I know a lot of potential donors
[T]he medical profession is gradually coming to accept the somewhat startling idea that sometimes the best therapy is a fecal transplant — from a healthy person to the one who is sick, to replenish the population of "good germs."...Exactly how the altered intestinal bacteria might cause weight loss is not yet known, the researchers said. But somehow the microbes seem to rev up metabolism so that the animals burn off more energy.
A next step, Dr. Kaplan said, may be to take stool from people who have had gastric bypass and implant it into mice to see if causes them to lose weight. Then the same thing could be tried from person to person.
If they pay for supplies, this could solve the nation's economic downturn.
| Posted at 5:36 PM | Permalink |
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Comments (11)
Yucky!
Posted by dg | March 27, 2013 6:06 PM
Just the prospect of such a treatment is a powerful weight-loss motivation.
Posted by Allan L. | March 27, 2013 6:11 PM
No need for alarm here - it would only be a matter of time before drug companies synthesize and secure patents on chemical feces, and make sure that their clinical trials are rigged to demonstrate that their product is better to the real thing. Then they would buy off regulators to make sure that doctors could only prescribe their product, at tremendous profit margins, of course.
Posted by John Rettig | March 27, 2013 6:33 PM
Now some people will literall be full of ----
Posted by Mike H | March 27, 2013 6:50 PM
It sounds odd at first, but rest assured that fecal bacterial transplant is an established (and notably effective) treatment for certain hard-to-treat gastrointestinal disorders.
You wouldn't be able to digest food without symbiotic bacteria. They make up fully half of your solid waste. Everybody has a different census, hence the need for research.
This is a fascinating area of research, and I'll bet there's more on offer once they figure out the interactions between all of the species. Remember Heliobacter pylori?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori
Nobody understood gastric ulcers (and certain other g-i issues) until a clever scientist discovered the connection between this microbe and many common ailments.
Posted by Downtown Denizen | March 27, 2013 7:03 PM
Save that for me. I'm on a diet.
Posted by Private parts | March 27, 2013 7:58 PM
Just wait until you see the fan that comes with it.
Posted by Texas Triffid Ranch | March 27, 2013 8:16 PM
Under Obamacare, would this be an experiments treatment or a routine procedure.
Posted by David E Gilmore | March 28, 2013 6:41 AM
Sounds like the perfect solution to cut the huge pile of fat known as the Federal deficit.
In fact deficit kinda sounds like....
Posted by Tim | March 28, 2013 9:33 AM
...patents on chemical feces
And sue everyone for royalties for no. 2
Posted by Conrad | March 28, 2013 10:56 AM
Would the recipient have to list the new fecal matter as "income" for the arts tax?
Posted by TacoDave | March 28, 2013 12:40 PM