BY last August, my 1-year-old son had taken five courses of antibiotics for recurrent ear infections. That was alarming. By age 10, the average American child has had about 10 courses, and some microbiologists argue that even one course a year is too many — that it might damage our native microbial ecosystem, with far-reaching consequences.
My son was off to a worrisome start. Why, I wondered, didn't doctors work harder to prevent this collateral damage, not with store-bought probiotics, but with "microbial restoration"? Why didn't we reinfuse patients with their own microbes after antibiotics?
The scientific term for this is "autologous fecal transplant." In theory, it could work like a system reboot disk works for your computer. You'd freeze your feces, which are roughly half microbes, and when your microbiome became corrupted or was depleted with antimicrobials, you could "reinstall" it from a backup copy.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/should-we-bank-our-own-stool.html?
