<story><title>Why DIY fecal transplants are a thing</title><url>http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal-transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DanBC</author><text>Intestinal flora are complex.  Here&apos;s a story about  &lt;i&gt;Akkermansia muciniphila&lt;/i&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22458428&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22458428&lt;/a&gt;) which appears to make it harder for people to become obese.&lt;p&gt;Here&apos;s an article from Nature that shows mice can become more easily obese if you infect them with some, er, stuff, and that this is transmissible (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05414.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05...&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;So you could be giving yourself stuff that would make it easier for you to become obese, or you could be giving yourself stuff that would make it easier for you to stay not-obese.&lt;p&gt;And that&apos;s just these few bugs.  There are a whole range of really quite unpleasant things you could be getting.&lt;p&gt;Regulations are important.  They&apos;re not to protect well informed people from making calm rational choices, although they do have that unfortunate effect sometimes.  Regulations are to prevent cynical, or stupid, people from offering dangerous untested unproven &quot;treatments&quot; at great cost to desperate and ill people.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;d be great if there was a safe way to decouple these, allowing people to gamble with their own health if that&apos;s what they want to do, but protecting people from evil con-merchants.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ef4</author><text>&amp;#62; Regulations are to prevent cynical, or stupid, people from offering dangerous untested unproven &quot;treatments&quot; at great cost to desperate and ill people.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s the rationale for the regulations, but it&apos;s not why we have them. The laws we have didn&apos;t get passed because the public demanded protection. They got passed because industry groups pushed hard for them, as a way to lock out potential competitors.&lt;p&gt;A system actually designed to prevent harm would look quite different.&lt;p&gt;Preventing the use of a good treatment (type I statistical error) &lt;i&gt;is just as bad&lt;/i&gt; as allowing a bad treatment (type II statistical error). A balanced regulatory regime would make both kinds of errors with about equal probability. Our current system is so heavily biased toward preventing type II errors that we accept a vast number of type I errors.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why DIY fecal transplants are a thing</title><url>http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal-transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DanBC</author><text>Intestinal flora are complex.  Here&apos;s a story about  &lt;i&gt;Akkermansia muciniphila&lt;/i&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22458428&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22458428&lt;/a&gt;) which appears to make it harder for people to become obese.&lt;p&gt;Here&apos;s an article from Nature that shows mice can become more easily obese if you infect them with some, er, stuff, and that this is transmissible (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05414.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05...&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;p&gt;So you could be giving yourself stuff that would make it easier for you to become obese, or you could be giving yourself stuff that would make it easier for you to stay not-obese.&lt;p&gt;And that&apos;s just these few bugs.  There are a whole range of really quite unpleasant things you could be getting.&lt;p&gt;Regulations are important.  They&apos;re not to protect well informed people from making calm rational choices, although they do have that unfortunate effect sometimes.  Regulations are to prevent cynical, or stupid, people from offering dangerous untested unproven &quot;treatments&quot; at great cost to desperate and ill people.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;d be great if there was a safe way to decouple these, allowing people to gamble with their own health if that&apos;s what they want to do, but protecting people from evil con-merchants.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jere</author><text>One of my favorite quotes on this subject from Kurt Harris:&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;This is why I am very hesitant to offer ANY specific prescriptions for what to do about your gut biome. The advice to eat dirty vegetables or even start walking around barefoot in the dirt or drinking pond water or whatever &quot;natural&quot; activity you can think of is VERY DANGEROUS.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;The reason is not all parasites are &quot;old friends&quot;, only some of the ones that are commensals that we co-evolved with. Getting toxoplasmosis from a cat, or a zoonotic helminth from dog shit or a dead raccoon or a pig tapeworm will do your immune system no favors and could even kill you.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;DO NOT PLAY AROUND WITH THIS CONCEPT UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN WHAT YOU ARE DOING.</text></comment>