ABSTRACT
My first recollection of volunteers in research was when I was a medical student. One of the lecturers asked for volunteers to take part in a project within the department. Being young and somewhat foolish I was one of the people who said that I would help. There were no medicals, no information, certainly no consent and before I knew what was happening I had been given a drug and was sitting on a chair with sulphur dioxide being pumped into the air to see if the drug was an anti-tussive. Very rapidly I learned that if I did not breathe during the course of this experiment I did not cough and therefore no worthwhile results were obtained. It was retrospectively an illustration of many of the issues in research that ought now to be prevented.
