Science & technology | Faecal transplants

People bank blood. Why not faeces?

Storing your stools when you are young may help you later in life

Laboratory technicians at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) prepare syringes with stool mixed in a solution to treat patients with serious infections of the colon by Fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), also known as Gut Flora Transplant (GFT), at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (CHU) in Clermont-Ferrand, central France on July 26, 2019. (Photo by Thierry Zoccolan / AFP) (Photo by THIERRY ZOCCOLAN/AFP via Getty Images)

It never hurts to put something aside for a rainy day. And not just money can be put in a bank. Blood from donors is routinely banked, too. And some parents bank blood from their child’s umbilical cord, on the off-chance that stem-cells therein will prove useful for the future treatment of bone-marrow cancer. But three researchers at Harvard Medical School propose going further. They suggest people consider banking deposits, as it were, of their faeces.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “A little something in the bank”

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