Natural parenting advocates in general, and anti-vaxxers in particular, are certain about one thing: if it’s natural it must be nearly perfect.
Breastmilk is “best” because it is naturally made by the human breast.
There is one human organ that does not receive the same respect as all the others: the human brain.
Childbirth pain is good for women because it occurs naturally in labor.
Childbirth itself is inherently safe because women were naturally “designed” to give birth.
Natural immunity is all we need to protect ourselves from disease (despite the fact that reliance on natural immunity leads to countless preventable deaths) simply because it is natural.
If natural is better — and it is always “better” — then the product of the human breast, the workings of the human uterus, and the disease fighting attributes of the human immune system must be superior.
Curiously, there is one human organ that does not receive the same respect as all the others; instead of being lauded, its products are derogated. It’s the human brain.
Despite the fact that the human brain is entirely natural, it’s workings are routinely disparaged as unnatural. This disparagement is particularly ironic when you consider that the human brain is the ultimate human organ.
The brain, more than any other organ, has allowed human beings to survive and thrive in a world where its closest hominid relatives became extinct long ago. Tool making hominids vanquished and/or outlasted all other hominid species. The human brain has allowed us to do something that no other large animal species has ever done: survive and thrive in nearly every earth environment.
Curiously, we do appear to appreciate the workings of the brains of other animals. We marvel that chimps construct tools to dig bugs out of rotting logs; we thrill to video of dolphins that have learned to work together, rounding up fish and herding them toward shore to eventually beach them, making it impossible for the fish to escape and easier for the dolphins to eat them; and we ponder the complex underwater communication of whales. All these are products of the animals’ brains and we don’t accuse those animals of behaving unnaturally when they use their brains to solve problems instead of relying on instinct and other organs.
So why have we created a false dichotomy when it comes to the human body and brain? Why do we venerate breastmilk as the natural product of the human breast, but denigrate infant formula despite the fact that it is the natural product of the human brain? Why do we extoll women who passively accept the pain of labor because it is a natural result of the working of the human uterus, but deride women who use epidurals — a natural product of the human brain — as selfish wimps? Above all, why do the antivaxxers among us extoll the limited virtues of natural immunity, the natural product of the human immune system, and deny the unlimited virtues of vaccines, the product of the natural human brain?
The truth is that vaccines, the fruit of years of scientific inquiry conducted entirely by human brains, are perhaps the paradigmatic example of natural humans doing what they do best — recognizing a problem and then using tools to solve it.
Help me understand, antivaxxers: why you practically worship every organ in the human body for what it was “designed” to do, routinely insisting that the products of each organ system are virtually perfect, yet disparage the natural products of the human brain doing what it was designed to do? When you consider that the human brain is our most distinguishing natural feature, how could one of its most spectacular products, vaccines, be anything other than natural and therefore great?
