Perhaps at first it seems obvious that modern medicine relies on synthetic solutions because they are standardised, patentable, and socially sanctioned, while natural remedies are quaint, unreliable, or peripheral. Yet the reality is far more subtle, layered, and remarkable than that initial impression. Tea tree oil, obtainable for a few pounds, both kills and repels, creating an environment inhospitable to parasites over time without repeated dosing or complex schedules. In daily life one can observe the quiet effects on skin, the absence of crawling lice, the subtle relief of irritation, the almost imperceptible but unmistakable repellent influence when travelling on crowded public transport, and all of this without coercion to purchase repeated prescriptions, without complex regimens, and without reliance on expensive chemical interventions that achieve only temporary relief.
Humans have relied on plants, oils, resins, and herbs for millennia and measured their effectiveness not through controlled trials but through lived experience, careful observation, and pragmatic necessity. Garlic, neem, willow bark, tea tree oil, and countless other substances could, in some instances, produce long-lasting or permanent relief from ailments (not as isolated accidents, but repeatedly enough to be recorded in practice and anecdote). Modern medicine, however, treats these solutions as marginal at best, unscientific at worst, despite the fact that chemists, pharmacologists, and toxicologists fully understand their mechanisms. The complexity of natural compounds cannot be cheaply replicated in a single isolated molecule, and yet synthetic alternatives are prioritised because they can be standardised, patented, and sold repeatedly, generating predictable revenue while appearing controlled, sophisticated, and objectively necessary.
Permethrin kills parasites only during brief contact and then requires reapplication, whereas tea tree oil applied daily or in shampoo creates a continuous protective environment that strengthens resilience in lived experience. Antibiotics, for instance, are often prescribed in multiples per day, three times a day for fourteen days, sometimes repeated annually or for recurring infections. Each person can therefore consume dozens of individual doses every year, a predictable and reliable cash flow for pharmaceutical companies, while a single bottle of tea tree oil could achieve a similar protective effect over weeks. The repetition of these interventions is internalised as necessity, yet the logic embedded in their structure is as much about economic design as long-term benefit. It is striking to reflect that a cheaper, longer-lasting method can be framed as unreliable or unscientific, while the expensive, episodic intervention is celebrated as legitimate.
This inversion extends beyond pharmaceuticals into public health discourse, social norms, and media representation. Questioning standard practices, pointing out the enduring power of natural remedies, or reflecting on preventive potential — whether through vaccines, hygiene, or holistic methods — is frequently framed as denialism, eccentricity, or unscientific belief, even when observations are grounded in centuries of empirical practice. The public is trained to rely on consumable interventions while the potentially permanent and preventive powers of nature are quietly devalued. The extraordinary potential of preventive practice is obscured not because it is ineffective, but because acknowledging it would expose structural contradictions and threaten predictable economic flows, revealing the very logic of control behind medical orthodoxy.
History offers striking illustrations. Physicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, working without synthetic chemistry, relied on garlic to prevent infections, willow bark for pain, and oils to repel parasites, sometimes achieving cures that endured for life or dramatically reduced recurrence. These instances were observed, recorded, and repeated in practice. Modern science does not discover them as unknown; chemists understand their bioactive compounds and mechanisms. Yet the contemporary system marginalises these solutions because they cannot be standardised, patented, or sold repeatedly. In contrast, synthetic interventions, even when less effective in the long term, generate repeat consumption, secure income, and reinforce professional authority.
Yet there is another dimension, subtle and almost invisible, in which the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Even if permethrin is acknowledged at all, it is rarely sought with the same awareness one might have if historical and natural logic were present. We are conditioned to anticipate the need for intervention, to accept the episodic, patentable solution as inevitable, and to desire it when it is scarce, framed as the only rational option. Were the true prevalence of parasites, the subtle but enduring benefits of natural remedies, and the preventive potential of everyday measures widely understood, the very compulsion to purchase, apply, and repeat might transform. Permethrin might then be coveted, not because it is superior to tea tree oil or garlic, but because acknowledgement and scarcity create desire, and perceived control amplifies compulsion.
This pattern is mirrored across social and epistemic life. Observation of what is effective, measured in experience rather than authority, is often socially coded as eccentric, obsessive, or irrational. The extraordinary potential of simple, ordinary remedies becomes invisible precisely because recognising it challenges structures of authority, commerce, and institutionalised expectation. Human perception is trained to overlook subtle, preventive efficacy, and to value repetition, expense, and standardisation over quiet, enduring effectiveness. What is most powerful in nature — self sovereignty, long-term prevention, the ordinary’s invisible authority — is simultaneously what society renders socially illegible.
From lived observation, historical precedent, economic structure, and bodily experience, an unavoidable conclusion emerges. Nature in its complexity often provides solutions more enduring than synthetic interventions, yet society, through framing, incentives, and epistemic authority, systematically marginalises them. What seems obvious — that chemicals are necessary and natural remedies quaint — is, in truth, a product of layered conditioning, institutional incentives, and profit structures. The simple, observable efficacy of tea tree oil, garlic, or other natural substances is rendered socially invisible, while episodic, repeatable, patentable, and expensive interventions are celebrated as the only legitimate solutions.
The remarkable implication is that ordinary, accessible remedies humans have relied upon for millennia are, in a sense, profoundly radical, offering long-term prevention, real world efficacy, and a form of self sovereignty over bodily health. Their marginalisation is not evidence of failure, but evidence of the priorities of modern systems, which celebrate repeatable dependence and economic predictability over holistic, cumulative, and lived effectiveness. The reader is left to reconcile the quiet, historical, and practical truth of these remedies with the intricate social, economic, and scientific systems that obscure them, and to pause, perhaps, at the strangeness of a society in which rational, observable, and historically grounded practices are dismissed while expensive, episodic, and controlled interventions are enshrined as the only valid solution.
Finally, one is compelled to consider the subtle patterns across medicine and public health: why antibiotics are prescribed three times a day for fourteen days, why they are repeated periodically, sometimes yearly, even when shorter courses could suffice, why preventive measures are applied selectively, why vaccination schedules are staggered, and why questioning these patterns provokes social or professional outcasting. It suggests a logic not only of biology but of incentive, authority, and social conditioning, a system in which the ordinary, powerful, and preventive remains marginalised while the synthetic, episodic, and profitable is elevated. In recognising this pattern, one glimpses the extraordinary conclusion: the true power to prevent, to protect, and to live with resilience has existed in nature all along, quietly, effectively, and invisibly, while the world around us has been structured to obscure it, and the simplicity of that truth is its radical power.
OAM
-END-