Abstract
This study investigates how English-language news sources have represented fecal microbiota transplants (FMT). FMT involves transferring stool from a healthy donor to a recipient with a dysfunctional intestinal flora in order to repopulate their gut microbiome. FMT applications are increasingly moving into mainstream clinical care. We investigate press coverage of stool transplants, as well as broader themes associated with health and the gut microbiome, in order to uncover emerging social representations. Our findings show that print media focused in particular on creating novel, mainly hopeful, social representations of feces through wordplay and punning, side-lining issues of risk and fear. We also identify changing metaphorical framings of microbes and bacteria from “enemies” to “friends”, and ways in which readers are familiarized with FMT through the depiction of the process as both mundane and highly medicalized.
Highlights
The year 2003 saw several seminal scientific developments, such as the complete sequencing of the human genome and the emergence of epigenetics and microbiomics (Nerlich and Hellsten 2009)
We identify changing metaphorical framings of microbes and bacteria from “enemies” to “friends”, and ways in which readers are familiarized with fecal microbiota transplants (FMT) through the depiction of the process as both mundane and highly medicalized
A brief history of FMT in English language newspapers FMT first appeared as a topic in English language newspapers in a 2003 investigative article for the Australian Financial Review under the title “Cure caught between two stools; Men’s health”
Summary
The year 2003 saw several seminal scientific developments, such as the complete sequencing of the human genome and the emergence of epigenetics and microbiomics (Nerlich and Hellsten 2009). Scientists, doctors and patients began to consider a more rudimentary health intervention, namely “fa(e)cal microbial/microbiota transplants”, “stool transplants”, “fecal transplants”, or FMT for short. The Fecal Transplant Foundation (2017) defines FMT as “a procedure in which fecal matter, or stool, is collected from a tested donor, mixed with a saline or other solution, strained, and placed in a patient, by colonoscopy, endoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, or enema.”. The purpose of FMT is to replace a healthy gut microbiota that have been damaged due to an infection and antibiotic treatments, or a chronic intestinal disorder. The Fecal Transplant Foundation (2017) defines FMT as “a procedure in which fecal matter, or stool, is collected from a tested donor, mixed with a saline or other solution, strained, and placed in a patient, by colonoscopy, endoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, or enema.” The purpose of FMT is to replace a healthy gut microbiota that have been damaged due to an infection and antibiotic treatments, or a chronic intestinal disorder.
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