Field of Science

"Raw" water, not a craze, just crazy

Sometimes, maybe not enough times, the lack of a scientific perspective can be dangerous to your health or that of others (anti-vacc people).  The promoters of raw water want you to have all the minerals, and Pro-biotics, in untreated water.  Now in the view of a biologist having ready access to safe, hygienic water is one of the best examples of how science and technology have improved the public's well-being.  And remember this: "In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria." (David Auerbach, 2002).  TPP, as a frequent traveler in the tropics, even appreciates the marketing insight of soda makers who realized that by the time you had the water filtered and treated to make it safe for soda, you had a marketable commodity before you even added in the sugar, or its substitute, and the flavorings and colorings and carbonation, and charge nearly as much for no more ingredients.  So you can find nice, safe bottled water all across India, and the rest of SE Asia.  And you can stop wondering if the water treatment tabs you brought from home will kill elephant liver flukes as well as they kill moose liver flukes.  So the raw water people are just being stoopid and ignorant, as stoopid and ignorant as their gullible prey, presumably the same people who buy things because they are labeled "non-GMO" or "no gluten" especially items that could not possibly have a cereal grain protein.  Or could we market a homeopathic water purifier?  Would it magically remove things from water as well as it puts them in?  Or are we going to have another PT Barnum moment of never under estimating people's ability to fool themselves, but can they fool their intestines too?

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