How do drug trials really work? I got dengue fever to find out

Just like a mosquito bite, the shot of dengue virus I received in my arm was so quick and painless that afterward I wasn’t even sure it happened at all. A few years ago, I wrote a story about a young woman who was infected with malaria by 200 mosquito bites to test a potential vaccine. At the time, it was bewildering to me that someone would willingly agree to take on so much risk and put themselves through so much discomfort for only a modest sum of money. Yet many people choose to participate in clinical trials for new drugs every year. In fact, it is required in our medical system that drugs be tested on human participants in three phases of clinical trials to evaluate their safety and effectiveness before they can be approved for use.Over half a million clinical trials have been registered on the US government’s ClinicalTrials.gov since the clinical-trial-tracking site launched in February 2000. And nearly $100 billion is spent every year on the business of running clinical trials. The vast majority of the trials, and the money that goes into them, don’t result in a new drug approval.So when an ad popped up in my Instagram feed suggesting I could earn up to $3,425 for participating in a 5-month-long dengue study at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Immunization Research (CIR), I was intrigued. I wanted to know more about the business and ethics of human medical experimentation. And I was willing to put