WARNING: GROSS - Turd transplants
The Washington Post covers fecal bacteriotherapy, a medical procedure that amounts to, basically, a shit transplant.In the procedure, people whose digestive bacteria have been destroyed by antibiotics or disease drink the extract of diluted turd.
I'm endlessly fascinated by the doctor's statement that a turd is an "independent organ."
It is normally considered waste product, but it is in a way an independent organ, like the kidney, and it contains thousands of different bacteria living in symbiosis. These bacteria are needed for normal health. When you use some antibiotics, some of this bacteria population gets destroyed. If you later get infected with Clostridium difficile colitis, there is this competitive battlefield in the colon, and without the necessary bacteria, Clostridium has the upper hand. So what we do is take normal stool from a normal person, make an extract of it, put it in a blender with water, take two tablespoons of that cocktail, and introduce it into the patient's body.Link (via JWZ)
Share this post
Cory Doctorow
Upcoming appearances
* Feb 9, 2012, DeKalb, IL: Day of Doctorow, NIU
* Feb 10-12, 2012, Chicago, IL: Capricon 32
* Feb 13, 2012, Arlington, TX: UT Arlington College of Engineering Distinguished Speaker Series
* Feb 16, 2012, Victoria, BC: 13th Annual Privacy and Security Conference
Recent books:
* Context (essays)
* With a Little Help (short stories)
* For the Win (YA novel)
* Makers (adult novel)
Where not otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution. Boing Boing is a trademark of Happy Mutants LLC in the United States and other countries.