CharonY

Moderator NoteAs the topic is speculative, it has been moved to the speculations section. Please check out the guidelines for this section of the forum. It is also suggested to take a look at existing literature on this matter.

I don't think it is illegal in either jurisdiction, but any use beside treatment of clostridia is considered off-label. These are generally not covered by insurance and many just won't do it because of practical and liability issues. But not being approved is not the same as being banned. Trials are one pathway were off-label use can be tested and funded, and a prerequisite is that they are not banned for that purpose (there might be ways to get an exemption but I am not sure). A big issue specifically related to autism is the paucity of placebo data for FMT. There is longish history of a strong placebo effect on the treatment of autism with sometimes really high effect sizes (One recent review is found here https://doi.org/10.1111/dmcn.15574). So much in fact I am wondering whether placebo treatment shouldn't be on the table. After all, if symptoms lessen and the folks feel better, why not do it even if we do not really understand why? After all, if FMT provides relief, we also do not really know, we mostly speculate).

I think that description of especially the temporary relief is emblematic for the challenges of FMT. I think it is a bit misguided to think in terms of a good or bad donors exclusively. Rather the question in my mind is matching the right type of donor with the right type of recipient. It is already not trivial to ensure reliable short-term benefits, but there clearly will also be compatibility challenges between the gut environment of individual recipients and the what potentially and what is put into them. The big issue is that the gut flora is highly dynamic to begin with, of course. Obviously, FMT will create short-term changes and those will in somewhat unpredictable ways modulate immune responses, so they are quite likely to impact for example inflammation responses. However, whether those responses are able to provide relief (beyond placebo treatment, which is yet another interesting approach) will highly depend on the individual. In short, from a microbiological perspective I think we need a better understanding of the functionality and dynamics of the human gut microbiome so that we can actually make better classification (beyond what is currently done) and also improve our understanding of host-pathogen interactions. This would ultimately allows us to make better functional predictions. But again, this type of research is a bit tricky and does not satisfy the immediate desire for better treatments.

Sorry, lab lingo- yes tetracycline. One of the reasons is its wide use in agriculture to promote growth.

This dilemma presupposes that whatever trait under discussion is highly predictive for violence and related actions. The issue starts already with the classification as mentioned earlier in this thread. Even a term such as Antisocial Personality Disorder is not specific but describes broad patterns. Among those diagnosed with APD, only about 30% have traits that align with what is called sociopathy (e.g., only bonding with primary group, high impulsiveness, higher likelihood of violent outburst, morality often limited to to primary group), which is likely associated with environmental factors, such as adverse childhood experiences. Only a small subsection of the folks diagnosed with APD, have are aligned to what OP seemingly refers to as psychopathy traits (including lack of bonding, insensitivity to pain or suffering of others, even as children, lack of guilt or remorse). So it is a very small and AFAIK not clearly defined group of people. Depending on the criteria, some studies have found successful leaders with psychopathic tendencies (though some early studies suggesting that psychopathy is positively correlated with success in corporate leadership is probably overblown). While violence is more common in psychopaths, I have seen figure of around 2x more likely, the likelihood of men conducting violence compared to women is also around that order of magnitude. So just that does not seem to me as a sufficient indicator for broad intervention (or at least we do not seem to really contemplate treating all men). The question is then whether there is a way to identify those most at risk for selective treatment, if such a thing was available.

The study was designed as pilot and beside the limited participant numbers a big challenge is the lack of controls (and it is open label). That is especially problematic as many previous attempted autism treatment studies had fairly strong placebo effects (I think I also read at least one study where the calculated effect size for the placebo treatment was actually higher than the intervention, but I cannot recall the authors anymore). I think one of the issues he is looking at is donors who have had prior drug treatments that lead to growth of drug-resistant bacteria in the gut. In 2019, a person died in the United States after receiving an FMT that contained drug-resistant bacteria. I am providing link partly so that Mr Harrop will understand I have been reading about this aspect of FMT. There is also the complication that resistant bacteria have become ubiquituous in the environment. You can find certain resistances in pretty much any water stream and they are also present in our food chain. Of course, oral consumption does kill off some, but there there are bacteria that can survive stomach acids reasonably well and even if not, their DNA carrying resistance genes can be stochastically taken up by some incumbents of the gut. While without selective pressures they might vanish again, there is really not guarantee. This is especially true as some exporters and other genes can confer other selective advantages. Although not a main part of my work, I occasionally see those data sets and samples and virtually all samples to contain some sort of resistances. Tet resistance is ubiquitous, for example. Anything that has been exposed to sanitary systems and/or agriculture pretty much has them.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/world/middleeast/gaza-starvation.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Y08.EwGn.XHUloxRwrpu2&smid=url-share

I think the issue is that your good intentions are not matched by the effort put in in trying to understand the discussion at hand. I think the error you are making is assuming that you need to appear knowledgeable in all topics under discussion. This is not the purpose of this forum. While folks who often have some level of understanding, we tend to hash out things collectively, in part by providing literature (which we actually have read!). Thereby we try to scope out what is known about a particular topic and ask each other questions (and sometimes there is just no clear answer). This is also why search engines and LLMs are not loved here- they provide definitive and declarative statements which suggest some form of authority and understanding of the matter, but frequently miss the point. This almost always rubs folks the wrong way. A better way to engage in topics that one is curious about but does not know much is to ask questions and see if someone can explain things. The forum is intended for human interactions, not for showboating.

You need to read whole sentences then. Exchemist wrote: Again, it states that it is highly speculative for ME/CFS and the only form that has established uses is the C. difficile example. The issue here is you claim that you have the intention of clarifying things but are effectively muddying the waters essentially because you do not seem to read things properly (neither the posts nor your sources, for that matter).

You are conflating different goals here and have missed exchemist's key point: You then proceeded to provided links that basically state that yes, it works for C. difficile infection (for reasons outlined by exchemist) but completely missed that the part you quoted was in reference to CFS. Before questioning the validity of someone's sources one might want to read ones' own AND put it into context with the provided information.

Moderator NoteThis seems more suitable to the speculations section of this forum. Please note the guidelines for this section.

Yeah, but importantly, how can you hype that and make money fast with it?

I adore pretty much anything with Attenborough and even if the narrative can be weak at times, the wildlife footage is superb. The big issue is that it is is also extremely depressing, especially if you watch wildlife documentaries back in time.

Your endorsement certainly piqued my interest. I have a bit of a pet peeve for terms like "untold stories", "mysteries" and "secrets" in documentaries but maybe it is worth getting the blurays once it gets out.

I think the evidence is a bit weak, there are associations, but it is unclear if there is functional involvement. There are some data from animal studies but at least from what I have read the effect size an potential mechanistic linkages are weak. While the gut brain axis is a hot topic, there is a risk (as with many other hot topics before) to overstate early findings and to conflate associations with causative linkages. These are complex interactions on multiple levels (development, environment, genetics, immune system etc.) and focussing on one aspect tend to create appealing, but often non-viable models.

Our gut environment also changes with age, and lifestyle. And that in turn influences the gut composition in addition to diet in the mid- to long-term. That is, even a diet change might not be able to fundamentally change the intestinal environment and might lead to a continued shift to unfavorable gut microbiota (though there is also uncertainty regarding the specifics of that).

Here is a fun little study providing evidence for a friendly association between ocelot and opossum. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.70322 Also a NY Times article (gift link): https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/15/science/ocelots-opossums-friends-video.html?unlocked_article_code=1.XE8.rKzr.EcZZx85fiDvm&smid=url-share I think there is a continuing trend in research to be less restrictive in assumptions about the range and capabilities of animal behaviour, which in the past frequently has led to dismissal of unexplained observations.

Oh yes, there are a lot of unspecific observations (e.g. necrotization of tissues) but figuring out what leads to these phenotypes is often painstaking work and often unfundable. A pity, as it can be quite interesting.

Or some fibrous food residue.

Well the use of AI is frequently done to avoid the arduous task of thinking. If they were able to listen and respond to criticism they likely wouldn't just blindly copy the LLM output in the first place. The best you can hope for is that they enter your criticism into their chat and then paste whatever abomination of a response is generated then. And of course, if the idea is to outsource the thinking and reading part, it is just a consequence that citations are not going to be read, either. The whole approach takes away the joy of discussing and arguing and it simply becomes a bad-faith performance for its own sake. In a broader sense, I am not sure whether this might eventually be the end of online discussion fora. What is the point of it, if over long or short you could have the exact same discussion with a chat bot? It might be a Luddite way of thinking, but it seems to me that the new technologies almost makes it necessary to go back to face-to-face to maintain the human connection.

AFAIK the toxicity mechanism might still be poorly understood. Last time I looked was around 10-15 years back and while there were histotoxicological studies out there, there were still big gaps in figuring out what ultimately killed the ants when exposed to boric acid. I recall that histologically there were dose-dependent morphological changes in the epithelium of the gut, potentially related to intercellular adhesion and restoration. I believe there was some speculation that this also affects water homeostasis. But the main idea is that it somehow disrupts especially the midgut of ants.

I am not sure how accurate it is, but read that while it performed well in benchmarks, it did poorly on a range of tasks, most notably coding and debugging. But then I have no idea how the whole thing works and how citizen data would impact it.

Well, what are the chances that things might be dependent on whether the operation is a in a red or blue state/county? Meanwhile, the acting director of ICE claims that they don't even need probable cause to arrest folks. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5396985-trump-homan-immigration-detainments/

Well, probably the least surprising development in recent times.

Oh I see. At least in the agriculture sector it seems that most developments in that area a still smaller startups. They are trying to put AI in everything and it might be a market that they may be eyeing, but I am not sure how profitable it might or might not be. But honestly, that looks like too much long-term planning for techbros.