Nature is Overrated

"[The state of nature of mankind is such that life is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
--Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Chap. 13, para. 9)


"Nature is a whore"
--Kurt Cobain (In Bloom)


For most of human history, it was understood that the state of nature is not one of perfect tranquility, balance, and harmony.  Early cavemen saw the forest as a place where predators lurked and dangerous elements awaited.  Whether it be a bear, lion, or some other creature, danger was never far behind.  Hurricanes, floods, violent storms, and other natural disasters were just a part of life.  Drought and famine were commonplace.  The average lifespan was less than 30 years old.  


In fact, in some parts of Africa such as Angola, the average lifespan is still less than 35 years old.  It has only been since the early 1900s that lifespan has doubled in first world nations to the age of 78.  Left alone, nature doesn't give a damn about whether human beings have feast or famine.  Producing food organically is difficult and yields such low amounts that if we relied upon it instead of modern industrial farming, the 7 billion person population of the world would starve itself down to a fraction of this amount.


Left alone, nature has evolved horrific communicable diseases such as polio, smallpox and TB that have ravaged entire populations and caused untold suffering and misery.  


Millions of people inherit diseases caused by mutations that at one time might have been helpful but now cause epidemic levels of disease.  Many inherit gene mutations that cause them to die of heart disease and cancer despite eating a healthy diet.  Some people of African descent inherit sickle cell anemia, which may protect against malaria but causes serious health problems.  If it were not for the artificial synthesis of human insulin, every Type I diabetic in this world would be dead. Again, nature itself is not intelligent and certainly far from perfect.  It is only through the application of science to medicine that we have ways to deal with nature--vaccines, innoculations, the creation of artificial insulin, chemotherapy against cancer, surgery, and the like are sometimes the only barriers between us and early death.


Toward the end of his life, Steve Jobs admitted regretting his decision to delay surgery for the pancreatic cancer which would take his life.  Instead, he chose "natural" remedies, including fasting, drinking fruit juice, and other alternative therapies.  During this time, the cancer had 9 months to grow and proliferate.  By the time he did choose surgery, it was too late--the cancer had spread to the surrounding tissues.  The ten year survival rate for those with the same type of rare pancreatic cancer which afflicted Jobs was above 95%, assuming the patient received surgery and radiation early.    


Rachel Carson's 1962 Silent Spring is credited with beginning the modern environmental movement.  Carson asserted in the book that the use of chemical pesticides such as DDT led to the widespread death of birds and other natural creatures, poisoning the earth and causing untold damage to humans.  Environmentalists in the 1960s came to argue that the state of nature was one of balance, tranquility, harmony, and perfection.  They argued that it was modern science and the chemical industry which was detrimental to the well being of humans, not nature itself.  Of course, these arguments are lobbied not by mountain men like the Unabomber from a remote wooden cabin, but from college educated folks from their comfortable urban abodes crafted on their Macs in a state of air conditioned lux.  This is ironic given that without the agricultural yields produced by genetically engineered crops and petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides, we would have famine and starvation at a massive level.  Modern cities could not exist because farmers could not produce enough food to feed such densely populated areas.  At the turn of the 20th century most people were farmers.  Now, only 3% of the U.S. population farms, yet we have an abundant and relatively cheap food supply.  While we have banned DDT to protect the animals, the levels of malaria have risen dramatically in Africa and cause many, many unnecessary deaths.  But at least the birds are happy, right?


Next, there is an entire health industry now selling "natural" products which essentially play off the notion that all things "natural" are better than things which are "unnatural."  We are told ad nauseam how modern medicine and drugs produced by the big bad pharmaceutical companies are going to harm us.  If we take herbs, we are told, then we won't have side effects and the remedy will be safe--implying that all things which come from nature lead to healing and well being.  The problem with this, however, is that it just isn't so.  Modern medicine relies upon rigorous testing for safety and efficacy.  Double blind, placebo controlled studies help separate effective treatments from non effective treatments.  This is the point of evidence based medicine.  The natural product industry faces no such requirements.  The bottom line is that we simply don't know what works and what doesn't.  And contrary to the "nature-is-better" notion, some herbs and vitamins can be downright harmful, much more harmful than their regulated, big pharm cousins.  For example, St. John's Wort is an herb used to treat depression.  Prozac, an SSRI medication, which is made by Eli Lilly and Co., is also used to treat depression.  Many people are afraid of the side effects caused by SSRI based antidepressants, which can include sexual dysfunction and insomnia, therefore they try St. John's Wort.  While Prozac has been on the market for 20 years and has been tested in hundreds of studies as to its long term effectiveness and safety, St. John's Wort has not been studied nearly as rigorously.  Worst of all, if you are taking other medications while on St. John's Wort, there is a chemical inside of it that can cause dangerous drug interactions for many people who take it.  While we may be more afraid of the pharmaceutical drugs, sometimes this is just because the drug manufacturer is required to list the side effects. Natural products require no such listing.  However, this doesn't mean that there aren't side effects.


Not all that is natural is our friend.  Poison ivy, skunk spray, snake venom, and porcupine quills are all much more natural than something like cortisone cream.  Yet one can cause great harm while the other can bring about great healing.  


I suffer from inflammatory arthritis caused by my immune system attacking multiple joints in my body.  It causes redness, swelling, the buildup of fluid in the joints, particularly my knees, and extreme pain, particularly in my hips, spine, jaw, knees, jaw and feet/ankles.  Before receiving treatment, my knees were so swollen that they were 3x their size.  Walking 50 feet to the restroom at work was so painful I carefully monitored my liquid levels to avoid having to make the trip.  I also suffered from general flu-like symptoms, including body aches, fatigue and malaise.  Pain and stiffness upon waking was excruciating.  Life was miserable.  My quality of life was reduced to nothing.  


It took awhile before I was referred to a rheumatologist who diagnosed my condition and began to treat me. Because the immune system is out of whack in this disease, the treatment consists of taking medications which essentially poison the immune system to weaken it, thereby alleviating the damage to the joints.  I began taking the prescribed medications and did indeed begin to feel better.  The redness and swelling decreased and I began to have a better quality of life.  The drawback was that I had to get my liver enzymes checked for possible liver damage from the medications.  A few months into the treatment, I started showing signs of liver inflammation.  This scared the dickens out of me.  After the medications were withdrawn, the monstrous pain and swelling returned.  I tried to take gluten out of my diet and reduced my consumption of red meat.  I hoped I could find something natural to treat this disease without harming my liver.  I drank copious amounts of green tea, which is supposed to help fight inflammatory arthritis.  Yet despite my diligence, the natural remedies simply didn't work.  The only thing I could clearly ascertain was that avoiding dairy seemed to help some, but not enough to make my condition bearable.  I found myself once again living in hell.


Thankfully, in a few weeks my liver healed itself.  My liver enzymes returned to normal.  The doctor tried a different mixture of drugs.  These didn't hurt my liver and my condition again improved.  For whatever reason, my body can handle some drugs as opposed to others.  I am now on a newer infusion based medication which is bioengineered.  It is lab created and totally artificial.  It is not a poison.  Instead, it regulates the immune system to bring it back into balance and reduce symptoms.  It has helped me a great deal and every day I thank God for it.  If I was alive 70 years ago, my only treatment would have been aspirin.  I would literally be crippled and living my life in a wheelchair.  Life would be unbearable.  It is only through the blessings of modern science and medicine that I have any quality of life now.


Of course, science and technology are not perfect.  Harmful medications sometimes do make their way through the FDA.  Some pesticides, in large enough amounts, can indeed be carcinogenic.  Science, after all, did lead to the creation of the atomic bomb.  Yet as humans we have come too far to abandon ourselves to the fickle state of nature, not unless we want to return to a time of disease, starvation, and decay.  Nature is not our enemy, but nor is it necessarily a friend.  The real problem with nature is that it just doesn't give a damn, and we deserve better.  Using our tools and understanding, we attempt to make life better.  It has taken the human race thousands of years, but we are making incremental progress.  Infant mortality is down, lifespan has doubled over the last 100 years, vaccination has reduced some of the worst communicable diseases, and modern treatment has extended the lives of those suffering from diseases like cancer, heart disease and stroke.  There is room for optimism because the future is in our hands, but only if we want it to be.