what are the chances for him getting sick on a deserted island. not from an infection but from a virus/bacteria.
What can you catch from animals/insects?
Well, you’re also missing something else… rocks
You see the guy running around barefoot half the time. He’s bound to scrape his feet up. Every try climbing up a jagged coastal cliff? In your bare feet? Not fun. You open up a cut, and virus/bacteria can get in there from almost anywhere. Dirt isn’t exactly sanitary.
Bugs and animals are small potatoes, man, although if the island is in a tropical clime, bugs can be carrying any number of odd diseases.
In other words, the chances are pretty damn good of getting sick after living for months in stone-age conditions. Especially if you don’t have a lot of wilderness survival training.
You can catch lots of things from animals/ insects birds etc. Flu becomes dangerous when passed on from pigs or birds; mosquitoes carry the bacteria (well protozoan) for malaria; plague is carried by ticks on rats to give some examples.
BTW bacteria and viruses cause infections, I take it you mean that he wasn’t already infected before he got cast away? If so then if someone/thing infected had been on the island before him then yes.
Is Castaway worth watching? I can’t decide whether or not ot go and see it. 
I don’t think there were any animals on the island, and possibly not too many bugs, FWIW. The island was it’s own small ecological system.
Arjuna34
Just remember that salt water is a natural topical antiseptic for treating cuts and open wounds. There is plenty of that around on a tropical island
From Premiere.Com:
“Let me show you the scar,” Tom Hanks says, plunking his right boot down on the table. He yanks his jeans above his calf to reveal a crescent of pink skin just below his kneecap, a little something he picked up on location while shooting his latest film. “About four days before we left Fiji, I got a scratch or a blister,” he says. “By the time I got home, my leg hurt so much I couldn’t sleep.” Something—a grain of sand, a sliver of wood—had imbedded itself in the wound. “If the infection had gotten through to my bloodstream, it would have been bad. The doctor said, ‘You shmuck, you could have died.’ ” He drops his leg back to the floor and smiles: “The things we do for our art, I’m telling you.”
I have to second this idea - you figure he would’ve been eating better if there were other animals around. And although I know the OP said no infections, I winced when he cut his leg on the coral, because those things usually get infected instantly, IIRC. Either way, it looked sore…
And Catmarie, if you don’t mind the fact that the trailers gave away the ending of the film (or, better yet, you didn’t see that trailer at all), it’s a good film to watch. I mean, I wouldn’t recommend it over Chocolat or Snatch, but it’s still a good film, especially if you like Tom Hanks.
I haven’t seen any trailers as yet so it hasn’t been spoilt for me as yet, there again I think its only just come out here in the UKso there’s plenty of time yet.
An ecological system implies that there is some form of life and as SPOOFE said, dirt isn’t exactly free of bacteria etc! :eek: