Yes, but can you do it well enough to make a fresh poo pill you want to swallow? It should have no chance of leakage, be sufficiently sturdy to remain in the mouth for some time without dissolving prematurely, and have no sharp edges.
And you really want that to be near 100%. I was thinking you would want a machine that can literally melt, cut and twist very precisely. I haven’t looked at available polymer options though, so it may very well be easy enough to do by hand.
I’ve made plenty of capsules with dried powdered herbs, and they’re easy enough if you’ve got a capsule machine. The cheap “machines” are simply a set of plates which hold each half of the gelcap - you fill the holes of one plate with the small ends of the gelcaps, pour and scrape your powder over them and then align the plate filled with the big ends correctly and snap them together. I haven’t done it with anything gooey, but it should work fine if the viscosity is made right so the goo falls into the capsule ends and doesn’t just stick over the top. And, of course, modern mass production methods put gooey stuff (like vitamin E) into softgels with no problem - although with more waste than making capsules by hand.
So, assuming absorption works okay, it really boils down to the dose and patient compliance. Most patients would probably willingly swallow half a dozen gelcaps of Restorpoo to avoid an NG tube, but if they need several ounces of the stuff, that’s a lot more capsules than most patients would be wiling to swallow in one go.
I thought about those capsules, but the difficulty is in getting the goo into the capsule without getting it on the outside. The whole point of the capsule is to make the poo pill nothing like poo. You don’t want to smell it and you don’t want to taste it. That’s why I came up with the tube-to-pill mechanism.
Of course, if you put the poo in the pill, then put that pill in another pill, then coat that with candy it might be doable. It seems like it would be a lot of stinky work for the nurse though.
The question for Qadgop the Mercotan then is, how much poo does it take? How many pills would we have to make to be effective? Personally, I’d swallow 20 pills to avoid the tube. Maybe they could centrifuge it to concentrate the cultures.
I’ll give this another shot.
It is a common medical procedure to simmer Koala feces in hot water and serve the resulting tea to those encountering various illnesses. Recently Mercy Hospital resumed this practice, but received complaints that there were chunks of Koala crap floating in the concoction. Patients were informed that…
…their insurance was up a peak without a Craddle.
What?..
…The Koala tea of Mercy is not strained.
HEADLINE: Mercy Hospital Up Shits Creek.
It doesn’t seem that the dose needs to be very large. For this study, they instruct the use of 30g or 2cc of donor stool, then mixed (in a household blender) with 50-70mL sterile (really? Sterile? c’mon, Doc…) saline before straining and administration by NG tube. However - it seems you need to use enteric coated capsules; the donated material needs to be delivered to the duodenum. If the capsule dissolves in the stomach, it won’t work. So this doesn’t look like a DIY capsule making situation (darn it! I had figured out how to do it cleanly, too: put the goo in a syringe with a large bore needle and shoot it into the open caps!)
And, indeed, some researchers *are *looking into other forms of administration, and even autologous donation (stool you donate to yourself):
I was confused by your “Let’s try this again” post when I read it. Laying in bed last night, I realized they were a set up for some pun. I got as far as “koala tea” = quality and figured “Mercy” had to be in there some where…
Doesn’t where the capsule dissolves just depend on the capsule material, or maybe thickness? I wouldn’t think that was a show-stopper.
Oh dear, I was just thinking of the package insert (or maybe the T-shirt):
Crap. Take only as directed. Side effects may include . . .
It’s got to be coated with something that withstands stomach acid but will dissolve once it reaches the small intestine. I don’t think you can get that off the shelf if you’re not a pharmacist. I could be wrong, though, I’ve never needed it, so haven’t researched it.
But yes, obviously someone can make an enteric coated PooPill, it just isn’t going to be me. Which is probably a good thing.
I don’t think anyone was suggesting a Do-it-yourself kit. Rather, wondering why the medical establishment hasn’t considered it, given the ubiquitousness of pills and the difficulty/discomfort of the nasogastro tube.