When a possible link between gut biomes and disease progression was first proposed, the response by the established science was pretty harsh.
That people studying these links persisted and have created many reproducible experiments that demonstrate the connection is a testament both to perseverance and to science.
When people try to argue that science is "people making things up." as a reason for disbelieving science that challenges their beliefs, I use this example of fecal transplants as a real world case of how scientists challenge, confront, debate, and incorporate changes into their world views through process, review, and reproduction.
And I know at least one researcher who started looking more deeply into the impact of the gut biome on health because of the demonstrated link between bacteria and ulcers.
At some point, I would expect a fecal sample/biome to be part of one's periodic physical so that we could build a data set of biomes + medical history database that is a bit more comprehensive than the voluntary ones that exist today.
Meanwhile, offering high quality FMT transplants is a huge startup opportunity. People who need FMT are very sick, desperate, and willing to pay thousands of dollars to get it done. Recently, I have spent $2000 to order poop from the internet.
Finding a high quality doctor is extremely difficult for a normal person. You have to find someone who is young, athletic, very healthy, never taken antibiotics, and then do some medical tests on them (pretty much everything that's wrong with a person can be transferred through FMT). Finding such person, bringing up the subject with them, and getting them agree to help is very hard.
A company who could find and screen high quality FMT donors could make thousands of dollars just selling poop. Hundreds, if you're willing to drop prices to help people.
All you have to do is find a healthy person who matches the criteria, and spend $2000-$3000 doing a number of blood/stool tests (and retest them every few months). Also figure out how to freeze/package/ship the transplants in a way that does the least harm to the microbes.
If you are a healthy person who fits the description (or know someone who is), and are willing to help - please send me an email - fmthelp@protonmail.com
This is still an under researched field (with a lot of alternative medicine types surrounding it), but there have been some studies that even relatively minor antibiotic usage in childhood may have long-term impacts. And there are more (and better) studies that gut flora isn't back to normal 6 months after a course of antibiotics. It's something of an open question currently. It seems like there may be a few stable microbiomes that can develop in humans; some are better than others for health.
I think it would be helpful here to describe how very sick people looking for a fecal transplant usually are. And also how - even though it's only been clinically approved for Clostridium difficile infections - there are also controlled data that indicate it's effective for other intestinal illnesses.
Hacker news is one of the places where I often value the comments more than the linked articles themselves. But wow. This thread is full of pseudo-science type reasoning.
Let’s be careful. We have science and the scientific methods to investigate things like this. It’s worked very well for us for a long time, let’s try to have som faith in it.
> Hacker news is one of the places where I often value the comments more than the linked articles themselves. But wow. This thread is full of pseudo-science type reasoning.
It's been this way for years. HN is really quite good when it comes to things in their wheelhouse (software, tech companies), but hilariously bad about diet and related issues, I suspect because it's a sore spot for many and they are in denial.
Diet is one of the things that's absolutely full of bad science, because it's hard to study. So claiming HN is somehow in denial implies there's an amazing scientific consensus. (Also even if we take the best studies at face value the relative risk differences are ridiculously low between diets. [At least as far as I know.])
Well, more than diet, anything that isn't technical in nature. Economics, (geo-)politics, biology (particularly humans), etc. There's a lot of that fallacy around here that being knowledgeable/smart in one area means that obviously it transfers to every other field.
The scientific method works at a very slow pace and goes even slower when public opinion is against an idea.
We have a lot of known unknowns about gut biota. And a lot of people whose gut biota are literally killing them. And a lot of friends and family of those people. They are of course going to be frustrated. Especially when they look at how long those question marks have existed. Get to it already!
Feyman’s wife died while the antibiotic that saved people like her was in drug trials. Can you imagine being that close to a cure and missing it? When I read about people dying of infections mid century I have to pull up my calendar and just pity them a little bit more.
Listening to a recap of the effort to test the theories of relativity, it occurred to me that confirming "truth" may be just as hard as refuting falsehoods. It's certainly not easy.
I am not sure what you mean by ‘the scientific method is slow’. Compared to what, really? Just winging it?
But I think I see what you mean. And yes, science do take time. From discoveries in basic science, all the way to clinical trials and then treatment approval, there is significant lead time. And, of course, it is especially sad for those who suffer when treatment seem to be just around the corner.
But the alternative is surely worse; to not test, to not review or to base treatment on other things than facts.
And, one more thing. The speed at which we have scienced the shit out of Covid (the amount of science that we have done in response to this virus) is, at least to me, astounding. If we succeed, which it looks like we will, to win this battle using the vaccines which are already available, it, not only, is in favour of science in fact being very quick, but could also be considered one of humanities greatest feats.
I mean, full agreement here but the... that science should be done and not financially starved because the outcome serves no long-term financial interests.
If you're referring to fecal transplants, you're wrong. There is significant controlled clinical data that it's effective. Many more trials are underway. And there are masses of anecdotal case reports of truly miraculous recoveries.
But this particular study isn't one of them. It is completely uncontrolled. That's the problem with HN. People just can't tell the difference between good science and non-science, and they keep upvoting these junk articles.
Isn't all science "pseudo-science type reasoning" before someone goes out and proves/disproves it? I don't see a problem with some curious conversation.
No. There is difference.
Science works by making observations, making hypothesis and then testing those. The result is some kind of knowledge which is useful for making predictions.
Reasoning in this world is based on that. We only make predictions when something is tested, established or pure fact.
What I mean by pseudo-science type reasoning is; not based on any fact, nor any position which has been tested (scientifically), nor any established knowledge.
Instead it is often based on anecdotes or the reason is motivated or heavily biased.
Frankly, I don’t care too much about bad reasoning. But when there is risk that it might be understood as recommendations, and it might be unsafe for someone reading it, then I think it’s dangerous.
As an anecdote, I'm close to someone who had issues w/ their microbiome causing havoc for a year after taking antibiotics. They tried all kinds of diet and probiotic treatments to no avail. In desperation, a doctor prescribed an experimental approach where they'd take antibiotics again to kill the 'bad bacteria', then go on a heavy probiotic regimen. This worked thank god.
I had a business idea a few years ago to do fecal transplants from famous people as a new LA business. There seems to be a lot of regulatory hurdles for doing it though. I would love to see someone do this both in disease treatment, as well as just to test out impact on things like mental or athletic performance.
In 2012, Brandon Cronenberg, son of David, released a movie called Antiviral about a niche product -- viruses and bacteria harvested from celebrities who become sick, in order to inject them into paying clients who want a "connection" with the famous.
> Davar and colleagues collected fecal samples from patients who responded extraordinarily well to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy and tested for infectious pathogens before giving the samples, through colonoscopy, to advanced melanoma patients who had never previously responded to immunotherapy. The patients were then given the anti-PD-1 drug pembrolizumab. And it worked.
It's pretty crazy that your gut biome can change the way your body responds to skin cancer treatment.
Could this work for basically anything immune-related? Maybe people who got COVID but were asymptomatic could donate some poop.
This is something that I've been thinking for quite some time now (i.e. pre-COVID and just generally health related).
I was on lots of anti-biotics as a kid and I turned from skinny to fat at some point.
We know already from experiments/treatments being made that fecal transplants can make a fat person skinny for example (no I didn't do that :))
Personally I transformed my life from being very lethargic and not being able to tolerate anything but small amounts of certain foods and also alcoholic beverages without getting major migraines by getting the right probiotics. To give you an idea, eating leftover lasagna two days in a row was a sure fire way to get a migraine, as was drinking a bottle of alcohol-free beer and anything with alcohol was even worse. Even just small amounts. We're talking migraines where you feel like you're gonna puke and my eyesight was affected as well.
I felt really sick for about 2 weeks after starting the right probiotics. And it wasn't just any probiotics that would do. I tried out different ones, until I found a specific one that mainly differs in one bacterium from all the others I tried. Bacillus subtilis in case you're wondering. During that time my then current microbiome would've been fighting with the newly introduced strains. After that, I was no longer lethargic and slowly but surely I was able to tolerate foods in normal quantities again. Leftover lasagna is just awesome now, like it should be!
So yeah that's just a personal anecdote on how gut health can really eff up your life and health. So I can very well believe that people with a 'broken gut' would die more easily from COVID or get infected more easily with other things as well. But where's the money in simply fixing peoples guts? Isn't it 'better' if we make them sick, so we can then prescribe them stuff?
I actually know someone who is going through immunotherapy (for leukemia) and so suddenly this kind of news is quite a bit more relevant than just a interesting factoid.
Thankfully this person seems to be responding to therapy, but it makes me wonder whether they will end up benefiting from microbiome therapy in the future.
Readit News
That people studying these links persisted and have created many reproducible experiments that demonstrate the connection is a testament both to perseverance and to science.
When people try to argue that science is "people making things up." as a reason for disbelieving science that challenges their beliefs, I use this example of fecal transplants as a real world case of how scientists challenge, confront, debate, and incorporate changes into their world views through process, review, and reproduction.
At some point, I would expect a fecal sample/biome to be part of one's periodic physical so that we could build a data set of biomes + medical history database that is a bit more comprehensive than the voluntary ones that exist today.
Finding a high quality doctor is extremely difficult for a normal person. You have to find someone who is young, athletic, very healthy, never taken antibiotics, and then do some medical tests on them (pretty much everything that's wrong with a person can be transferred through FMT). Finding such person, bringing up the subject with them, and getting them agree to help is very hard.
A company who could find and screen high quality FMT donors could make thousands of dollars just selling poop. Hundreds, if you're willing to drop prices to help people.
All you have to do is find a healthy person who matches the criteria, and spend $2000-$3000 doing a number of blood/stool tests (and retest them every few months). Also figure out how to freeze/package/ship the transplants in a way that does the least harm to the microbes.
If you are a healthy person who fits the description (or know someone who is), and are willing to help - please send me an email - fmthelp@protonmail.com
I'm pretty sure you meant "donor" there, no?
I understand recent antibiotic use such as past 12-24 months, but never?
It's been this way for years. HN is really quite good when it comes to things in their wheelhouse (software, tech companies), but hilariously bad about diet and related issues, I suspect because it's a sore spot for many and they are in denial.
We have a lot of known unknowns about gut biota. And a lot of people whose gut biota are literally killing them. And a lot of friends and family of those people. They are of course going to be frustrated. Especially when they look at how long those question marks have existed. Get to it already!
Feyman’s wife died while the antibiotic that saved people like her was in drug trials. Can you imagine being that close to a cure and missing it? When I read about people dying of infections mid century I have to pull up my calendar and just pity them a little bit more.
Listening to a recap of the effort to test the theories of relativity, it occurred to me that confirming "truth" may be just as hard as refuting falsehoods. It's certainly not easy.
Brandolini's law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law
But the alternative is surely worse; to not test, to not review or to base treatment on other things than facts.
And, one more thing. The speed at which we have scienced the shit out of Covid (the amount of science that we have done in response to this virus) is, at least to me, astounding. If we succeed, which it looks like we will, to win this battle using the vaccines which are already available, it, not only, is in favour of science in fact being very quick, but could also be considered one of humanities greatest feats.
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Reasoning in this world is based on that. We only make predictions when something is tested, established or pure fact.
What I mean by pseudo-science type reasoning is; not based on any fact, nor any position which has been tested (scientifically), nor any established knowledge. Instead it is often based on anecdotes or the reason is motivated or heavily biased.
Frankly, I don’t care too much about bad reasoning. But when there is risk that it might be understood as recommendations, and it might be unsafe for someone reading it, then I think it’s dangerous.
Or is transplanting a requirement?
It's pretty crazy that your gut biome can change the way your body responds to skin cancer treatment.
Could this work for basically anything immune-related? Maybe people who got COVID but were asymptomatic could donate some poop.
I was on lots of anti-biotics as a kid and I turned from skinny to fat at some point. We know already from experiments/treatments being made that fecal transplants can make a fat person skinny for example (no I didn't do that :))
Personally I transformed my life from being very lethargic and not being able to tolerate anything but small amounts of certain foods and also alcoholic beverages without getting major migraines by getting the right probiotics. To give you an idea, eating leftover lasagna two days in a row was a sure fire way to get a migraine, as was drinking a bottle of alcohol-free beer and anything with alcohol was even worse. Even just small amounts. We're talking migraines where you feel like you're gonna puke and my eyesight was affected as well.
I felt really sick for about 2 weeks after starting the right probiotics. And it wasn't just any probiotics that would do. I tried out different ones, until I found a specific one that mainly differs in one bacterium from all the others I tried. Bacillus subtilis in case you're wondering. During that time my then current microbiome would've been fighting with the newly introduced strains. After that, I was no longer lethargic and slowly but surely I was able to tolerate foods in normal quantities again. Leftover lasagna is just awesome now, like it should be!
So yeah that's just a personal anecdote on how gut health can really eff up your life and health. So I can very well believe that people with a 'broken gut' would die more easily from COVID or get infected more easily with other things as well. But where's the money in simply fixing peoples guts? Isn't it 'better' if we make them sick, so we can then prescribe them stuff?
So what characteristics would a good vs bad donor gut biome/fecal biome be?
You and the rest of the medical community. This is largely still an open question.
Thankfully this person seems to be responding to therapy, but it makes me wonder whether they will end up benefiting from microbiome therapy in the future.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190409093725.h...