A participant in the Moderna COVID vaccine trial has some thoughts about trial participation; more precisely, he has some thoughts about why he stopped trial participation. His views were recently posted online here in STAT. In summary, he objects to participating in experiments that result in what he claims are large profits for pharma companies.
Thoughts from the OP-ED staff here at IRB blog central. First, his account doesn’t mention payment for participation. One commenter on the article estimated he was paid about $2,500 for his participation in the Moderna trial. Nor does the article mention the cost of running a clinical trial. Lastly, the author fails to point out that for every medical drug or device that makes it to market, there will be many others the company invested it in that will never make it past the early testing phase, due to lack of efficacy or safety.