Need money? Thanks to a nonprofit organization called OpenBiome, you can cash in like $13,000 a year and save lives just by selling what you really don't need - you're poop.
Since 2013, OpenBiome has been processing and shipping loads of it all over the country. The frozen stool is administered to patients who are very sick with infections of a bacteria called C. difficile. The bacteria can cause extreme gastrointestinal distress, leaving some sufferers housebound. Antibiotics often help, but sometimes the bacteria rears back as soon as treatment stops. That leads to a miserable, continuous course of antibiotics.
By introducing healthy fecal matter into the gut of a patient (by way of endoscopy, nasal tubes, or swallowed capsules) doctors can abolish C. difficile for good. Finding a donor is tough business, and some patients grow so desperate that they treat themselves with fecal matter from friends and family. That's what happened to a friend of OpenBiome's founders, inspiring them to open up the first nationwide bank. So far they've shipped about 2,000 treatments to 185 hospitals around the country.
And yes, they pay for healthy poop: $40 a sample, with a $50 bonus if you come in five days a week. That's $250 for a week of donations, or $13,000 a year.
There's a catch: You don't just have to be healthy. You have to be really healthy. OpenBiome's donation procedure may be as easy as your standard bowel movement, but the selection process makes giving blood look like a walk in the park.
"It's harder to become a donor than it is to get into MIT," joked co-founder Mark Smith (who would know, as he got his PhD in microbiology there). Of the 1,000 or so potential donors who've expressed interest on his Web site over the past two years, only about 4 percent have passed the extensive medical questioning and stool testing.
The screening process can cost up to $5,000 -- so when someone makes it through, Smith and his co-founders hold on tight.
"We get most of our donors to come in three or four times a week, which is pretty awesome," Smith said.
"You're usually helping three or four patients out with each sample, and we keep track of that and let you know."
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com
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