Have you ever wondered when your poop might save lives? Well, read this page A1 article from the NY Times (perhaps while you're doing your business) and learn all about the amazing world of... fecal transplants: "Transplanting feces from a healthy person into the gut of one who is sick can quickly cure severe intestinal infections caused by a dangerous type of bacteria that antibiotics often cannot control."

According to the Times, "A new study finds that such transplants cured 15 of 16 people who had recurring infections with Clostridium difficile bacteria, whereas antibiotics cured only 3 of 13 and 4 of 13 patients in two comparison groups. The treatment appears to work by restoring the gut’s normal balance of bacteria, which fight off C. difficile. The study is the first to compare the transplants with standard antibiotic therapy. The research, conducted in the Netherlands, was published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine."

Apparently C. difficile, which can particularly hit people already on antibiotics (because they destroy "normal gut bacteria") kills 14,000 in the U.S. each year:

Researchers say that, worldwide, about 500 people with the infection have had fecal transplantation. It involves diluting stool with a liquid, like salt water, and then pumping it into the intestinal tract via an enema, a colonoscope or a tube run through the nose into the stomach or small intestine...

The donors were tested for an array of diseases to make sure they did not infect the patients. Their specimens were mixed with saline in a blender and strained, to produce a solution that Dr. [Josbert] Keller said resembled chocolate milk.

Keller, a Dutch gastroenterologist who led the study, said that he and his colleagues had done it a few times with great success, "After the first four or five patients, we started thinking, ‘We can’t go on doing this kind of obscure treatment without evidence.’ Everybody is laughing about it."

Dr. Lawrence Brandt, a gastroenterologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told the LA Times he's been doing the transplants for 14 years, "It's a strange concept to use stool, which has always been looked on as something dirty. We're entering a very exciting new chapter in medicine." And, FWIW, per the LA Times, stool has been used in Chinese medicine since the 4th century and "Later, in the 16th century Ming Dynasty, herbal healers prescribed fermented fecal solutions for abdominal ailments, calling the concoction 'yellow soup' to make it more palatable."

And James Versalovic, professor of pathology and immunology at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, gave it a very of-the-moment spin, "This could be viewed as another form of recycling: one man's waste is another man's treasure." Poop—it can save lives and can save the spirit of Christmas: