Michael Harrop
Active member
https://slate.com/life/2024/05/fecal-transplant-fmt-c-diff-microbiome-poop-black-market.html
Kind of an odd article. Amusing, seemingly agenda-driven, occasionally deceptive, but not all bad. I'm curious what impact this article will have. Will it be better or worse than the "complete silence" by most of the media up until now?
The journalist interviewed all of our recipients who volunteered to be interviewed. I think there were a dozen or so, and they included a doctor and other people with advanced biology degrees. The goal may have been to find dirt to dig up, but they didn't find any. But in many places, the article is worded as a hit piece that seems like it would have been much worse had there been any actual "dirt".
Is HumanMicrobes.org really "the black market for poop"? I don't see it that way at all. Grey market perhaps, but a "market" isn't my goal regardless. And it's certainly not "booming".
Anyone unfamiliar should review our website and blog https://www.humanmicrobes.org/blog which lays out all the details. This 10 minute Youtube video gives an introduction to the project as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wi52tLjCps
I can only guess that Slate felt that writing this type of article would attract more clicks. So we continue on the path that there's a possible solution to rampant chronic disease and a single disabled person remains the only one out of billions of people who is trying to obtain it.
They reference the wiki (https://humanmicrobiome.info/) without linking to it. Likely because people who actually review it will recognize it as a high-quality, scientific resource which goes against the tone of the article.
FYI, Sahil Khanna, the Gastroenterologist they interview and quote, is hired by many pharmaceutical companies:
This includes the developers of the $17,500 per course "FMT alternative" drug that was recently FDA-approved. Companies like that may see FMT and the Human Microbes project as threats to their profit.
Despite that, I'm still doubtful that Sahil Khanna thinks the humanmicrobes.org project is "a terrible idea".
Not to mention that the "more research" they reference is literally impossible without the humanmicrobes.org project screening millions of people to find high-quality donors: https://www.humanmicrobes.org/blog/fda-fmt-regulation
Kind of an odd article. Amusing, seemingly agenda-driven, occasionally deceptive, but not all bad. I'm curious what impact this article will have. Will it be better or worse than the "complete silence" by most of the media up until now?
The journalist interviewed all of our recipients who volunteered to be interviewed. I think there were a dozen or so, and they included a doctor and other people with advanced biology degrees. The goal may have been to find dirt to dig up, but they didn't find any. But in many places, the article is worded as a hit piece that seems like it would have been much worse had there been any actual "dirt".
Is HumanMicrobes.org really "the black market for poop"? I don't see it that way at all. Grey market perhaps, but a "market" isn't my goal regardless. And it's certainly not "booming".
Anyone unfamiliar should review our website and blog https://www.humanmicrobes.org/blog which lays out all the details. This 10 minute Youtube video gives an introduction to the project as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wi52tLjCps
I can only guess that Slate felt that writing this type of article would attract more clicks. So we continue on the path that there's a possible solution to rampant chronic disease and a single disabled person remains the only one out of billions of people who is trying to obtain it.
Contradicted by the very next paragraph where he quotes me giving a detailed personal biography.
I would have never used that wording. In fact, when starting out I explicitly said that I didn't consider it a business and wasn't interested in starting a business. But at this point, "a business" seems accurate.
It's $1,000 for a whole stool split into 10 pieces/doses. So $100 per dose, for anyone able to do some basic kindergarten math.
It's not. Openbiome touts a pass rate of 3%, which is not close to "fewer than 0.1%". Openbiome, and other "aboveboard" FMT distributors all have severe donor quality deficiencies, which is why the humanmicrobes.org project had to be started to begin with. Of course, this was not mentioned at all in the article. Later on, the article does mention:
This is deliberately deceptive. The tests that are done are from the European consensus conference on faecal microbiota transplantation in clinical practice https://gut.bmj.com/content/66/4/569#boxed-text-3. So our testing is equal to the most rigorous testing, and is according to an international scientific consensus published in a reputable scientific/medical journal. "A handful of known pathogens" is me describing the severe limitations of current testing capabilities, which I provided citations for (https://humanmicrobiome.info/testing/), and which highlights the importance of our other screening criteria (such as stool type).
They reference the wiki (https://humanmicrobiome.info/) without linking to it. Likely because people who actually review it will recognize it as a high-quality, scientific resource which goes against the tone of the article.
Strange then that so many doctors, other medical personnel, and people with advanced science degrees, are all applying to be donors as well as purchasing from our donors. The Slate journalist who wrote the piece even interviewed some of our recipients who were doctors and other bio degree holders.
FYI, Sahil Khanna, the Gastroenterologist they interview and quote, is hired by many pharmaceutical companies:
This includes the developers of the $17,500 per course "FMT alternative" drug that was recently FDA-approved. Companies like that may see FMT and the Human Microbes project as threats to their profit.
Despite that, I'm still doubtful that Sahil Khanna thinks the humanmicrobes.org project is "a terrible idea".
It would be extremely dystopian if that took yet another 50 years when it very likely already exists and is extremely simple.
Not to mention that the "more research" they reference is literally impossible without the humanmicrobes.org project screening millions of people to find high-quality donors: https://www.humanmicrobes.org/blog/fda-fmt-regulation
Indeed. What does this article do to advance the process of finding out whether or not that's the case? One might argue that this article hinders the most promising effort to discover it.
- Format correct?
- Yes
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