Wednesday, March 29, 2023

11:30 am-1 pm

Sage Lab 5711

Matthew Wolf-Meyer - Senior Research Fellow at Tampere University and Associate Professor at Binghamton University

Innovation and “the Ick Factor”: Desperate Patients, Fecal Microbial Transplants, and the Rise of American Self-Regulation

Fecal microbial transplants (FMTs) have recently risen as a remedy for life-threatening illnesses. FMTs are exquisitely effective, but physicians often decry “the ick factor,” or the disgust response that many patients have in response to employing FMTs. That “ick factor” also shaped government responses to the therapeutic, leading to the FDA temporarily banning them until their decision was overturned through patient-led activism. Access to FMTs has resulted in the absence of government regulation, which has led patients to learn to self-regulate their exposures to risk, extending American traditions of self-care related to bodily exposures to racialized forms of “ick.”