postcard FROM SAN FRANCISCO

Testing, Testing: Everyone in San Francisco has noticed the spate of ads on the back pages of the Bay Area Guardian and the SF Weekly as well as on the noticeboards of cafes frequented by young people with time, but not money, to spare. San Franciscans who are flat broke after Christmas are discovering rich pickings volunteering for medical tests with pharmaceutical companies and research hospitals. And with the pressure on companies to produce results early in the new year, the result is a symbiotic feeding frenzy.

People with the kind of problems they never thought would come in useful - alcoholics, opiate dependents, pregnant smokers - command the best offers. One researcher wants to talk to women about their dreams after abortion. Many only want men, so I end up having a long telephone conversation with Miguel, a telephone interviewer hired by a company looking for headache sufferers, who asks me a score of questions. I exaggerate helplessly. I'm hardly an acute sufferer, but I am succumbing to the documented tendency of subjects to try to please researchers when financial inducements are involved - $90 to take a few pills. It's obvious that the company is trying to produce some research of dubious integrity to back up a TV ad campaign. Miguel asks me what I currently take to cure my headaches. I name two products I've seen on TV. Miguel says I may have qualified to take part.

At the downtown clinic the waiting room is packed. The same company is recruiting for an Alzheimer's study, and chaos is imminent. I join a contingent of headache sufferers. Jason is 21 and came up from Santa Cruz for the holidays. He needs the money to get back. He regrets he can't do a new cocaine study: "I'm not a user, man." His friend offers to hit him with a baseball bat so he can qualify for a study on sports injuries.

For Melissa, faux fur coat and dyed black hair, this is not so much a career as a lifestyle.Trying to quit smoking is her New Year's resolution and she is going to get on the smoking rehab programme "for sure". They always advertise for those studies at this time of year. Scientific research has been good to Melissa. She once profitably sub-let her apartment while she took part in some research on sleeping patterns. She claims to have tested quantities of diet pills effectively, and now points to a printed request for people interested in plastic surgery treatment - eyelid-lifting and laser skin-resurfacing. The only occupational hazard so far is the concern that she will be recognised. Recruiters, understandably, want fresh subjects.

This a world of mixed motives and morality. Later in the day an item on the news says researchers into HIV are worried their test results are being compromised by participants who give their drugs away to friends who are positive but have failed to qualify. One guy's T-cell count has come back from the brink as a result. For him it really is a happy new year.