Just what is the fixation with "natural"?
The nature of natural
Natural is good, right?
Every day we are told that man is interfering with the natural order of things. Every day adverts and other media imply that "natural" is good; that manmade is somehow "unnatural" and implicitly worse off for being so. Belladonna is a plant, and definitively natural. Arsenic is an elemental metal and implicitly natural. Syphilis is a disease and definitively natural. Meteor strikes are natural. Volcanic eruptions are natural. Floods; typhoons; tsunamis - all natural. Natural does not automatically imply "beneficial".
In the news not so long ago there were concerns over a perfectly natural phenomenon: an outbreak of measles. So what if just a couple of days later there was a concentration of over a thousand known cases? What's everyone up in arms about. It's natural for children to get measles. What's the fuss? And while we're at it, why bother when kids become sterile after rubella or chlamydia, or die of whooping cough? Should we not just let them take their course? Where's the problem? After all, it's all 100% natural.
Why did it happen? Because parents were unduly influenced - even after it had been resoundly discredited - by an unscrupulous charlatan peddling his fraudulent and unsubstantiatable "research". They eschewed the "unnatural" practice of inoculation and they each decided that the risk to their children and society of the definite effects of the diseases was far more tolerable than the unspecified and vague risk of "side effects". Perhaps the parents cannot be entirely blamed for being influenced when the quack was in favour. Most people get the bulk of their common knowledge from the modern news media, so they had little else to base their judgements on. But once his research had been resoundingly rejected, it was still finding favour with parents, because of this irrational preference for a vague notion of "natural" over tested and proven scientific practice.
There is an increasingly fashionable phobia of interfering in the "natural order of things", whilst at the same time betting the farm on fanciful practices such as homeopathy, and chiroproactics. Even herbalism - which has at least some proven value - is elevated to a station well above its practical value, and often then strays back into homeopathy. (A whole 'nother topic for a whole 'nother day, but how come all that untested, disproven, and vague poking, prodding, distilling and decanting is ok, whilst dosing of measured, researched, proven, and biologically tested and understood active ingredients is "unnatural"?)
Quite aside from any of the moral and practical arguments, there is the question of semantics and logic. There is an inherent illogic in decrying the influence of mankind as "unnatural". The species we are was forged by nature itself. Mankind is part of nature. We know that the species we are, and hence our interaction with the environment we live in, was shaped by the natural process of evolution over billions of years (unless you are some kind of religious crackpot in denial, in which case you probably stopped reading three paragraphs back, and consider prayer a more appropriate response than medication). Our impact as a species upon ourselves or our environment is no less natural than that of a rain storm or a microscopic baccilus. We are not divorced from the rest of reality. This modern corruption of the idea of "unnatural" to mean "by the hand of man" is quite ludicrous.
Really - the big question is not "is anything natural" but "is it beneficial"? Let's stop pretending that one implies the other.
