How To Earn an Extra $13,000 A Year Off Your Feces
There are many parts of your body that you can donate--- blood, eyes, organs, plasma, eggs, and sperm. But there's one part that hasn't made you particularly attached to it, yet can get you some money. Your poop.
Yes, it's a great source of money, and it can save many lives too. A nonprofit organization called OpenBiome helps you to donate your poop as well as earn about $13,000 annually. The process started two years ago, when OpenBiome decided to transport and use a lot of poop to help patients all over the country.
Reportedly, the human body contains 10 bacterial cells for every human one, and 100 "unique bacterial genes for every human gene", which is part of a "vast, hidden bacterial majority" that is called microbiome, according to openbiome.com.
The frozen stool is given to patients who host a bacteria called C. difficile that has caused heavy gastrointestinal distress. Antibiotics help to fight it, but most of the time they make the bacteria just disappear during the treatment and then get back. This in turn leads to a "miserable, continuous course of antibiotics", according to washingtonpost.com.
In order to throw some bombs at C.difficile forever, the docs need to introduce some "healthy fecal matter into the gut of a patient" with the help of some missiles such as endoscopy, nasal tubes, or swallowed capsules. Hence, doctors can destroy C. difficile for ever.
But getting a donor is difficult, and sometimes patients are desperate enough to get their families and friends to donate their poop! That's when OpenBiome's founders decided to open the first nationwide bank and transported about 2,000 treatments to 185 hospitals in the US.
Moreover, they even pay for every sample: $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.
The only factor that you have to keep in mind is that you have to be very healthy. OpenBiome's donation process may make you think that you can pass the easiest entrance exam like a cakewalk, but the standards that you have to meet are not what you may be able to pass!
"It's harder to become a donor than it is to get into MIT," joked co-founder Mark Smith---one of the MIT alumni who's got a PhD certificate in microbiology from that venerable institute. While more than 1,000 donors have tried to be part of the website's donors, just about 4 percent have passed its extensive medical questioning and stool testing tests.
Hence, even though the starting screening process may come upto $5,000, Smith and his co-founders are eager not to let the admitted exclusives leave after they qualify.
"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."
However, donors earn more than just money from the "donation". Fellow co-founder Carolyn Edelstein explains: "Everyone thinks it's great that they're making money doing such an easy thing," Edelstein said, "But they also love to hear us say, 'Look, your poop just helped this lady who's been sick for nine years go to her daughter's graduation.'"
The awesome few are mostly from Tufts University, as they need to enter Medford, Massachusetts. Many of them have come from the neighbouring gymnasium. "It's great to have a healthy contingent of regular gym goers right there," Smith said.
Even though currently fecal matter is successfully treating C. difficile that recurs, OpenBiome is offering its samples to many trials that explore various other kinds of use.
"There's a lot of promise in other conditions," Smith said, "But also a lot of hype. Treating C. difficile is a bit less sexy, but that's the one area where we know this works." Yet, he wants to understand how this kind of microbiome engineering will work for them.
Smith is also satisfied to find lots more donors. "I never thought that after getting my PhD I'd start mailing poop around," he said, "But here I am."
