Did you know that to discover 1 human medicine , a pharmaceutical research company has to test about 10,000 chemical compounds (drugs)? The trouble is that all drugs have side effects and can be poisonous (= for some life forms, taking the drug kills them!)

In Earth circles, it can take 15 years to get from the first idea of a medicine to completing all the tests on a drug so that Government authorities allow you to prescribe it for human patients. (It takes about 7 years for similar studies to complete for drugs for non-human life forms on Earth!)

Some drugs cost £4 million to develop. (That is about US $7 million but I am not sure of the conversions to Alpha Centuri dollars or other currencies.)

Makes you think ... for many drugs where the side effects alter your mind, many volunteers will pursue the efficacy trials without being paid. The same is true of Vitamin trials :-)