Donors who qualify can earn $40 per sample of "perfect poop", to be used for fecal transplantation to treat patients with C. difficile infection:
Prospective donors are told, "It's easier to get into MIT and Harvard than it is to get enrolled as one of our donors."To donate, Eric had to pass a 109-point clinical assessment. There is a laundry list of factors that would disqualify a donor: obesity, illicit drug use, antibiotic use, travel to regions with high risk of contracting diseases, even recent tattoos. His stools and blood also had to clear a battery of laboratory screenings to make sure he didn't have any infections.After all that screening, only 3% of prospective donors are healthy enough to give. "I had no idea," he says about his poop. "It turns out that it's fairly close to perfect."And that, unlike most people's poop, makes Eric's worth money. OpenBiome pays its 22 active donors $40 per sample. They're encouraged to donate often, every day if they can. Eric has earned about $1,000.
The poop also has to have the acceptable texture, either types 3, 4, or 5, on the Bristol Stool Chart:
