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'ALL NATURAL' IS NOT A VIABLE HEALTH STRATEGY  
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Kristen Panthagani
January 21, 2025
Your Local Epdemiologist
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_ Sometimes “all natural” is far better, but other times nature
tries to kill us. We need health policy guided by data that recognizes
the harms of both sugary drinks and infectious threats. Americans
shouldn’t have to choose. _

"SARS Virus Particles", by National Institutes of Health (Public
Domain Mark 1.0)

 

RFK Jr.’s hearing for Health and Human Secretary of the United
States is soon. A recent poll
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that 40% of Americans view him positively. Despite the myriad fringe
beliefs he has espoused, such as that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS or
Wi-fi causes cancer, his message has resonated with many Americans.
Why?

We wager there are three main reasons:

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_UNKNOWN PAST:_ Many people don’t know about his past positions and
more fringe ideas.

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_HITTING A NERVE: _He’s placing heightened focus on problems many
Americans care about (e.g., the rise of chronic disease), seems
willing to push back against the food industry, and has tapped into
the frustrations many Americans have with health institutions.

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_APPEAL TO NATURE FALLACY: _Many of his messages are packaged in a
highly appealing narrative that the marketing industry has burned into
our brains: “_Natural things are good for us, and unnatural things
are bad_.”

While YLE has already focused on the first two, the appeal to nature
fallacy deserves space as Congress evaluates RFK Jr.’s eligibility
to run a $1.8 trillion agency and far-reaching public health policy.
Wellness marketing has made this idea extremely popular, but as a
public health policy, it is overly simplistic, biased against
technological advances, and can potentially harm our health.

THE APPEAL TO NATURE FALLACY

Many of RFK’s health ideas center around a central theme:
downplaying natural threats (including germs), and emphasizing that
unnatural (human-made) things are the real problem. In his recent
book, he laments that “germ theory”—the idea that germs cause
disease—has dominated over the competing 19th-century “miasma
theory, [[link removed]]” which
he defines as “preventing disease by fortifying the immune system
through nutrition and by reducing exposures to environmental toxins
and stresses.” In this light, RFK’s various and seemingly
disparate ideas start to fit a pattern:

NATURAL THINGS ARE GOOD (OR NOT THAT BIG OF A PROBLEM):

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As HHS secretary, he wants to take an 8-year break
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studying infectious microbes (seeming to imply these naturally
occurring germs are not a pressing threat)

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Promotion of raw milk
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“natural” than pasteurized milk)

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Suggestion
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HIV (a naturally occurring virus) isn’t the true cause AIDS, rather
drug use is actually to blame

UNNATURAL (HUMAN-MADE) THINGS ARE THE PROBLEM:

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As HHS secretary, he wants to take an 8-year break
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drug development (drugs are “human-made”).

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Claim that Wi-fi
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causes cancer

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Claim that antidepressants (human-developed drugs) promote mass
shootings
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Claim [[link removed]] that
anti-viral drugs for HIV killed people

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Claim that fluoride
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is bad (even though fluoride is a naturally-occurring mineral, it’s
been branded as a “chemical” which many people erroneously view as
“unnatural”)

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Claim that vaccines (human-made) are not safe
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Of course, there are some exceptions to this pattern. (For example,
he promoted
[[link removed]] ivermectin
and hydroxychloroquine, both of which are human-made drugs). And in
some cases, he correctly identifies human-made things that really are
problematic. (For example, he correctly states that sugary,
ultra-processed drinks like soda
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not healthy; there is solid evidence they contribute to obesity
[[link removed]]).

The appeal to nature fallacy is very popular in American culture.
It’s an easy logical error to make—so many good things come from
nature (plants, oceans, food, medicines) that it’s easy to think
that all natural things must be good for us. In a world where health
information is confusing and oftentimes contradictory, it makes things
simple: stick to what is “natural.” And many times, it’s
correct: fresh fruits and vegetables are very good for us, and
breathing industrially polluted air is not.

But a quick step back makes it clear this overly simplistic metric
doesn’t always hold up. Infectious diseases are natural, and they
kill people. Many antibiotics are “human-made,” and they save
countless lives. Tobacco is natural but not good for us. And vilifying
“human-made” things means vilifying technological advances that
genuinely help people, like new drugs to treat cancer.

Even more confusing, “natural” versus “unnatural” is often an
arbitrary distinction, and many medical interventions are a blend of
both. For example, naturally occurring antibiotics like penicillin are
purified using human-made technology so that people don’t have to
eat mold, and vaccines are human-made technology that rely on
people’s natural immune defenses to fight off infections but give
them a shortcut for doing it.

Unfortunately, marketing strategies that want us to buy, not think,
have burned this “_natural is always better_” narrative into our
minds. “All natural” labeling is included on food, beauty
products, and supplements to try to convince us that their product is
healthier so that we will buy it.

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Doesn’t this ice cream almost seem healthy?

SO WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?

The rise of chronic diseases in American is a major health crisis that
must be addressed. But to make changes that truly benefit America’s
health, it’s critical that we correctly identify _WHAT FACTORS ARE
ACTUALLY DRIVING THE PROBLEMS._

RFK’s strong leaning toward the appeal to nature fallacy, to the
point where he would rather campaign against Wi-fi than give an HIV
patient medicine that will save their life, does not bode well for
consistently diagnosing the root causes of America’s health
problems.

THE COST OF GETTING IT WRONG

The appeal to nature fallacy sometimes gets it very right, but other
times is dangerously wrong. We need health policy that does better
than this—that recognizes naturally occurring threats and doesn’t
attack human-made interventions that are actually helping.

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_BIOSECURITY THREATS: _Health policy that fails to recognize the
threat of naturally-occurring infectious disease leaves our nation
open to biosecurity threats, limiting our technical capacity to
identify and respond to new outbreaks. RFK has already cast doubt
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vaccines in development for bird flu.

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_WASTED TAXPAYER MONEY: _Research funds should go to the most
promising hypotheses with data to back them, whether or not the root
causes and solutions are “natural” or involve human-created
technology or drug development. If millions of NIH research dollars
are thrown at the wrong hypotheses, it will cost a lot of money
without much progress.

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_BRAIN DRAIN:_ If RFK truly decides to stop funding drug development
and infectious disease research as he has stated, the U.S. will start
to lose scientists who have the knowledge and capacity to do this type
of research and train others.

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_INCREASED HEALTHCARE COSTS:_ While RFK Jr. has claimed he’s not
going to take away vaccines, efforts to undermine childhood
vaccination (either through changing regulations or sowing distrust)
will also increase healthcare costs substantially, as childhood
vaccines have saved
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estimated $540 billion dollars in direct costs alone over the last 30
years by preventing illness, hospital stays, not to mention missed
school and work days.

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_AMERICANS DON’T GET HEALTHIER:_ Of course, the biggest cost of
failing to correctly diagnose America’s health problems is that the
root causes are not adequately addressed, and we fail to find
solutions that actually help.

A health policy underpinned by a logical fallacy doesn’t easily
change its mind when it’s wrong. This is personally my biggest
concern about RFK as HHS secretary—he has a track record of sticking
to opinions, even when clearly shown evidence that’s not the case.
For example, he continues to repeat the three-decade old rumor that
vaccines cause autism, even though this has now been studied in over
a million children [[link removed]] and
found to be false. If data show some of his policies for America’s
diet or chronic diseases aren’t working, instead of changing his
mind he may dig in his heels. Even more concerning, he has suggested
[[link removed]] that
the attorney general should file racketeering lawsuits against
journals editors who make retraction decisions he doesn’t agree
with. Having the government dictate what scientific journals publish
via legal intimidation does not bode well for scientific accuracy,
effective health policy, or free speech.

BOTTOM LINE

Sometimes “all natural” is far better, but other times nature
tries to kill us. We need health policy guided by data that recognizes
the harms of both sugary drinks and infectious threats; Americans
shouldn’t have to choose.

Sincerely, KP

_Kristen Panthagani, MD, PhD, is a resident physician and Yale
Emergency Scholar, completing a combined Emergency Medicine residency
and research fellowship focusing on health literacy and communication.
In her free time, she is the creator of the medical blog You Can Know
Things and author of YLE’s section on Health (Mis)communication. You
can subscribe to her newsletter
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[[link removed]]. Views expressed belong to
KP, not her employer._

_Your Local Epidemiologist 
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newsletter with one goal: to “translate” the ever-evolving public
health science so that people feel well-equipped to make
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* public health
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* Medicine
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* diet
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* infectious diseases
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* vaccines
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