[at-l] Water filters...

[orangebug74@yahoo.com (Orange Bug)]

Excellent points. The problem is that this would be an impossible study
to create. It would require creating some sort of blind water treatment
that would involve processing the water in a way that the hiker would
not recognize - as means to include the placebo effect. Each leg of the
study would include some sort of contraption that would make the water
go through a filter body, receive a chemical appearing treatment
(complete with smell and taste) and wait the required 20 minutes.

You would also need to convince hikers to use water with the
understanding that some of the water will be contaminated.

You would then need the hikers to be available for at least 1 month
post-hike in order for giardia colitis to develop.

I don't think such a study would receive many volunteers, or get past
an ethics board.

The only available studies are self reports after the fact. This
probably gives a good trend and suggests that there is much more to
hiker gastroenteritis than simply the water treatment strategy. To this
hiker, that is a very powerful and believable outcome.

Bill...

--- McDermott <mcdermot@verizon.net> wrote:
> What I cannot believe is that there was no significant difference.
> It seems to be that there would have to be some kind of a difference
> in the outcomes.  It would actually be easier for me to believe that
> the people who treated water got the sickest that to believe that
> there was no signigicant difference.  Treating the water must effect
> the outcome in some way, either for better or worse, but I
> cannot believe that it would be the same.  I believe this study must
> be flawed in some way.  I would have to see many more studies
> confirming this before I could believe it.
>

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