Why Rockwell is Wrong about Giardia

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Colter
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Re: Why Rockwell is Wrong about Giardia

Post by Colter »

mokelumnekid,

I am not simply "cutting and pasting" what other people have written. I researched out the infective dose issue. I discovered Rockwell's insinuation that San Francisco was using raw water wasn't true. I researched the kind of filters used back then to test water for giardia and found out that only about 10-30% of cysts were recovered. I learned "pulse contamination" isn't factored in and can wildly skew the results of testing. I researched whether Rendtorff had verified his giardia cysts were viable. He hadn't. So get off your high horse.

Here's a couple of blog posts I've written. My own words, with citations of peer-reviewed papers.
Backpacker Giardia: Debunking a Skeptical Paper
http://bucktrack.blogspot.com/2012/09/b ... cal_8.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Waterborne Giardia for Backpackers: No Myth
http://bucktrack.blogspot.com/2011/03/w ... rs-no.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

are you simply repeating scraps you have gathered from other online threads, with no more peer review than Rockwell's? If you read what I've already written on this thread and thought for an instant you'd know your question was B.S.

Ask any statistician/epidemiologist familiar with giardia and ask them if Rockwell's stats are legit and support his claim "...you can indeed contract giardiasis on visits to the high mountains of the Sierra Nevada, but it almost certainly won’t be from the water. So drink freely and confidently." I'll bet you can't find ONE that agrees with that, and I'm certain the majority would disagree.

So, to close, what IS the science you speak of that will quantitatively do an order of magnitude more...
As far as I know that's just a pure straw-man argument. A study like that would be difficult. In the meantime, we need to avoid disinformation like Rockwell's. The Rockwell paper, often considered the gold standard, is, in the words of the giardia expert quoted above poorly researched, poorly referenced, and [with] many glaring errors. I independently came to the same conclusion.

gdurkee said California had about 1800 cases in 2009 & 2010 with a rate of about 5 cases per 100,000 people. Bad stats. Reported cases are not actual cases. To quote the CDC: not all infected persons are symptomatic, persons who are symptomatic do not always seek medical care, health-care providers do not always include laboratory diagnostics in their evaluation of nonbloody diarrheal diseases, and case reports are not always completed for positive laboratory results or forwarded to public health officials Only about 20,000 of about 1.2 MILLION cases were reported in the US. in 2010. So if, say, 90% of CA case are unreported, the actual number is closer to 16,000 cases, not 1,800.

Out of about 400 PCT thru thru-hikers each year there are usually multiple reports of giardia, commonly in the Sierra. Rockwell said: the risk of contracting giardiasis in the wilderness is similar to that of a shark attack... Untreated Sierra Nevada water should be, almost everywhere, safe to drink—if you “drink smart.” If you don’t “drink smart” you may ingest diarrhea-causing organisms. But it won’t be Giardia. Those are absolutely untrue and deeply irresponsible things to say.
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