Jake Eberts posted a photo of him drinking the brew.
A 26-year-old man, in the name of science, drank a life-threatening concoction of Shigella bacteria, which are found in the feces of infected people. Jake Eberts received $7,000 from the University of Maryland for participating in an 11-day clinical trial.
He drank a glass of cloudy, salty liquid with the bacteria empty, knowing it would set off a miserable case of dysentery.
“I will be deliberately infected with dysentery and kept in a quarantine facility for 11 days as part of a Phase IIc vaccine clinical trial,” he said in a tweet on April 4, a day before I entered the trial. He later posted a photo of himself drinking the smoothie.
Ennnn infected!! 🤪Here’s a wonderfully unflattering selfie as you take the buffer solution 2 minutes before the actual shigella solution. Both tasted like saline. I didn’t try to make a video for the last solution because I wasn’t trying to drop biohazard juice on the floor pic.twitter.com/dMWmWAQQhI
— Jake Eberts (@wokeglobaltimes) Apr 6, 2022
He then posted an ongoing thread of the vaccine trail experience to tell users how the bacteria affected his body.
Mr Eberts said the symptoms of the trial resulted in the “worst eight hours of my life”. He was one of 16 healthy young adults who participated in the trial.
Later, in a conversation with Insider, Mr. Eberts: “I don’t want to pretend to be Mother Teresa here – I wouldn’t have done this for free. It’s a big question to ask someone to get dysentery.”
Mr Eberts said he would do it again if he was paid.
Speaking of the research, the University of Maryland said they were evaluating the effectiveness of an investigational Shigella vaccine.
According to experts, Shigellosis, caused by the Shigella bacteria, is a disease that affects the digestive system. It is highly contagious and results in stomach pain, diarrhea and fever in people who are infected, Cleveland Clinic said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on their website that the Shigella bacterium causes 600,000 deaths worldwide every year and that there is no vaccine available against it.
Shigella enters the body by drinking contaminated water, eating poorly prepared food or coming into contact with a person’s infected stool, the CDC said.
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