How much should healthy medical research volunteers get paid?

One night, an ad on Reddit caught Jake Eberts’ eye. Using graphics from the classic video game “The Oregon Trail,” it said something like, “You have died of dysentery. Help us prevent dysentery by joining this vaccine study.”

Eberts was intrigued. For $7,300 (and out of a sense of altruism), he joined a study on a shigellosis vaccine that required him to be exposed to the bacteria that causes the disease. Along the way, Eberts developed dysentery — “pretty aggressively,” he said. “I joked that I was one of the overachievers in the cohort.” The experience inspired him to become an advocate for healthy volunteers.

On this episode of the “First Opinion Podcast,” I spoke with Eberts, who is now on the board of the nonprofit 1Day Sooner, and Jill Fisher, a professor of social medicine at the