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A year adrift on the Pacific? A medical Q and A

By Nick Perry
Published February 6, 2014 6:44pm ET
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A year adrift on the Pacific? A medical Q and A
In this Monday, Feb. 3, 2014 photo provided by the Marshall Islands Foreign Affairs Department, a man identifying himself as 37-year-old Jose Salvador Alvarenga sits on a couch in Majuro in the Marshall Islands, after he was rescued from being washed ashore on the tiny atoll of Ebon in the Pacific Ocean. Alvarenga told the U.S. ambassador in the Marshall Islands Tom Armbruster and the nation's officials that he left Mexico in December 2012 for a day of shark fishing and ended up surviving 13 months on fish, birds and turtles before washing ashore on the remote Marshall Islands thousands of miles (kilometers) away. (AP Photo/Foreign Affairs Department The Marshall Islands, Gee Bing) | Gee Bing

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The story of a Salvadoran fisherman who says he survived more than a year adrift on the Pacific Ocean raises many medical questions. The Associated Press spoke with Claude Piantadosi, a professor of medicine at Duke University and author of the book “The Biology of Human Survival,” to find out what is physically possible and for his view on the tale of Jose Salvador Alvarenga. This is an edited version of the interview:

Q: How long can a human survive without any water, or without any food?

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