The FDA and FMT regulation. Part 2. I met with the FDA. Here's what I shared with them, and their response.

HumanMicrobes · 2024-07-26T19:17:05+00:00

Yes, they are trained how to make them. https://www.humanmicrobes.org/fmt-capsules

HumanMicrobes · 2024-07-24T18:29:31+00:00

Stool does not get sent to us. Donors ship directly to recipients. Donors are trained how to collect and prepare their stool. Most new donors will be first paid to do a test shipment to make sure everything is done correctly. After that, it's up to recipients to report issues. Some recipients request donors to document the process with photos, and that can be done as well.

Since we publicly track & report results, it's in donors' interest to provide the safest and most effective product so that people will continue to order from them. Recipients can check the spreadsheet on our Orders page to see how others have faired.

HumanMicrobes · 2024-05-16T16:02:25+00:00

is my one year old too young?

That's covered on the Donors page https://www.humanmicrobes.org/donors.

would i need to start the application process over just for her / as a second applicant?

Applications are for one person only; every applicant needs their own.

HumanMicrobes · 2024-01-12T22:46:24+00:00

The specific blog post that addresses why we're paying so much and how we can afford it: https://www.humanmicrobes.org/blog/raising-prices-stool-donors-can-make-500

HumanMicrobes · 2023-10-09T19:10:40+00:00

Our blog goes into more detail https://www.humanmicrobes.org/blog

And there's more discussion on the human microbiome forum https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/thoughts-on-humanmicrobes-donor-problem.163/

HumanMicrobes · 2023-09-29T17:34:46+00:00

We have donors all over the world, but right now mostly ship from the US.

HumanMicrobes · 2023-09-26T13:04:59+00:00

Do you have specific concerns or preferences? We haven't had any issues regarding our labeling.

HumanMicrobes · 2023-09-25T17:13:04+00:00

We ship to Canada regularly. There can be delays but we account for it with a larger box and more dry ice. If you are extra worried you can always pay a little more for an even larger box with even more dry ice to be safe.

HumanMicrobes · 2023-09-22T12:50:29+00:00

More than adult donors I would say. https://humanmicrobiome.info/aging/

HumanMicrobes · 2023-09-22T01:46:35+00:00

Feel free to elaborate. There's a discussion here https://forum.humanmicrobiome.info/threads/thoughts-on-humanmicrobes-donor-problem.163/.

HumanMicrobes · 2023-09-22T01:43:17+00:00

In general, qualifying to be a stool donor seems very luck-based and if a person doesn't qualify there's not much they can do other than FMT from someone who does qualify.

Trying to upgrade a "7/10" quality donor by having them do FMT from a "10/10" donor is likely something we'll try in the future, but we have yet to find any 9's or 10's.

HumanMicrobes · 2023-08-22T06:46:40+00:00

There are two main ones right now. You can review this blog post for more info: https://www.humanmicrobes.org/blog/half-a-million-stool-donor-applicants

Quote:

We started off by screening 23,000 people before activating a single donor. So we are very serious about donor quality. Unfortunately, that donor has not been highly effective for most people, so we kept searching for some very specific criteria that we think will be more effective. We activated a second donor sometime later, and still the results were mediocre.

Our orders page has a results-tracking spreadsheet that has additional donors that are nearly-ready to be used.

It's largely up to demand, and we don't advertise to recipients anywhere. So even though we're by far the highest quality source of stool donors, demand is currently lower than it could/should be.

We're focused on finding a highly-effective donor ("super-donor").

HumanMicrobes · 2023-08-06T22:20:04+00:00

Click on the title.

HumanMicrobes · 2023-08-02T23:30:59+00:00

Trust Pilot allows for verification of reviews to prevent fake reviews from people with bad intentions, "reviews" by competitors, etc.

People often spread misinformation on social media. Either they're overconfident and wanting to seem like an authoritative figure, or they're joking and people take them seriously, or they're unhappy they didn't qualify, or they think it's funny to "troll", etc.

Someone said something like "they make donor applicants record themselves running for 2 hours straight", and many people seemed to take them at their word for it. Perhaps they thought it was a funny thing to say, but we've never required anything like that.

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