Newcastle — “Are you feeling tired and listless?  Are you prone to colds and allergies; suffering from nausea, indigestion, uncontrollable bowels?  Ask your doctor about Crapcion.  Millions have been helped by this naturally organic suppository, antiseptically packaged in a lubricated, flexible capsule for easy insertion.”  I wonder how long it will be before we hear this ad interrupting the nightly news.  Of course the product will be available under a number of brand names: Kaksin, Stoolup, Exiturd, Scatago, Angidung, and the French generic Merdel.

Joking aside, this scenario is not as absurd as it might at first seem.  I was recently introduced to the medical benefits of feces listening to a Freakonomics podcast titled The Power of Poop. The program featured an Aussie whose progressive MS has apparently been arrested by fecal transplants, more sophisticatedly, Fecal Bacteriotherapy, whereby a patient is administered beneficial bacteria using fecal material from healthy individuals.  Clearly his is one of the more spectacular results, but the treatment is normally, if rather rarely, successfully used for digestive complaints.

For example, take the story of Marion Browning of North Providence, R.I that was published in Scientific American.  “She was at her wit’s end. The 79-year-old retired nurse had suffered from chronic diarrhea for almost a year.”  Unfortunately, the malady was caused by her doctor, who prescribed strong antibiotics to battle her diverticulitis.  The “cure” destroyed beneficial bacteria “allowing a toxin-producing organism known as Clostridium difficile to take over and begin eating away at the entire lining of her gut.”  Further administration of powerful antibiotics, which the clever little bacterium has learned to live with, failed to cure the new problem, and she was referred for fecal flora reconstitution.  Her son the donor, the procedure was accomplished, and within two days the diarrhea was gone.  It has not recurred.

Trillions of micro-organisms, bacteria, live within our guts.  Bacteria produce antibiotics.  Through galloping progress in medical science we have come to understand and synthesize a few of these.  But, there remain many hundreds still to learn about, good and bad, living in the colon.  Why study these?  Why not just use what we have?  Transplants from a healthy person seem eminently logical, and they work.

The healers have been slow to pick up the practice.  It was first exercised in the 1950’s in a last ditch effort to save the lives of people ravaged by Clostridium difficile, a bacterium unidentified at the time.  Yet even though the procedure proved successful, it faded away until the seventies, and currently is not widely used.  Is this because the treatment is so unscientific, or is it simply because we are early taught to be disgusted by our waste and cannot overcome this acquired revulsion?  Yes, taught; I’m sure you can recall, or have seen in your children, that the wee ones are fascinated, not nauseated, by what they produce.  Another triumph of education.

The gut, or fecal organ if you will, contains nine times more bacteria that the body contains human cells.  This may be interpreted to mean that you are, as people sometimes tell you, ninety percent kaka.  Be proud of this!  Be an organ donor!  Do you suppose that we will someday have collection programs in the manner of blood drives?  Will there be typing and matching as in other organ transplants?  Note that the doctors chose Marion’s son to be her donor, but partners have also been used.  Any stranger would probably do, provided he’s healthy.

To date I have read only commentary on the palliative properties and nothing on the preventative potential of fecal transplants.  The latter doesn’t seem too far-fetched a concept.  Say you’re worried about the drinking water in that third world country you’re about to visit.  Might it not be prudent to send for some of the local feces?  Just a thought.

Living as we do in a society hidebound by bureaucracy,  transpoosion (as one gastroenterologist calls it) is not recognized by hospitals or insurance companies, because it has not been given FDA approval.  Such a blessing requires randomized clinical trial to prove effectiveness.  But the NIH will only fund or perform such a study on something granted “investigational” status by the FDA.  This is given only for drugs, medical devices, and biological products such as vaccines and tissues.  I’m sorry, but feces need not apply.  How patently ridiculous.  Another thought: next time you’re providing your doctor a sample stool for your annual physical, copy the FDA.  The address is: 10903 New Hampshire Avenue Silver Spring, MD 20903.