i'm outside boston to meet carolyn edelstein. her openbiome organization is combating a notorious bacteria, c. dficile or c. diff. openbiome is helping fight this life threatening gut infection with a radical treatment, human fecal transplants. - c. diff or c. difficile is the most coon hospital incurred infection in the u.s., actually. - who is at risk of contracting it? - oftentimes what happens is someone will go into a hospital or a long term care facility, they'll go on antibiotics and they'll acquire a c. diff infection. what happens when you go on antibiotics is a lot of the microbes that are normally present in your gut get wiped out. and without that competition c. diff is able to spread and to start producing the toxin that makes you sick. c. diff is really difficult to kill and to get rid of, because it makes little spores. - [julia] these toxic spores are c. diff's most ruthless weapon against the body. - because of this, it's pretty easy for patients to be colonized by c. diff. - [julia] c. diff infects a half a mill