I was thinking about homeless people on the bus. It is possible one of the objections to the homeless is the smell.

What would improve things is a simple technology to end body odor. Perhaps a body surface probiotic could replace the usual skin flora with a new scentless version.

One possibility is the natural flora of the skin of children. I am under the impression that children do not have body odor. They do however have a coating of bacteria known to succeed on the surface of the human body.

So, make versions of those bacteria that are immune to a specific antibiotic, then make an antibiotic rinse loaded with scentless probiotics. This replaces the old bacteria with the new ones.

Further improving this would be engineering the bacteria to metabolize body odor chemicals, possibly among them butyric acid. That way the new bacterial coating would metabolize things the body itself produces.
-- beanangel, Nov 23 2017

The thing about children is that they haven't reached puberty, at which time the body starts producing more things for skin bacteria to digest, and ultimately yield greater body odor than before puberty.
-- Vernon, Nov 23 2017


... which clearly implies that the solution to smelly homeless people was the one proposed by J M Barrie; if the Lost Boys never grow up, they won't smell.

A few small technical details remain to be worked out.
-- pertinax, Nov 24 2017



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