Bored of mini golf and axe-throwing? Try the plague

Bored of mini golf? Try the plague, writes Phoebe Arslanagić-Little, as she discovers the world of ‘human challenge trials’

Escape rooms. Mini golf. Afternoon tea. We live in the world of the ‘experience economy’. Forget hand soap for your mum’s birthday, take her to try something new! Don’t give the children another plastic toy, go somewhere they can do something! Primarily, my parents are the beneficiaries (or victims) of my forays into the experience economy and related gift-giving. Sometimes, I do well – my mother loved beekeeping. Sometimes, I get it wrong – my father hated caving and is clearly concerned I might try and make him do something like it again. “Please don’t put yourself out,” he says as his birthday nears, “I don’t need or want anything. Really. Please.”

But my interest in the experience economy has resurged because at a party in September I met George, a young man who had recently contracted salmonella, completely voluntarily. He had been given a vial containing salmonella – to drink – as part of his participation in what is known as a ‘human challenge trial’. George explained to me that human challenge trials are a type of medical research study. Participants are voluntarily infected with a disease so that how the disease develops and manifests can be better understood. 

I was completely and utterly fascinated. George played his next card. “In 2025,” he said casually, “I might be participating in a plague challenge study.” 

The plague! The Black Death! The disease that devastated and reshaped Europe by killing as many as 50m of its inhabitants. I may be over-romanticising what will no doubt be a trying few days for George, but experiencing the plague (safely) strikes me as a chance to live a tiny piece of that history, gaining insight that is denied to the rest of us, bumbling around with our standard coughs and colds. 

To be clear, the plague is a dangerous disease (there was a serious outbreak in India in 1994) and any strain used in such a study will be carefully selected. And George does not volunteer for challenge trials for the foolish and sentimental reasons that might lead me to sign up to one. Instead, he is motivated by a desire to help advance medical science. He chooses to undergo something unpleasant, but bearable and low risk, so that better treatments might be developed. And George is also compensated every time he participates in a challenge trial, at a little over £3,000.

All challenge trials taking place in the UK are reviewed by an ethics committee to make sure risks to participants – who are after all being deliberately exposed to harm – are minimised, and that participants fully consent to and understand the process. The first human challenge trial is one you might remember learning about in biology at school: Edward Jenner intentionally attempted to infect eight-year-old James Phipps with smallpox to test whether he had been inoculated against the disease through exposure to the less dangerous cowpox. 

You may also have heard a little about human challenge trials during the pandemic (astonishingly, George also volunteered for and participated in a Covid challenge trial). Challenge trials were part of the warp-speed process that developed Covid-19 vaccines, the most rapidly developed vaccine ever. 

When you next get Covid, or salmonella, or the plague, remember that there are people out there, like George, who have voluntarily undergone the same experience so that things might be better for others. And if you are bored of escape rooms or mini golf, and you really do want to do something different, may I suggest you consider signing up to a challenge trial yourself? 1DaySooner – a nonprofit that advocates for people who participate in and want to participate in high-impact medical studies like challenge trials – is a great place to start for those who are intrigued.