[pct-l] Playing in dirt

[Michael S]

You should fire your doctor, and write a letter of complaint to your state's Board of Medicine.  This is a naturalistic fallacy that sets up an unrelated conclusion from a fact.  Yes, the immune system needs antigens to develop an immune response.  However, a one year old child develops nearly 1 billion immune responses in its early life, and sitting in dirt isn't going to add much to that.  The problem is, a sandbox or the soil may contain pathogenic organisms that enter through the digestive tract, where there are negligible immune responses.  

However, like both of us have said, I'm not sure that shaking hands is going to be that bad.  The problem is that ingesting those pathogenic bacteria from someone else's intestinal tract is not so good.  I'd always figure out a way to cleanse my hands before eating or sticking my fingers into my mouth.

Michael
michaels at skepticalraptor.com
http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php



On Feb 8, 2012, at 10:00 :02PST, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:16:33 -0700
From: Jeffrey Olson <jolson at olc.edu>
Subject: [pct-l] backcountry hygiene
To: pct-l at backcountry.net
Message-ID: <4F317891.2080807 at olc.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

A doctor friend said that it is important that children play in the dirt 
because they take in microbes that their immune system has to respond 
to.  This response strengthens the immune system and is a kind of 
vaccination against many different things that make us sick - or so I 
understood him.  He laughed at the modern suburbanites need to protect 
his or her child from dirt.  This only sets them up for colds, etc., 
later in life.

While I don't go so far as to "eat dirt" when hiking, I certainly don't 
worry about being dirty.  Sweaty - yes - that's sometimes uncomfortable 
when sleeping.  I certainly have not been acosted by hikers wanting to 
shake my hand.  A casual "Hey," a raising of the eyebrows, and openness 
to whatever the other wants to say is good enough...  Hygiene is like 
driving, it is others that I watch out for.

Jeffrey Olson
Martin, SD