Irradiation of volunteers in nuclear medicine

The preliminary assessment of many radiopharmaceuticals is often carried out with the help of "normal volunteers". These volunteers are drawn from the general public, are fully informed of the procedure to be performed and its attendant risks, and in many cases are compensated financially for their trouble. The cooperation of such people is of vital importance to the full understanding of the normal kinetics and metabolism of many new radiopharmaceuticals. The restrictions on the choice of normal volunteers, and the radiation dose limits which must be observed are not explicitly defined in any of the current guidelines, and in this paper we propose a rationale, based upon available information, which sets acceptable limits for volunteers, and provides a framework within which scientists and physicians can work.