There are tens of thousands of different kinds of bacteria and archaea that make up the human gut microbiome. Various strains of the same species of microorganism have distinct genes that might impact your health and the diseases to which you are prone. There is currently not much information on why different individuals possess distinct strains of the same kind of microorganisms in their intestines, even though researchers are now starting to understand what factors—such as diet—affect microbiome makeup. Human Microbes, a company incorporated in the United States and Canada, has meanwhile adopted an endeavour that is a bit beyond our comprehension.
For one stool sample, this firm is providing $500 (about Rs 41,000), or if you have daily bowel movements, they are offering almost $180,000 (approximately Rs 1 crore 40 lakh) every year. They welcome “donations” from all around the world and promote numerous “donations.”
According to the company’s website, you have the option to determine your own price if the money isn’t sufficient for you. Their website also has a video that describes how to become a “stool donor” and emphasises their need for human waste and how it might “save someone’s life.”
Why are they doing this, exactly? The researchers think that a processed stool sample from a healthy individual injected into a patient may be able to treat serious mental health problems and even aid those with various gastrointestinal ailments.
Once the donors are selected, the company also compensates them in advance. After that, the donors will need to ship the cargo using dry ice.
Furthermore, Human Microbes guarantees that the donations will remain anonymous if this is not a source of income you would like to boast about.
Human Microbes seeks to identify the fewer than 0.1% of people who have host-native microbes passed down through generations and connect them with medical professionals, researchers, hospitals, therapeutic trials, and individuals.
To put it another way, the company wants to link researchers with “high-quality stool donors” who have faeces that contain certain bacteria that are valuable for study.
According to the company website, the prevalence of chronic disease and poor health in general has increased dramatically over the past several decades, to the point that the majority of people are now severely unwell.
It continued by stating that the situation is getting exponentially worse with every generation, mostly as a result of our host-native bacteria disappearing as they were handed down through the generations.
New findings in microbiome research have raised hopes for solving these significant issues. However, the company states that in order to do this, it will require just a small 0.1% of individuals who are still in good enough condition to be eligible for high-quality stool donations to sign up and begin donating their faeces.
In the meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned the company in March that it was selling faecal microbiota transplants (FMTs) in violation of agency laws by selling the transplants in a variety of forms, such as “capsules, enemas, and infusions.”
According to MedPage Today, the FDA wrote to Human Microbes’ founder, Michael Harrop, stating that statements published on the business’ website suggest that its products belong in the medicine and biological product categories.
Consequently, in order to offer its medicines to patients, it would require an approved biologics licence application (BLA) or an investigational new drug (IND) application in order to carry out research.
Its products “raise potential significant safety concerns due to inadequate donor screening,” according to the warning letter.
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