A cash-strapped student voluntarily contracted deadly typhoid - and was paid almost £3,000 by medical scientists.
Sian Rogers had to get a taxi to the hospital every morning for doctors to check whether she was going to die - and all so she can pay for a new car.
The 22-year-old Oxford Brookes student first learned about medical trials last year when she funded a trip to Florida after being injected with ebola.
This month Sian contracted Salmonella Typhi, also known as typhoid, to help test a new vaccine.
Typhoid is an infectious fever which is common in developing countries and can prove fatal.
The student believes she is helping treat certain illnesses in the process of earning some extra cash - as the current vaccine for typhoid cannot be given to children and only works in 60 percent of adult cases.
Sian, a third year law student, now hopes to use the cash to buy a new car, after spending a week bed-ridden with the infection.
Speaking to student newspaper, The Tab, she said: "At first doctors gave me a drink of water with bicarbonate of soda in it - just so I wouldn't be contagious.
"I then had a second drink which contained the bacteria. I had to wear some protective gloves and goggles while drinking it.
"They had to monitor me everyday for two weeks to see how I was doing, and for the first week I was fine, I had to fill in an online diary of my symptoms too."
At first she felt fine, but in her second week she was left bed-ridden.
“I started feeling woozy on the Monday and I just put it down to a busy day and having blood taken," she said.
"I felt so sick that every time I moved I thought I was going to vomit."
Sian explained that the trial, organised by the Oxford Vaccine Group, lasts an entire year, but the worst of it is over.
She said that doctors hope that the vaccine could help eradicate Typhoid for good.
Sian said: "It's pretty cool to be able to say that I'm being part of eradicating a disease."
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