Hazardous transport: Camel vs Dromedary

Scientific paper on Camel and Dromedary hazards for humans.

Study photos for camel here. For dromedary see Egypt day 2.

Hazardous Transportation: Camel and Dromedaries: Risks related to gravitational issues : Systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Author: Ian G McGillivray

Author affiliations: Currently on Sabbatical

Objective: to determine whether the risks of major traumas differ between camel and dromedary riding

Background: My wife asked, is it safe to ride a dromedary in Egypt, and she asked Mongolia if it was safe to ride a camel. I needed an answer.

Design: Systematic review of randomised controlled trials

Data Sources: Medline, Web of Science, Embase, and the Cochrane Library of Databases; appropriate internet sites and citation lists

Study selection: Studies covering traumas related to camel and/or dromedary riding

Main Outcome Measures: Death, Major Trauma defined as an injury severity score >15

Results: I was unable to identify any randomised controlled trials covering camel and/or dromedary riding

Conclusions:
As with many studies concerning reducing death and major trauma, the safety of one mode versus the other has not been subject to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials.
Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of the use of only observational studies . I think that everyone might benefit if the protagonists of evidence based medicine participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled crossover trial of the two species and a horse.

Footnotes: This line of reasoning is copy pasted from a similar article “Hazardous Journeys: Parachute use to prevent death and trauma.“ BMJ 2003 ; 327 GCS Smith, JP Pell. I hope Smith and Pell will see this shameless plagiarism as acknowledgement of their groundbreaking publication.

Funding: Savings from working for Big Pharma

Competing Interests: The author is the author of an unpublished observational study[1]. The author states his partners questions did not influence the study design, not conclusions.

Ethical Approval: Not Required

[1] The author concluded that the statistically significantly shorter legs of camels meant that the risk of trauma or death was reduced and that the 2nd hump reduced the risk of falling off backwards. He therefore concluded that the frequency and severity of accidents for camels would be less.Read more