Our nostalgia—be it for “natural” immunity resulting from contracting an infection, or for the nourishment of raw milk, or just for the purity of preindustrial life—leaves out of its vision the high death rate from infections, the dirty water that spread typhoid, the rancid unpasteurized milk that sometimes killed babies, and the basic struggle to survive. It leaves out our longer lives and our lower rates of infant and maternal mortality. Americans’ embrace of the “natural approach” is a rebuke to the dominant social structures of our time—Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Tech. But in a crucial
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