A clinic in Florida is using a treatment largely banned by the FDA that it claims cures ailments from diarrhea to HIV: poop. Yes, poop transplants. But as strange as the idea sounds, there is some evidence that the procedure can help with at least one ailment.

According to a BuzzFeed feature, the unnamed clinic takes human feces and transplants it into to the colon of a person it did not originally come out of. And this Tampa clinic isn't the only place that thinks so. Researchers are reportedly looking into whether poop transplants can help with everything from irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, obesity, diabetes, epilepsy, and HIV.

According to the Fecal Transplant Foundation, poop transplants, more officially called Fecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT) are procedures 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, the foundation notes, "is to replace good bacteria that has been killed or suppressed, usually by the use of antibiotics, causing bad bacteria, specifically Clostridium difficile, or C. diff., to over-populate the colon."

BuzzFeed reports that C.diff (a bacterial infection) is the only thing the FDA allows fecal transplants to treat. Still, the Tampa clinic and others use it in an attempt to treat a whole host of issues, which some say could be dangerous for a few reasons. First of all, the longterm effects of fecal transplants are unknown. Second of all, fecal transplants could actually be really helpful, but using them in unapproved ways could halt progress.

“If you start having a lot of this craziness,” Colleen Kelly, a gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University, told BuzzFeed, “something's going to happen to a patient, or there will be some infection transmission or some bad outcome and that's going to really delegitimize the real value to this treatment.”

Poop transplants are not new, but they certainly are controversial. And while the FDA banned the procedure for anything other than Clostridium, BuzzFeed reports the it has not taken action against any clinics offering fecal transplants to patients. It seems like the future of poop transplanting is pretty murky.

Click over to BuzzFeed to read their full feature.

Related: What the 7 Types of Poop Say About Your Health