Australia has given regulatory approval for faecal transplants, the first country in the world to do so.
For such a transplant, poo donors – who have to meet a list of conditions – provide healthy genetic material from their microbiomes. The microbes are collected and delivered into the gastrointestinal tract of an unhealthy person, where they have been shown to treat conditions such as the potentially deadly bacteria Clostridium difficile colitis (C diff).
