For years, “butt science” was the stuff of bathroom humor and bad tabloid headlines. Now it’s in Med, a serious medical journal, and yes—it’s official: scientists have tested enteral ventilation, aka breathing through the rectum, in humans. And it’s safe.
You couldn’t invent a story more perfectly engineered for the internet if you tried.
A group led by Dr. Takanori Takebe ran the first human trial using a liquid called perfluorodecalin—a compound that can carry oxygen. Twenty-seven brave volunteers received it the old-fashioned way (an enema, but make it scientific). Nobody was trying to oxygenate anyone yet; this was just a safety test. Result: mild bloating, no disasters, and one of the most shareable research headlines of the decade.
This is where science and media do their little tango.
The researchers say the goal isn’t to replace ventilators, but to find a way to deliver oxygen through the intestines during respiratory failure. But tell that to the internet, which instantly transformed a legitimate medical advance into a punchline. Every outlet from 404 Media to Reddit went all in with puns that practically wrote themselves—“Hold onto your butts,” “Backdoor breathing,” “Gas exchange, indeed.”
Yet beneath the laughs, there’s a fascinating (and slightly beautiful) truth: science often starts where absurdity lives. Remember, this same team once won an Ig Nobel Prize—the award for discoveries that make you laugh, then think. That might be the purest form of communication we’ve got.
There’s something almost poetic about it. The idea that a technique inspired by fish could one day help humans in respiratory distress—and that the public found out about it because of a headline that looked like satire. It’s proof that attention is the gateway drug to understanding.
So yes, butt breathing is real science. And if it takes a few cheap laughs to get people to read about medical innovation? Oxygen well spent.