Dena Dietrich courtesy of google.com
Years ago, actress Dena Dietrich, dressed in Greco-Roman garb, her dark hair encircled in a crown of daisies appeared in a commercial for Chiffon margarine. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature,” she warned. Then she stared into the camera, her eyebrow arched, leading us to understand margarine had no business tasting like butter. (Click)
In my thirties at the time, I still found the woman intimidating. To this day, I wander through the dairy aisle feeling apologetic as I reach for a tub of unsaturated margarine.
Most of the time, I respect Nature’s dictates. Certainly, I’m not one to deny climate and am surprised at the number who do. Experience tells me Her dominion over us shouldn’t be ignored. Take India, for example. Modern technology gives parents the ability to choose an unborn child’s gender. Since males are generally preferred over females in that country, parents tend to opt for boys. Overtime, their preference has created a female shortage, one that threatens India’s social fabric. (Click)
China has learned from their neighbor’s mistake. It forbids gender selection. But, as the country relaxes its one-child policy, it faces other consequences. Men and women, long accustomed to postponing child birth, are less fertile. Sperm counts in men has fallen dramatically, for example. (“China Needs Help Having Babies,” by Li Hui and Natasha Khan, July 17, 2017, pg. 15.) To have a child, more and more couples rely on in vitro fertilization — an irony because China has the world’s largest population (Click). During the one child policy, no one could have guessed that one day “…assisted reproduction [would] become one of the fastest growing, high-potential fields in China’s medical market.” (Ibid pg. 16)
Life’s web is more subtle than any that is human made. Most of us know that. But we forget small alterations can have great impact. As Dena Dietrich should have also warned, “It’s not wise to fool Mother Nature.”
(Originally Published 8/9/17)
