To find people like Harold, some contract research organizations have employees visit room-and-boards and homeless shelters. In Philadelphia I met a man named Ed Burns, who explained to me how these recruiters work. Burns and his wife had been on the street for over two years when we spoke; he said they had trouble getting space in shelters, even though his wife is pregnant and Burns has bipolar disorder and depression. “I was on Depakote and I almost killed someone out of anger,” he said. “It made me a wrecking machine.” Burns was living in a shelter when he got a message saying that someone from the Veterans Affairs hospital was waiting outside for him. But when he went outside, he said, he was met by a representative of a research company known as CRI Worldwide.

“I was tired, I was hungry, and half an hour earlier the police had treated us like crap,” Burns said. “And this woman is saying, ‘Imagine, in 40 days you’ll have $4,000!’ The recruiter made testing drugs sound like a vacation in a five-star hotel, Burns said. “It’s like a resort selling time shares. They talk about all the benefits first, and it sounds great, but then you start to ask: What do I have to do?”

Not long ago, such offers would have been considered unethical. Paying any volunteer was seen as problematic, even more so if the subjects were poor, uninsured, and compromised by illness. Payment, it was argued, might tempt vulnerable subjects to risk their health. As trials have moved into the private sector, this ethical calculus has changed. First came a hike in the sums that volunteers could be paid: Many clinical trial sites now offer over $6,000 for an inpatient drug study. Eligibility requirements have changed, too. For years, trial sites paid only healthy volunteers, mainly to test new drugs for safety. These days people with asthma, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, and other conditions can be paid take part in trials.

https://medium.com/matter/did-big-pharma-test-your-meds-on-homeless-people-a6d8d3fc7dfe

The sole founder and CEO of Sweet Peach Probiotics is a 20-year-old woman named Audrey Hutchinson. A former college student at Bard, where she studied on a full-ride Distinguished Scientist Scholarship, she describes herself as an "ultrafeminist" who dropped out to pursue her vision of helping women manage their reproductive health without the need for doctors or clinics. "I don't think women should have vaginas that smell like peaches or anything like that," she says.

[SNIP]

For the record, that's not how Sweet Peach will work. According to Hutchinson, a user will take a sample of her vaginal microbiome and send it in for analysis. After determining the makeup of her microbiome -- in effect, taking a census of the microorganisms that reside in her vagina -- the company will supply a personalized regimen of probiotic supplements designed to promote optimal health. By making sure desirable microbes flourish in their proper balance, the supplements will help ensure that bad ones, like the ones that cause yeast infections, can't get a toehold.

The name alludes not to any quality of the product but to the way peaches have been used as a symbol of the vagina in literature for hundreds of years.

"I'm obviously sort of appalled that it's been misconstrued like this because it was never the point of my company," she says. "I don't want to apologize for [Austen], but at the same time I want to apologize to every woman in the world who's heard about this and wants my head on a stake."