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As recently as the mid-2000s, medical school students were told that human beings, who carry about 100 trillion bacteria each, were bacteria-free at birth, writes The New York Times.

One of those students, Juliette Madan, is now an assistant professor of pediatrics at theGeisel School of Medicine, and has come to a very different viewpoint. “I think that the tenet that healthy fetuses are sterile is insane,” she tells the Times.

Madan and other researchers now believe that mothers “seed” their fetuses with microbes during pregnancy, and that these microbes may be important to the health of the babies, and could lead to new ways to treat a number of medical conditions, the Times writes.

Read the full story, published 8/29/13 by The New York Times.