One man's poop is another's medicine

Medford, MA (CNN)It's the middle of the day for Eric, a 24-year-old research assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and nature is calling.

Eric leaves his job and hops a train. Then a bus. Then he walks some more. He passes countless toilets, and he needs to use them, but he doesn't.

Eventually, Eric arrives at a nondescript men's room 30 minutes away from MIT. A partition separates two toilets. There's a square-tiled floor like in any public restroom. It's unremarkable in every way, with one exception: A pit stop here can save lives.

Eric hangs a plastic collection bucket down inside the toilet bowl and does his business. When he's finished, he puts a lid on the container, bags it up and walks his stool a few doors down the hall to OpenBiome, a small laboratory northwest of Boston that has developed a way to turn poop from extremely healthy people into medicine for really sick patients.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/26/health/fecal-transplant-poop-medicine/index.html