Company paying up to $13,000 a year for samples of your poop

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Monday, February 2, 2015
(OpenBiome)
OpenBiome-WLS

You've seen the infomercials that promise you'll earn easy money, but it might not get any easier than selling your poop.

Yes, you heard that right.

A Massachusetts company called OpenBiome is offering up to $13,000 a year for your poop. The nonprofit company offers cash for human feces as a way to fight a rare bacteria called C. difficile. The bacteria finds its way into some people's guts and causes extreme gastrointestinal distress, and prevents many sufferers from leaving their homes.

OpenBiome collects poop samples from healthy people, treats it and introduces that healthy fecal material into the guts of patients through nasal tubes or swallowed capsules. The healthy fecal material ends up destroying the C. difficile bacteria.

In the past, some patients have grown so desperate that they began treating themselves with fecal matter from family or friends. That's when the founders of OpenBiome decided to open a stool bank for healthy fecal material.

OpenBiome

A chart provided by OpenBiome shows how much donations can help.

So far, they've shipped 2000 treatments to 185 hospitals.

For now, the company only takes samples from people who come into their offices in Medford, Massachusetts. To donate your poop for pay, you have to be really, really healthy. The founders joke it's harder to become a donor than it is to get into MIT. Of the 1,000 potential donors who've offered to sell their poop so far, only 4 percent have passed the testing.

For those people who do pass, the company pays $40 dollars for each poop sample and a $50 dollar bonus if they come in and donate five days a week. That's $250 a week or $13,000 a year. You can also win special prizes if you make the biggest single donation of the month.

The founders say donors love to hear that their poop has cured someone who's been sick for years.

If you'd like to try and join the registry, you can do so by clicking here.

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