Big Alterna . . .

Got some unsolicited stuff in the mail, as we do, now that my bride has subscribed to some information services promoting good health.

It occurs to me that providing for alternative medical practices and ingestible supplements is a big business, bringing in big, big bucks, when you figure that on top of all the stuff being sold, there's a whole arkload of alternative treatment practitioners, healers, spiritual advisors, swamis, consultants, and suchlike, from acupunctuationists to rolfbrokers, to reikipilots, and all notional practitioners in-between.

And every damn one of them shares to following two points.

• They aren't doing what they do or distributing what they deliver for no charge.
• They all hate and despise what they contemptuously call Big Pharma, by which they mean protocols and substances that have been developed with more than a passing familiarity with the scientific method.

I say it's time to recognize that you have a choice between Big Pharma, and Big Alterna.  And your choice ought to be related to efficiency of result, alone, and not the fact that Big Pharma makes big bucks.

In that regard, Big Pharma is indistinguishable from Big Alterna, and don't think otherwise.

But hey, if you believe that a $139.00 hat with earflaps, made out of a sun activated corn silk and mole fur blend derived from ranch-raised moles, will cure migraines and ice-cream headaches, well, go for it.

It probably won't make any difference, in Darwinian terms, anyhow.