An independent non-profit stool bank called OpenBiome is willing to offer volunteers $40 per deposit [of] a sample of their poo.

The stool samples will be used for fecal transplants, to fight the deadly superbug C. difficile, which affects more than 500,000 and kills 14,000 Americans per year.

Stool transplants are being praised by many doctors as a miracle cure for C. difficile, a bacterial infection that most commonly affects hospital patients. It causes fever, painful cramps, severe diarrhoea, and in some cases, life-threatening complications such as severe swelling of the bowel.

[E]ach 250-milligram stool sample is sold to hospitals for $250 and can be used to treat up to five patients. Fecal transplants can save, on average, $17,000 per patient when compared with antibiotic treatments.

If you’re interested in what (and why) one gets involved in the august practice of “fecal transplants”, Wikipedia has a good overview of the procedure.

Just to give you a taste (heh) of the process, while the first line of approach involves swallowing capsules with frozen feces, emergency treatment can involve stools from (ideally) a family member mixed with saline solution and piped into the patient’s stomach view a tube down their nose.

Uh, I think I almost vomited just typing that…

Bottom image of fecal bacteria magnified 10,000 times from Wikimedia Commons.
OpenBiome via Oddity Central for the full story.