Thursday, September 17, 2009

Using a fecal enema!

I’m hearing that AMA medical students are now learning about a gross new treatment technique, the “fecal enema”, taking other people’s poop and injecting it up your rectum!

I wish Sigmund Fraud were still alive, I want to understand this fascination with shoving stuff up your butt. I can understand how Andy Kaufman, desperate to save his life from cancer, paid some Mexican to squirt coffee up his butt (the coffee enema),


Good to the last drop – the coffee enema

But it crossed the line after people started using butt-pipes to introduce gerbils into their colons:


Some queer folks enjoy a gerbil enema

Call me old fashioned, but I don’t approve . . .

Origin of a Feces

Given that the fecal enema involves injecting someone else’s poop up your anus, how does one go about finding a donor? Is it a romantic thing?

“My Dear, I love you so much that I want your bacteria to recolonize my intestines”

This page describes a fecal enema as a “Fecal Colon Flora Replacement”, and it says that you need to seek out baby crap:

“To avoid getting any unwanted parasites or any other disease, you choose a feces from a very healthy, unvaccinated, breastfed baby”

It’s said that fecal enemas are being used to recolonize your intestine with “good” bacteria, but why use a fecal enema for this?

In the olden days, a quick trip to Taco Bell would suffice to recolonize the bacteria in your gut.


Captain Enema spreads the word

But it gets stranger, there is a United States Patent on using poop to treat mental disorders!

Using fecal enemas to treat mental disorders

This sounds positively 17th century, but according to US Patent 7307062, we see that fecal enemas are being used to treat mental disorders.

That’s right, kids with Autism and being injected with feces from other children. The patent says the poop, suspended in a saline solution and injected into the anus, can help kids with autism:

“Qualitative and quantitative analysis of stool specimens from four children with autism revealed a complete absence of peptostreptococcal species. Peptostreptococcal species typically account for 10% of the total organism present in the microflora.

These children subsequently responded favorably to treatment with vancomycin, but relapsed within two weeks of discontinuance of the antimicrobial therapy. Two of these children were subsequently retreated with antimicrobials and then immediately administered a probiotic fecal enema.

Antimicrobial therapy was reinitiated to reduce the numbers of offending bacteria in the intestinal tract. 50 mg of donor stool was collected from a healthy sibling, homoginized with 500 ml of saline and administered as a rectal enema.

In both cases, the children's behavior remained substantially improved over baseline for several months after discontinuance of the antimicrobial treatment.”

Jeez, since when is treatment with poop patentable?