Why Your Poop is Worth $ 13,000 a Year

A non-profit is giving people a chance to earn $ 13,000 every year through their poop!

The non-profit Open Biome has been mailing poop to clinics around the country for more than a year to treat Clostridium or C.difficile infections, known to cause prolonged diarrhea and intense abdominal pain for extended periods. It affects nearly 500,000 people in the US and accounts for at least 14,000 fatalities, The Huffington Post reported. Every sample costs the organization $ 40 and donors usually make about five sample contributions every week.

The Washington Post quoted Mark Smith, the organization's co-founder, saying that the screening process in place to select donors is stringent to make sure only healthy donors contribute. In the last two years, only 4 percent of the 1,000 odd donors who sought to contribute have actually been selected.

C.difficile infections are caused when the disease's namesake bacteria replaces gut flora. This usually happens following antibiotic treatment for an unrelated infection. Reversing the replacement caused, is known to cure the condition.

Members of Open Biomeme are looking beyond C.difficile for human stool use. They have been mailing healthy human poop to researchers working on using gut flora to find cure for other diseases. The scientific community has already learnt that the composition of gut bacteria in people with conditions like irritable bowel syndrome, obesity and autism is different from healthy people. Though C.difficile remains the single largest and the only use for human poop, future may seen it play a bigger role in health.