Mal,
i tend to agree but for my own interest I like to get to understand why, which is why I ask questions that can appear stupid to some.
If there was a chance that they could somehow purify the water to drink it then it has to be looked into as some people believe that one or both of them survived longer than your 2 weeks.
One thing I note from reading the accounts of the
Norwich City wreck and the 1938 survey expedition is that it was remarkable how quickly diarrhea broke out amongst the people involved. The captain of the
Norwich City asked for chlorodyne when the rescue ship arrived and in the account of the 1938 survey it is noted that after the natives had gorged themselves on the crabs they came down with diarrhea. These outbreaks were in people who were conditioned either to the basic diet of sailors or natives accustomed to their own food staples, not people being exposed to an exotic and unfamiliar diet for the first time.
I'm not a physician however I suspect that this was probably due to the richness of the crab meat in various oils rather than any germs. Now amongst many things diarrhea dehydrates the body pretty rapidly if unchecked. Now if Earhart and Noonan were relying on crabs and sea birds (also oil rich) for food then to me it seems not unlikely that they would have contracted diarrhea fairly quickly. Unless they had a steady supply of uncontaminated water, and chloradyne or some other drug to control their bowels, then anything they drank would simply have exacerbated the diarrhea and hastened the inevitable causing rapid weakening and eventual incapacity.