Comedian John Tothill has opened up about his experience of contracting malaria for a drug trial in order to raise funds for his Edinburgh Fringe shows. Drug trials for malaria can come with a considerable pay cheque – one advert currently posted on the Oxford Vaccine Group website states that participants will be paid up to £9,100 for their time. But while Tothill had expected to only have a mild case of the disease, he ended up experiencing hallucinations and an extreme fever.
In an op-ed for The Times , Tothill, 27, wrote about how, two years ago, he had come across the medical trial when trying to fund his forthcoming Edinburgh Fringe show: Thank God this Lasts Forever . Working out that it could cost around £9,000 to live in the city for the month, he decided to sign up as a participant. Although his high white blood cell count meant he was rejected from FluCamp, Tothill was eligible for more rigorous trials, one of which was a “malaria camp”.
The plan was for Tothill to contract the disease and for his malaria count to reach 500 parasites per millitre of blood. Then, he “would be given a few tablets, make a full recovery, and be sent on my way a wealthy man”. Instead, after two weeks of feeling fine and having a count of zero, on day 14 of the trial he suddenly started to feel very sick.
He wrote: “The clinicians took my bloods and revealed to me (to the best of my feverish recollections), half nervously and half delightedly, that my malaria count was 28,0.
