[angersock]

"he's not a doctor, he's not a trained scientist, he's a dude who is shoving fecal extracts from his friend up his bum and hoping the results are positive."

Arguably, this is the oldest and most fundamental version of science.

You don't need to go to school for ten years to great your Magical Science Certificate in order to practice Science--you just have to be able to ask questions and try out random shit and share your results.

It's haphazard, but at least people here are trying, right? And if they're unfettered by the academic-industrial complex, so much the better.

[aroch]

    It's haphazard, but at least people here are trying, right?

No, no, no, no.

We should not encourage people to randomly experiment on themselves under the guise of "being a hacker" when those experiments can pose significant threat to life. Unscreened, random FMT can have a number of potentially life threatening outcomes; stool contain human serum, blood, lymphocytes, viruses and other biologics that can be harmful.

[colevscode]

OP: I agree completely, unscreened "random" FMT would be a very bad idea. The donor in this case was definitely not random.

[aroch]

Knowing the donor, calling them your close friend, is not the same thing as medically screening both of you and the poo before the transfer.

[logfromblammo]

But it is thousands of dollars cheaper, which is kind of the whole point. People wouldn't be doing this themselves [as often] if genuine elective medical treatments were not priced out of reach.