The benefits of "chemistry", the harm of natural
Chemistry for Life
Fedor Katasonov, Copper News
One day, my parents came to see me with a nine-month-old baby, whose stool was found to have blood. No, this is not a medical detective story in the spirit of Dr. House. Everything turned out to be very simple: when questioned, it turned out that the child was given whole cow's milk. It would seem that what could be more natural than ordinary cow's milk? However, for modern babies it is one of the most harmful products.
In philosophy there is a concept of "naturalistic error", the essence of which is to identify the natural with the "good", and the unnatural with the "bad" only on the basis of its existence or absence in nature.
In Western terminology, there is a more precise concept – appeal to nature, whereas naturalistic fallacy is a somewhat more complex concept, but in Russian both terms are translated as "naturalistic error".
This mistake, well known to philosophers and scientists for more than 100 years, unfortunately, is very common in our society and is even actively used as an argument in numerous disputes about GMOs or drug therapy. Nevertheless, it is not so difficult to rid yourself of it: for this you just need to think a little.
The myth of the usefulness of natural and the harm of artificial is more popular than ever today (depending on the category of products, it is popularly called "synthetics" or "chemistry") I have to debunk on duty. I treat children and often prescribe medications for them. (Often, but not always, because most of the appeals are related to acute respiratory viral infections and intestinal infections, which most often do not require medical treatment.) If a parent is subject to a naturalistic error, then his natural desire to protect the child from harm leads to rejection of most medications that are "chemistry".
In addition, the naturalistic error manifests itself in arguments about feeding. Parents (more often even grandmothers) think that what is cooked at home on their own stove is healthier than what is bought in jars. However, here, rather, there is distrust of producers, because the products declared on the jar – zucchini, rabbit or pear, for example – are also natural. The industrial method of production seems unnatural. In fact, food from cans of most reputable brands is, of course, safer, because the products for it are grown on land where nothing but baby food was grown, and no preservatives were used during transportation. Where the vegetables that we buy on the market are grown, what means were used for their growth, protection from insects and storage – we do not know, but the suspicions are the most serious.
What is the easiest way to prove that a naturalistic error is a mistake? Infections and parasites, strychnine and curare, opium, alcohol and nicotine are the most natural things. Moreover, after drinking 8 liters of ordinary, natural water per day, a person guarantees himself certain death. Inflammation, allergies and fever are natural reactions of the body. And even death itself may be the only possible natural outcome when medicine does not interfere. And what's good here?
On the other hand, it is by unnatural, artificially obtained means and interference with the natural course of things that we often benefit. "Chemical" paracetamol, one of the safest medicines, lowers the temperature, relieves pain, extinguishes inflammation. Antibacterial drugs, originally natural, and now increasingly synthetic and semi-synthetic, fight infections. Antihistamines with scary names like "chloropyramine" or "fexofenadine" allow allergy sufferers to breathe in the spring and go to visit dog friends.
It can be seen that it is worth thinking a little about how a naturalistic mistake turns out to be completely defeated. However, people who are subject to this error often get confused in their addictions themselves. For example, anti-vaccinators and vegetarians suffer from a love of everything "natural". Meanwhile, vaccines are originally of natural origin (it is worth recalling that the word itself comes from the Latin name of the cow – vacca – from which the first vaccine in history was obtained), and our ancestors began to eat meat long before the emergence of agriculture.
The thesis about the multicomponence or complexity of "chemical" preparations, in contrast to the simpler "natural" ones, does not stand up to criticism either. Most natural products contain many complex substances, it is enough to look at the chemical composition of an ordinary apple. Synthetic substances, on the contrary, can be arranged very simply. Besides, simplicity is not a guarantee of usefulness. Arsenic and chlorine are extremely simple, but deadly poisonous.
The naturalistic mistake gets into a lot of disputes – about the usefulness of GMOs, about natural selection, about healthy nutrition – and always remains a mistake. Based on the presence of a substance in nature, no conclusions can be drawn about its benefits or harm.
The parents of the poor child were terribly surprised to hear the diagnosis of "allergic hemocolitis", but it is cow's milk protein, along with chicken protein and other natural products, that is one of the most dangerous substances for infants. And the transfer to an "artificial" adapted milk mixture cured the baby.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru25.09.2014