Michael Harrop
Active member
We (https://www.humanmicrobes.org) got very lucky that one or more people organically made social media videos about us, which resulted in 450k+ views and 5000-6000 new donor applications. Unfortunately, I don't think any of the applicants are promising, and I'm not personally interested in using any of them. I have a dozen or so generally healthy people but I don't think their stool types would be highly effective for many people.
High rates of obese people were applying. Most applicants are extremely unhealthy despite the site clearly saying "looking for the top 0.1% healthiest people" and showing multiple examples of what a healthy person looks like.
Seems like a lot of nurses are applying. The vast majority (80%) of applicants are women, but that was probably in large part due to the platform and/or person who made the video.
A lot of people getting parts of their bodies cut out.
Seems like most obese people have liquid/very soft stool. I find this surprising since I wonder how they're even able to absorb enough calories. Possibly the lack of solid stool results in a lack of satiation. Possibly it represents severe gut dysbiosis resulting in immune system dysregulation, resulting in excess fat storage. Obviously there are many more mechanisms though.
I've been advised to increase prices in order to attract higher-quality donors. So I've doubled the prices for both donors and recipients but we will accept proof of low income, and eventually open to donations, in order to provide for low-income individuals.
We've also gradually increased the referral reward from $300 to $2500, and may even double that.
I seem to have been right about everything: https://maximiliankohler.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
The very first stool donor I picked (2016) was based on my detailed questionnaire + physical appearance. My intuition seems to have been completely correct. https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/attractiveness-facial-features-health-development-and-fmt-donor-select.64/. I screened a division 1 basketball team, and their appearance aligned well with their questionnaires and stool types.
The evidence so far seems to still support my stool-type hypothesis: https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/another-email-ive-been-sending-to-researchers-regarding-donor-quality.57/
I was right about the rarity of high-quality donors. And it seems to be even worse (fewer than 1 in 6000) than I estimated (fewer than 1 in 1000).
And it certainly supports my calls of alarm regarding our health, microbiomes, and society: https://archive.ph/i1YOs#selection-647.0-647.1
I think one of the first times I started realizing it is worse than I estimated was when I learned that Will Smith's family actually has many health issues. His daughter is someone I would have guessed to be a high-quality donor.
Another instance was reading some years ago that even Simone Biles takes one or more prescription drugs. Another was learning that Serena Williams probably wouldn't qualify.
When I contact people directly who are more likely to qualify, they don't respond. When we do general outreach via ads, social media, etc. we mostly get extremely unhealthy people, along with about 1% who are generally healthy but probably wouldn't be a highly effective stool donor. These one-percenters would be average people in a non-dystopian society, but in ours they are very rare.
Ray Allen has a kid with diabetes. I looked at his Instagram and he seems to be an intelligent person. He even visited Congress to advocate for more medical research for diabetes. I contacted him, told him about what I was doing - working on a potential treatment/cure for diabetes and more, and explained that he could be massively helpful by helping to acquire high-quality stool donors for FMT. No response.
Another college athlete has a loved one wanting/needing a kidney transplant. I informed this person that organ transplants will likely soon be seen in a similar manner to other historically barbaric medical practices. And I linked them to information supporting this: https://humanmicrobiome.info/intro/#kidney. I told them about what I was doing, explained that stool donors can make $2k+/mo, and that I'm paying $2.5k commission per donor, and that as a college athlete, they're in a great position to recruit likely candidates even if they don't qualify themselves. What do I get? Silence. This person doesn't seem to be an idiot. They don't seem especially intelligent, but not particularly unintelligent either. So what gives? They're in an ideal situation to help a loved one while earning thousands of dollars and they have no interest...
I see a similar thing in the CFS community. It's incredibly frustrating to observe the community and the advocacy organizations (Eg: solvecfs.org and others) spending their time and support on some of the least promising areas and actions, despite my spending years trying to educate them on the microbiome and FMT. They're constantly (rightfully so to some extent) moaning about their terrible condition and lack of treatments, then I point out to them that there's likely a currently-available treatment/cure which they can help obtain if we all work together, and I'm met with either silence, downvotes, or worse - misinformation, anti-scientific attitudes, wilful ignorance, etc.. I see them continually asking the same questions over and over (which I've already answered for them), and continually filling up the threads with useless noise. Eg: question, answers.
Similarly, the IBS, IBD, and other communities seem to prefer to wallow in their misery rather than discuss, strive for, and promote solutions https://archive.vn/8wNyu#selection-2079.11-2083.0. For more examples you can look through my many years of post and comment history on those types of subs, trying to educate them, and where is the support from those tens of thousands of individuals? Nowhere. There's not even support from the hundreds of people actively wanting/looking for FMT for themselves.
Living in Idiocracy is torture.
Where is the support from the /r/publichealth and other communities whose job and life goal is to increase public health?
There should be massive pressure, from the 99.9% of the population who is unhealthy, put on the fewer than 0.1% of people who qualify to be high-quality stool donors, to give us their stool. Yet there is next to none. These people who are flushing lifesaving medicine down the toilet should be ostracized by society. But that can't happen because of the ignorance and stupidity of the 99.9%.
Some years ago I saw a very healthy top UFC athlete bring on some really unhealthy fan and mourn about how terrible it was. That kind of shit is so frustrating to see, knowing that the healthy UFC athlete could probably "save" the kid by donating something that has 0 value to him. The same thing happened to a Starcraft personality, who ended up dying after I tried to inform them & the community that FMT was something they should try as a last resort.
It's infuriating to be in a society full of morons.
EDIT:
Important context:
Original 13 Jun 2021 (134 comments).
High rates of obese people were applying. Most applicants are extremely unhealthy despite the site clearly saying "looking for the top 0.1% healthiest people" and showing multiple examples of what a healthy person looks like.
Seems like a lot of nurses are applying. The vast majority (80%) of applicants are women, but that was probably in large part due to the platform and/or person who made the video.
A lot of people getting parts of their bodies cut out.
Seems like most obese people have liquid/very soft stool. I find this surprising since I wonder how they're even able to absorb enough calories. Possibly the lack of solid stool results in a lack of satiation. Possibly it represents severe gut dysbiosis resulting in immune system dysregulation, resulting in excess fat storage. Obviously there are many more mechanisms though.
I've been advised to increase prices in order to attract higher-quality donors. So I've doubled the prices for both donors and recipients but we will accept proof of low income, and eventually open to donations, in order to provide for low-income individuals.
We've also gradually increased the referral reward from $300 to $2500, and may even double that.
I seem to have been right about everything: https://maximiliankohler.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html
The very first stool donor I picked (2016) was based on my detailed questionnaire + physical appearance. My intuition seems to have been completely correct. https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/attractiveness-facial-features-health-development-and-fmt-donor-select.64/. I screened a division 1 basketball team, and their appearance aligned well with their questionnaires and stool types.
The evidence so far seems to still support my stool-type hypothesis: https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/another-email-ive-been-sending-to-researchers-regarding-donor-quality.57/
I was right about the rarity of high-quality donors. And it seems to be even worse (fewer than 1 in 6000) than I estimated (fewer than 1 in 1000).
And it certainly supports my calls of alarm regarding our health, microbiomes, and society: https://archive.ph/i1YOs#selection-647.0-647.1
I think one of the first times I started realizing it is worse than I estimated was when I learned that Will Smith's family actually has many health issues. His daughter is someone I would have guessed to be a high-quality donor.
Another instance was reading some years ago that even Simone Biles takes one or more prescription drugs. Another was learning that Serena Williams probably wouldn't qualify.
When I contact people directly who are more likely to qualify, they don't respond. When we do general outreach via ads, social media, etc. we mostly get extremely unhealthy people, along with about 1% who are generally healthy but probably wouldn't be a highly effective stool donor. These one-percenters would be average people in a non-dystopian society, but in ours they are very rare.
Ray Allen has a kid with diabetes. I looked at his Instagram and he seems to be an intelligent person. He even visited Congress to advocate for more medical research for diabetes. I contacted him, told him about what I was doing - working on a potential treatment/cure for diabetes and more, and explained that he could be massively helpful by helping to acquire high-quality stool donors for FMT. No response.
Another college athlete has a loved one wanting/needing a kidney transplant. I informed this person that organ transplants will likely soon be seen in a similar manner to other historically barbaric medical practices. And I linked them to information supporting this: https://humanmicrobiome.info/intro/#kidney. I told them about what I was doing, explained that stool donors can make $2k+/mo, and that I'm paying $2.5k commission per donor, and that as a college athlete, they're in a great position to recruit likely candidates even if they don't qualify themselves. What do I get? Silence. This person doesn't seem to be an idiot. They don't seem especially intelligent, but not particularly unintelligent either. So what gives? They're in an ideal situation to help a loved one while earning thousands of dollars and they have no interest...
I see a similar thing in the CFS community. It's incredibly frustrating to observe the community and the advocacy organizations (Eg: solvecfs.org and others) spending their time and support on some of the least promising areas and actions, despite my spending years trying to educate them on the microbiome and FMT. They're constantly (rightfully so to some extent) moaning about their terrible condition and lack of treatments, then I point out to them that there's likely a currently-available treatment/cure which they can help obtain if we all work together, and I'm met with either silence, downvotes, or worse - misinformation, anti-scientific attitudes, wilful ignorance, etc.. I see them continually asking the same questions over and over (which I've already answered for them), and continually filling up the threads with useless noise. Eg: question, answers.
Similarly, the IBS, IBD, and other communities seem to prefer to wallow in their misery rather than discuss, strive for, and promote solutions https://archive.vn/8wNyu#selection-2079.11-2083.0. For more examples you can look through my many years of post and comment history on those types of subs, trying to educate them, and where is the support from those tens of thousands of individuals? Nowhere. There's not even support from the hundreds of people actively wanting/looking for FMT for themselves.
Living in Idiocracy is torture.
Where is the support from the /r/publichealth and other communities whose job and life goal is to increase public health?
There should be massive pressure, from the 99.9% of the population who is unhealthy, put on the fewer than 0.1% of people who qualify to be high-quality stool donors, to give us their stool. Yet there is next to none. These people who are flushing lifesaving medicine down the toilet should be ostracized by society. But that can't happen because of the ignorance and stupidity of the 99.9%.
Some years ago I saw a very healthy top UFC athlete bring on some really unhealthy fan and mourn about how terrible it was. That kind of shit is so frustrating to see, knowing that the healthy UFC athlete could probably "save" the kid by donating something that has 0 value to him. The same thing happened to a Starcraft personality, who ended up dying after I tried to inform them & the community that FMT was something they should try as a last resort.
It's infuriating to be in a society full of morons.
EDIT:
Important context:
Original 13 Jun 2021 (134 comments).