Pooping Could Help You Earn Up to $13,000: See How

First Posted: Jan 30, 2015 04:08 PM EST
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Want to make up to $13,000 a year for your poop? If you're located in the Boston area, OpenBiome may have a job for you.

The non-profit organization is helping to address the painful digestive disease resulting from the infectious bacteria C. difficile by creating a pool of donors willing to share their poop. Healthy fecal transplants can currently be transferred to those with C. difficile through endoscopy, swallowed capsules or nasal tubes.

So far, OpenBiome has already shipped close to 2,000 treatments to 185 hospitals nationwide, according to The Washington Post. At $40 a sample, it's certainly not a bad price, with an extra $50 for those who can come in all five days of the week; that's about an additional $13,000 a year.

However, most are unlikely to qualify. While you do have to be in Boston to donate, location may not be the biggest issue, alone.

"Of the 1,000 or so potential donors who've expressed interest on his Web site over the past two years, only about 4 percent have passed the extensive medical questioning and stool testing," said Mark Smith, the organization's co-founder.

Symptoms related to C. difficile include watery diarrhea, fever, loss of appetite, nausea and abdominal pain or tenderness. For those suffering from more severe cases, the bacteria can leave them bedridden.

"For a person suffering from recurrent C. difficile infections, even leaving the house can become nightmarish. This aggressive intestinal bug affects 500,000 Americans every year, 20% of whom will face multiple relapses," concluded Smith. "Where antibiotic treatment has failed to help, though, a new treatment called fecal microbiota transplantation has shown a cure rate of 90%."

While antibiotics are initially prescribed to treat cases, more severe ones my require fecal transplants. 

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