Bedouin Camel Coprophagia Dysentery Cure A Pathway For MERS Infection

Its abundantly clear that MERS-CoV transmission is fecal based (more on that in a follow on post). In that regard, one important but embarrassingly overlooked source for Camel to Human MERS-CoV transmission is the Bedouin practice of eating fresh steaming camel dung to treat dysentery.

Based on this connection, one might expect that most camel turds are consumed by people during the flood season when dysentery may be at its highest. Of course one might also assume that this treatment is most used when one is out in the desert and away from the cities. Tracking the epidemiological correlations may be telling in regards to MERS first appearance and subsequent peaks.

Now as nasty as Camel Coprophagia may seem, if you're dying in the middle of the desert and the obviously healthy native people tell you that you better chomp down of a fresh steaming camel turd if you want to stay alive, what do you do? Reportedly this is the exact situation the Nazi army in North Africa faced in WW2. The Nazis ended up placing fresh hot camel turd on the menu, and a few medical innovations followed.

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Ralph A. Lewin

From: Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
Volume 44, Number 4, Autumn 2001
pp. 594-607 | 10.1353/pbm.2001.0067

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