The Magic Poop Potion

An Indiana grandma killed off a devastating superbug with a homemade fecal transplant and then embarked on a crusade to win over the FDA.

Illustrations by Laurel Lynn Leake

Catherine Duff, a fifty-seven-year old Indiana grandma with a compromised immune system, drove up to the security gates of the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She was greeted by four armed guards, two of them holding dogs on leashes. She was asked to get out of the car and proceed into a booth where she went through what she describes as “the strictest security check I’ve ever been to in my life.” She was patted down and asked to hand her belongings to the personnel. “They don’t just look at your purse; they take everything out,” she recalls. When she was finally let out of the booth, she found the doors of her Chevrolet Tahoe open and a canine sniffing through the glove compartment. Guards guided mirrors underneath the car, checking for explosives. For the shy, timid person Catherine Duff was, the process seemed very intense. “The only thing they didn’t ask for was a DNA sample,” she says. “It was a bit intimidating!”

Half an hour …