- Okay, poop is pretty gross.
We flush it, we mask it, we avoid talking about it
at all costs.
But what if poop could save your life?
I mean like, literally, poop could save your life.
This is On the Fringe, a show about weird ideas
that just might change the world.
- Poop is a funny subject for many,
and we've kind of welcomed that.
We kind of take our work very seriously,
but take ourselves lightly.
- The is Majdi Osman,
the clinical program director at OpenBiome.
It's a stool bank, like a blood bank but for poop.
- We're a nonprofit stool bank,
so we provide fecal material for fecal transplants.
- Yes, you heard that right, fecal transplants.
- Yes, it is literally exactly what it sounds like.
- This is Carolyn Edelstein,
the executive director of OpenBiome,
but her bit comes a little later,
so let's go back to Majdi.
No, not the dog again!
- Basically, you're taking poop from a healthy individual
and transplanting it into an individual
who has a disease that you're trying to treat.
- You might be asking why in God's name
would anyone want to do that?
This procedure is often a last resort
for people with Clostridium Difficile,
or C. Diff infections.
- C. Diff is a really nasty gut bug,
and it gives you pretty aggressive diarrhea.
- This little bastard is C. Diff.
It's a bacteria that's extremely common
in the environment at large,
as well as in many people's digestive systems.
Normally it's no big deal,
but if it gets out of control in your tummy,
it can cause an infection,
and that infection affects roughly
half a million people every year,
and about 29,000 of them will die.
- The sense of desperation that comes with someone
with C. Diff is immeasurable.
- This is Jessica Benois.
She contracted a C. Diff infection
two months before her wedding,
and antibiotics weren't working
- It just got worse.
I was septic, my joints were swollen,
I had a fever, I couldn't move, I was bleeding.
- Jessica was dying.
- And, I am so sorry.
I was finally at the point, I think,
towards the end of the fight of
this may actually happen.
I was about ready to give up.
- That's when her doctor mentioned
the idea of a fecal transplant, or FMT.
And when she asked him why he thought it was a good idea
to tell a dying woman that he wanted to put
someone else's poop into her body,
he probably said it has something to do
with her microbiome.
- So, where's this, what?
- Your microbiome is the sum total
of all microbial life that lives on and in your body,
both the good and the bad.
In your gut, these bacterial help you process your food,
maintain your metabolism, and otherwise stay alive.
The health of your gut biome can be
a critical factor in your health,
and your poop is basically just a
to-go version of your gut biome.
- What we're really transplanting
are the community of bacteria,
and that eventually leads to a resolution
of the person's symptoms,
and a rebalancing of the microbial community in the gut.
- The poop from donors can't be sterilized,
because that would defeat the whole purpose,
so donors are rigorously screened
to make sure they're very healthy.
Less than 3% of people make the cut,
but if you happen to be one of these
super healthy individuals,
you could get paid $40 per donation.
- I got a kick out of it.
I giggled, I remember laughing.
I was like, "This is fantastic.
"Sure, let's give it a shot!"
These people are trusting in it,
the science seems to be there, I read the studies,
and I was curious.
My doctor, it was among the first times
he had actually administered one.
We got the transplant matter from OpenBiome,
and we go back, show everyone and their mother my rear,
get it inputted, and then you go back to the room
and you have to sit on your side, on your left side,
and just kind of in the fetal position,
letting it marinate, if you will.
- After the procedure,
Jessica went home and went to sleep,
anxious to see if the procedure would work.
- I was so tired of feeling sick
that I was starting to go a little nuts,
and that was just the icing on the cake
where you're like, "I've really just put
"someone else's matter up in my colon.
"Man, I have really gotten to the point of
"just anything goes at this point."
But it worked!
Honestly, the feeling was almost instantaneous.
I was back at the office the next day.
FTM is tremendous.
- The most rewarding part of the work that we do
is the fact that, as a team, we show up every day,
we do our jobs, and somebody gets better.
It just so happens that that lifesaving treatment
is made out of poop.
- There's still a lot we don't know
about fecal transplants, but we do know it works.
In 2013, the New England Journal of Medicine
conducted a study on patients with C. Diff
that produced astounding results.
Fecal transplants were three times more effective
than traditional antibiotics.
- It's pretty awesome.
- Since that report, there's been
a growing interest in the procedure.
OpenBiome was founded to make performing
and researching FMT easier.
- It's such a privilege to be kind of
at the forefront of a field that
is really kind of shaping medicine as we know it.
- There's actually evidence to suggest
that fecal transplants can help treat
a huge number of conditions,
things as diverse as irritable bowel syndrome, or Crohn's,
but also things like MS, or even alopecia.
The gut microbiome simply plays a huge role
in our overall health.
The problem is that we still aren't quite sure
what bacteria is being introduced.
- Poop is a very complex mixture,
and we're really not sure at the moment
which component of poop is the one
that leads to clinical resolution.
- Researchers are hoping to being tracking
what changes before and after a transplant,
so they can identify exactly what microbes are changing.
In the meantime, the FDA has given the green light
for these procedures to continue,
meaning thousands more will have their life saved
by someone's poop.