[giblaz]

Take a large sample of people and find out patterns in their gastrointestinal bacteria, and run the numbers.

Is it out of the question for people to be consistently pooping & supplying this data so we have ongoing tracking of the ratios of the various bacteria present in the population? Some clear patterns may arise.

[dlss]

Clear patterns did arise when the Human Microbiome project did this :)

http://academy.asm.org/images/stories/documents/FAQ_Human_Mi...

That represents the consensus view (ie no exotic theories). The really good stuff starts on page 10.

[ssully]

This is actually really interesting, thanks for sharing.

They talk about mother's milk/breast milk being a source of microbes for babies at birth. I have heard this before and I wonder if it could be an alternative to this pill/fecal transplants?

[dlss]

It depends what you're using the feces to accomplish. Usually FMT is done for people suffering from CDiff infections. The healthy gut flora outcompete the CDiff, causing the infection to go away.

Mother's milk is mostly viruses, so it's unlikely this would work against CDiff. For other users is sounds interesting though!