An elderly woman in China, who claims to have beaten lung cancer by drinking manure water, has inspired her fellow villagers to consume copious amounts of what is essentially poop soup.

And scientific research suggests they may be on to something.

The unnamed woman, from Jinshicun, Hunan province, reportedly had been diagnosed in the terminal stage of lung cancer when she began regularly drinking water infused with cow and goat manure. After eight months of consuming the concoction, the woman claims to be cancer free.

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When word of this supposed miracle cure spread around her village, up to 20 other households began making their own batches of manure water, drinking it as a daily elixir. They would gather the manure from goats and cows, air it out, then stir-fry it and grind it. They would mix one spoonful of the ground-up manure in a cup of water, which they drink twice daily.

When the news media and Internet blogs picked up on this unusual and unpleasant sounding trend, it was universally mocked and laughed at. But the ones who should be laughing are the manure-consuming villagers, because they may have stumbled upon a treatment that really is helping their bodies fight off cancer.

Scientific research has found that the human body needs exposure to microbes and parasites because they not only include the bacteria and viruses that make people ill, but also those that can help.

This includes "friendly bacteria like lactobacillus that live in your gut, and other benign microbes that live in dirt and untreated water," writes Dr. Christina Clarke, a research scientist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, and a member of the Stanford Cancer Institute.

Clarke says that microbial exposures might influence cancer and inflammatory diseases. It is "likely that under-exposure to microbes skews gut bacterial ecosystems to create inflammatory immune responses," she adds.

"The immune system is known to be stimulated by the inhalation of bacterial cell wall components called 'endotoxin' that become airborne as cow manure or dog poo dries up," she said. "Exposure to cow manure may explain why dairy farmers have substantially lower rates of lung cancer despite smoking."

In 1996, Italian researcher Giuseppe Mastrangelo found that dairy farmers have a far lower risk of lung cancer compared to neighboring non-dairy farmers who worked in fields or orchards.

Mastrangelo's observations found that dairy farmers were about 35% less likely to get cancer than expected, and 51% less likely to get lung cancer. He also found that the longer dairy farmers worked with cattle - and the more land and cows they had - the greater the decrease in lung cancer risk.

This is not to suggest that cow farmers drink manure-infused water, but they could be benefiting from being around dried cow manure, the fumes of which they would likely inhale throughout the day.

This would indicate that the manure does not need to drunk to be effective, and could perhaps instead be inhaled through a vaporizer. However, it's highly debatable whether this method would be considered a more pleasant alternative to poop soup.

Fortunately, it's not being left up to elderly Chinese villagers to figure this out. "Researchers are starting studies to explore how probiotics, or other controlled exposures to microbes, might be new tools for preventing cancer," writes Clarke.

Let's hope they come up with a pill.

Tagspoop soup, manure-soaked water, Can Poop Soup Help Fight Cancer?, Cancer, Cancer Cure, cancer fighting, Christina Clarke, Cancer Prevention Institute of California, Stanford Cancer Institute, endotoxin, Jinshicun, Hunan Province