The annual Chemed Medicine and Ethics Conference, which took place this year at the Armon Hotel in Stamford from February 15-18, is a professional forum for observant Jewish physicians throughout the region. It’s also a platform for aspiring researchers to share their scholarship and learn how to engage colleagues in their work.
Joshua Cornick, who grew up in East Brunswick and now lives in Kew Garden Hills with his wife, Devorah (Schreier), a Jewish studies teacher at SKA, is a biology major in his last semester at the Lander College for Men/Touro University in Queens. They both attended the Chemed Conference and he offered a poster display that described advances in fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) as well as his research on individuals’ reactions to the prospect of being a donor or recipient.
FMT is the process in which fecal matter from a healthy donor is transferred into the gastrointestinal tract of a recipient who is ill in order to restore a healthy and balanced gut microbiota to help fight disease. FMT has been proven successful in the treatment of gastrointestinal conditions such as C-difficile and inflammatory bowel diseases and is being studied as a treatment for neurological, autoimmune and cancer conditions.
Having surveyed “gut reactions” of individuals to the prospect of being donors or recipients, Cornick’s research suggests that it may be worthwhile to monetarily incentivize people to be donors and that additional resources be allocated to making this treatment more readily available and affordable.
Cornick learned through his discussions that many people at the conference had generally heard of FMT treatment but were unaware of some of its potential applications, specifically that it is being studied as a potential treatment for many conditions other than gastrointestinal ones. Others shared that they had friends or relatives who were offered FMT as an adjunct treatment for their gastrointestinal conditions.
Harry Glazer is the Middlesex County Editor of The Jewish Link. He can be reached at [email protected]
