I will attend the meeting and see what happens. I'm currently still emailing the 1.2 million donor applicants. I'm about halfway through and so far no one seems to care. So things are not looking good.
If you are able to get in touch with Dr. Jason Hawrelak and let him know about this project and the current difficulty with the FDA that could be useful.
This would be a terrible decision by the FDA. There is no way that sterilized filtrate will be as effective as FMT. EDIT: I also do not think that the current evidence supports sterile fecal filtrate as being safer or more effective. There is very little science on sterile fecal filtrates, so it seems strange that they'd already be backing it.
Firstly I'd like to say I'm one of the 1.2 million applicants that was excluded by your screening process and I still took the time to join this conversion and give some feedback and ideas with no benefit or gain to myself. So it's not entirely true that no one cares.
I've actually witnessed you make several assumptions like this about a few things I've read here and in your emails and blog posts. I'll try to give some constructive feedback on solutions here since I know you are overwhelmed as it is.
1) Communication: Emailing 1.2 million applicant is no a complicated thing with the right tools, like a proper mailer/list manager, SMTP service, segmented list. You could literally write your email as if you were mailing one person , click a few buttons and the software would reliably take care of the rest for you. Additionally if you required emailing different segments this effort would also be reduced and made much easier to process in batches. It seems to me although you are brilliant at FMT research you could be more open minded and efficient at technology application and processing your data , or hire someone that is. Outsourcing doesn't have to be expensive if you have a system that someone can follow and the tools to do it. All successful organizations do this.
2) Targeting: I agree that you need to better target highly probable groups that could become "ideal" donor prospects, but you have said yourself that your algorithm doesn't produce the result you are after even when it is a young healthy athlete.
so I think that's a pretty good sample size to conclude that your current vetting method could be missing something. Although I'm sure you feel your criteria is valid you are really just guessing because unless you actually test each applicants stool you could be missing that ideal person you are looking for with the X factor.
You have also stated yourself that the young athlete category isn't always producing a good result and some have perplexingly bad stools for such great physiques. You need to expand your criteria to potentially include someone that cares about their health and their stool.
Athletes although fit aren't necessarily healthy. Many fitness protocols are very unhealthy. This is often very true in young people with the rising interest in exogenous hormone and other molecular usage , intense fitness routines that are nothing more than over training etc. Being young with a good physique don't make you smart. Many people as such use short cuts and creating to achieve their results.
Have you considered the the rising interest in the longevity and anti aging group? There are several young people in great shape in this group and they are already having their stools tested on their own to measure their microbiome health. And also perhaps some older people who have consciously cultivated their microbiome. I'm no expert on FMT or what you need but it seems to me your filtering is too exclusionary before you get actual proof (lab tests stools). I also realize this is partly due to sheer volume of applicants and of course targeting. But why not cast a wide web if you're already looking for a needle in hay stack and you can structure it so that the needle might make itself stand rather than needing to look at ever piece of hay to uncover it your self.
Solution A: Target people already monitoring their microbiome on their own dime. Longevity , Healthspan, Anti aging crowds.
Solution B: Why not take advantage of the 1.2 million applicants you already have by offering those you disqualified the opportunity to prove their stool is good by having a lab they can send their stool too for testing if they are willing to pay for their own test. You could have AI go over the lab results and organize them, so you,re not wasting time on clearly disqualified delusional people and you still get to learn from the process and possibly capturing more provable data on your applicant pool. You might also discover what criteria your algorithm is missing.
I can say that I for one would have been willing to pay for these tests just to discover how healthy or unhealthy my own microbiome is even if I didn't get the opportunity to make $500 per stool. That the selling point to gt people to do it if they really want the opportunity. You can simple say "I'm sorry but according to our initial screening you did not qualify but if you feel the was a mistake and would like the opportunity to prove you are a good candidate and would like to find out the actual health of your microbiome. Pay XX$ to get your stool tested here {link}, receive a microbiome health report and we will both know for sure. Im sure you can arrange something with one of these companies already doing this testing and reporting and s up an easy way to filter the actual data to have a second look.
I came to this forum and to apply and know about you and your work thru one of those side hustle videos. You never know who will see things or how they will come to you. I do agree although it's not the ideal group for targeting but it did generate this feedback for you so it does have some potential value.
3) Your website and FMT mention: This really is being over valued. The term FMT itself had no bearing on my application. The $500 for healthy stool was the primary motivator and the secondary motivator was that it was being used to help people generally who didn't have a healthy microbiome. Whether that's research or providing the stool for treatment didn't really matter.
I think you can easily remove the FMT information wording, state things very generally and still get applications. You could even say due to FDA rules you can't state specifically what the stool will be used for but that it is going to research to help people with an unhealthy microbiome. Regardless this is just my personal opinion but it is true that once again you have no actual data that you won't get applications or that mentioning FMT is important in people completing applications.
Like I said you can word things generally and still attract people that care and want to help. That is in fact one of your most important criteria. The only people that care about FMT specifically and the term itself are the recipients and researchers like yourself. I personally didn't even know about FMT before this and I'll bet that your ideal donor doesn't either and that expecting them search for it is completely unrealistic.
My intention in writing this 8000 character post and the time it took out of my day to do so is too open a good human beings mind a little more to the possibilities of the solutions to their issues. Anyone can relate to being caught up in the middle of it, when you're in it. I am not and insider in the area so Im giving you an outsiders view of what I see. Sometimes that is what is needed.
You clearly communicate your problems but perhaps unknowingly you also communicate why you have them. It's wonderful that there are people like you that care so much in this world that they dedicate their life and work to helping others suffering. Keep up the good work and I wish you the best and I hope you take my comments for what ever value you can find in them. At the very least I hope it sparks a possibility with in you towards a solution. There are alway people that care. Don't ever lose hope. In the end that's all good people can hold on to, and thank God you provide that for the people suffering from this condition.
Sincerely,
Joseph
