Clinical trials & medical research (young people)

And I think, I believe that the benefits of taking part in this is as I said for me personally hopefully I won’t actually develop CF related diabetes in the near future and hopefully, hopefully never, but I know that there are people, I do have a friend who does have slight issues with her blood sugar levels and this, this research will be really useful to see if it is something that will benefit people with cystic fibrosis and it can help people, you know, it may become used more frequently and it may be a good thing for people that are struggling with their blood sugar levels. So that’s why, that’s why I decided to take part. 

I felt like, yes, I did feel like that if I could help someone and someone could have, you know, a much easier road to recovery because of something that I did, it made me feel a bit better about it and that my suffering, being sick was worth it for someone else.

I don’t really know. Not particularly with clinical trials but, because I didn’t even, I didn’t even notice I was on a clinical trial, to be honest. It made no difference to me. Getting better is getting better, whatever you take. So, but I’m just happy that it could help other people maybe in the future and get a bit more funding for a drug that’s worked really well for me. So hopefully it will work well for other people and kind of reduce the suffering that some, some of the other drugs might produce. And if it can kind of ease the pain of an already painful situation, then that’s worth it for me.
 

I think a barrier might be, so as I said when I was younger we didn’t do anything where I had to have another blood test. So if there’s a particular procedure involved that you don’t really want to do then you’re very free to say no. But even if it’s something that only, you know, that only mildly inconveniences you, like I had to have these bronchoscopies, you know, it’s not exactly a fun thing to have but you think well it’s worth it to put myself through that for the benefit that the trial gains from it. Or I mean there was another, with the pilot study they had this worst test ever, they had like a wire pipe cleaner brush that they’d stick in your nose and go whoosh and take it out. And it’s really, really uncomfortable and oh it was horrible but in doing so they got a million epithelial cells from each nostril doing it so, and the doctor doing it said “I know these are horrible we’ve done them on, we’ve done them on ourselves as well” but the amount of data we get from it is incredible. So I think perhaps sometimes maybe for young people to try and see past the, you know, slight uncomfort they may have to go through for the greater gain that it brings yes. And I think as, as a facilitator as I said being a young person on the gene therapy trial if I’ve got a chance of being one of the first people to have gene therapy and then to be on that drug then that’s a, a really great opportunity for my health. So even though that’s a yes it’s not a financial incentive it’s still a really good incentive to take part. 

What were your key reasons for taking, wanting to take part?

Because I make sure the medicine, because it’s only approved in America at the moment, so we’re trying to get it approved in this country and Europe. So in the UK and Europe we’re trying to get it approved so people can get it, but because it’s for people that aren’t very well as well I think at the moment but we’re just saying what’s the point of getting it you have to wait to get ill first so we’re just trying to get it through for that because it’s well people they’re testing it on now. Because it’s in the third phase, the trial.