How on earth could millions of years of evolution possibly compete with Nestle et al "science"? Did I only say millions? I meant: hundreds of millions, silly me.
Perhaps evolution needs a better advertising budget.
That's like saying we'll never build a device that moves faster than we can run because evolution produced perfect locomotion for us. Or that we'll never be able to communicate further than we can yell, because evolution produced strong lungs for us.
There are plenty of cases where evolution failed. Allergies for instance... our own immune system reacting quite imperfectly to a harmless substance. That doesn't sound like pinnacle of evolution perfection to me.
There is a time that science wins and a time that natural things win. What if science added those antibodies to the formula? What about people who are unable to breast feed.
Allergies are a good example, because as far as I know, they exist mostly in our civilized society and from what I remember, mainly those suffer from it: who were not (enough) breast feeded and were kept in a sterile area as a kid and not in the mud outside.
But in general, yes, we can and could improve with technology on many things. But mostly only things we understand. A car is a very, very simple thing, compared to our bodies, our digestion system, immune system, cell growth ... And our bodies need very complex "material" to grow, as adults not so much, as babies. And mother milk is optimized and can dynamically change to adopt to the need of the baby. It was blind arrogance and yes, profit thinking, to assume a simple formula is better.
I fully agree. My point just being that declaring evolution the victor because "of course, it has had more time" is clearly not always the case.
But even aside from allergies, there are plenty of examples of doing things better than evolution. "I just leave ticks on my body, because hundreds of millions of years of evolution means my body will know how to get rid of them better than I could."
Trains and telecommunications are auxiliary; you walk to the train station and you talk into your phone. For breastfeeding it would be akin to using technology to aid the process, e.g. breast pump, refrigeration.
Allergies are likely an example of our ever evolving physical world, within a few generations the developed world has gone from days spent toiling in the fields to the sterile existence of modern cities, moving from one air filtered compartment to the next.
You may find the hygiene hypothesis interesting - the theory that the incredibly sharp rise in allergic diseases in developed countries is due to no longer being exposed to the types of bacteria that we had during most of evolution.
One example is that allergy rates in Finnish Karelia are much higher than right across the border with Russia, even though the populations and environment are otherwise very similar.
When you're thinking that science won sometimes it's nothing else but a sponsored think-tank and a big marketing campaign that made you think so. Just saying.
I get your joke, and it's not advertising but lobbying by the large corporations who make baby formula a recommended thing, eg sponsor a thinktank etc, and it's always 100% profit motive. Maybe we should get them off our backs and be aware that most of their products may be worse for us. And ideally change the mechanisms by which they are controlling the government. It's a tough fight because they are organized and have money and we aren't organized and our efforts need to be tenfold.
I'm not sure calling me right in this instance is the best start to an authoritative refutation of my thesis.
I am not appealing to nature (please read the article you linked to) I'm appealing to evolution.
I have had my jabs, including malaria, small pox, MMR, and tetanus at least. My Dad has a pacer. The appendix is a funny one because recent research indicates that it might simply act as somewhere for bacteria to accumulate ie a sort of biome generator or refresher, rather than simply being a hangover from something else. Given the way evolution "works" it seems to me that there was an additional useful function that the vestigial appendix carries on doing that means we still have them.
Evolution does not use a drawing board and beautifully rendered isometric drawings and a series of briefings before getting marketing involved. If it works it stays, if it changes a bit and still works and the owner happens to procreate, it might stay. If they die too early it might not stay. Rinse/repeat. Genes (selfish or generous), structures and amalgams and who knows what else, changing and morphing, evolution is a process that should not have a name because it isn't really a process that starts from A and goes to B. It starts from A and might happen to hit L which is quite close to B, which is nice. The biggest problem is that us humans like to slap a tag or a name on things to contain them and then misuse those names rather badly. Hence we get "intelligent design". Evolution is far more fascinating and sophisticated than anything that "intelligent design" could possibly come up with, whilst being far less sophisticated than "ID" - yes I am aware that is a tautology but it seems appropriate. Funnily enough, intermediate steps in eye development have been sighted in the wild.
I'd have added cancer to your list for a proper challenge.
Perhaps evolution needs a better advertising budget.