Friday feces blogging (part 2)

Since Dan had to go and bring up the subject of feces, I would like to direct our readers to a new article in Slate on fecal transplantation for C. difficile. Although Slate is written for the general public, this article does a good job explaining the procedure and the controversy that surrounds it. Of course, the issue of lack of randomized trials to support this intervention comes up in the article. I would respond by asking this question:  if you had diarrhea for 6 months unresponsive to treatment, would you try it, or would you wait for an investigator to perform a trial and publish it before you agree to giving it a try? And the other interesting question is whether randomized trials are always needed. On that one, I'll point you to an interesting paper in BMJ from a few years ago.