Cop out entry but working in Heathcare you totally see this.
Especially when I was underwriting life insurance. Alties. Funnay.
"They were seeking an alternate treatment ... the natural herbal and such different therapies versus the chemo and radiation they do in America."
If you believe that doctors, scientists, and the pharmaceutical companies conspire to suppress your favorite "alternative medicine" modality, you just might be an altie.
If you like to claim that science is a religion, you might be an altie.
If you accept vague and/or poorly documented anecdotes and testimonials as sufficient evidence that an "alternative" therapy "works," you just might be an altie.
If you make claims for a product or therapy like, "strengthens the immune system," "restores balance," "detoxifies the liver," "cleanses the colon," or "cleanses the blood," you may be an altie.
If you are impressed by such claims when made by others, you just might be an altie.
If you do most of your "scientific" research on websites that exist to sell "alternative health" products, you might be an altie.
If you believe that vaccines "don't work" or that they cause autism or other chronic diseases, you just might be an altie.
If you believe that alternative medicine practitioners are far more caring for their patients and far more moral (and therefore, by implication, less corruptible by money) than conventional doctors, you just might be an altie.
If you dismiss every well-designed randomized clinical study that failed to show a benefit for an alternative medicine or therapy over placebo control as either not proving that the therapy is ineffective or as having been manipulated by nefarious forces (conventional medicine, the pharmaceutical companies, the government, etc.) to produce a negative result, you may well be an altie.
If you are utterly convinced that autism is a "misdiagnosis" for mercury poisoning, despite the fact that epidemiological and basic scientific studies do not support this hypothesis, that the number of new autism cases in the U.S. has not shown a sign of falling since thimerosal was removed from vaccines three years ago (ditto Denmark, where thimerosal was removed in the early 1990's), and that autism does not share the symptomotology of mercury poisoning, you just might be an altie.
If you believe that a liver fluke can cause all the diverse kinds of cancer out there and that "zapping" that fluke can cure all cancer and AIDS, you just might be an altie.
If you underwent conventional therapy for cancer and then underwent alternative medicine treatment but attribute your survival and present cancer-free condition to the alternative medicine and not the conventional therapy, you just might be an altie.
If you frequently use the term "allopathic medicine" to refer to accepted evidence-based medicine (particularly if you either turn your nose up or sneer as you say it), you just might be an altie.
If you believe the trace of a dog's milk molecule diluted 30C times has more healing power than 875 mg of amoxicillin, you might be an altie.
If you consider someone to be a "doctor" because they have a diploma-mill ND, you might be an altie.
If you believe it's perfectly logical that some alt-med clinic tucked away in a remote corner of some South American country (or on the outskirts of Tijuana) has been able to achieve amazing cure rates for many usually highly fatal cancers for years, all without publishing any data and without attracting the attention of any Western medical or science institutions or media whatsoever, then you must be an altie.
If seeing a company charge exhorbitant prices for herbs or other alternative medicine treatments doesn't bother you in the least but you castigate pharmaceutical companies (which spend hundreds of millions of dollars and many years to get each new drug developed, tested, and approved) for price-gouging, you are very likely an altie.
If you say your healer "is too busy people making people healthy" to conduct evidence-based trials but have never met a single person helped by them, you might be an altie.
If you excuse your healer and other alternative medicine practitioners from conducting evidence-based clinical trials of their treatments on the grounds that there is no money to support well-designed clinical trials testing alternative medicine even though the yearly budget for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is over $120 million, you just might be an altie.
If you believe that there really are herbal cures for diabetes and cancer, but the government forbids their sale because pharmaceutical companies need to make money from their "expensive drugs that don't work," there's a good chance that you're an altie.
Goddamn alties.
"They were seeking an alternate treatment ... the natural herbal and such different therapies versus the chemo and radiation they do in America."
If you believe that doctors, scientists, and the pharmaceutical companies conspire to suppress your favorite "alternative medicine" modality, you just might be an altie.
If you like to claim that science is a religion, you might be an altie.
If you accept vague and/or poorly documented anecdotes and testimonials as sufficient evidence that an "alternative" therapy "works," you just might be an altie.
If you make claims for a product or therapy like, "strengthens the immune system," "restores balance," "detoxifies the liver," "cleanses the colon," or "cleanses the blood," you may be an altie.
If you are impressed by such claims when made by others, you just might be an altie.
If you do most of your "scientific" research on websites that exist to sell "alternative health" products, you might be an altie.
If you believe that vaccines "don't work" or that they cause autism or other chronic diseases, you just might be an altie.
If you believe that alternative medicine practitioners are far more caring for their patients and far more moral (and therefore, by implication, less corruptible by money) than conventional doctors, you just might be an altie.
If you dismiss every well-designed randomized clinical study that failed to show a benefit for an alternative medicine or therapy over placebo control as either not proving that the therapy is ineffective or as having been manipulated by nefarious forces (conventional medicine, the pharmaceutical companies, the government, etc.) to produce a negative result, you may well be an altie.
If you are utterly convinced that autism is a "misdiagnosis" for mercury poisoning, despite the fact that epidemiological and basic scientific studies do not support this hypothesis, that the number of new autism cases in the U.S. has not shown a sign of falling since thimerosal was removed from vaccines three years ago (ditto Denmark, where thimerosal was removed in the early 1990's), and that autism does not share the symptomotology of mercury poisoning, you just might be an altie.
If you believe that a liver fluke can cause all the diverse kinds of cancer out there and that "zapping" that fluke can cure all cancer and AIDS, you just might be an altie.
If you underwent conventional therapy for cancer and then underwent alternative medicine treatment but attribute your survival and present cancer-free condition to the alternative medicine and not the conventional therapy, you just might be an altie.
If you frequently use the term "allopathic medicine" to refer to accepted evidence-based medicine (particularly if you either turn your nose up or sneer as you say it), you just might be an altie.
If you believe the trace of a dog's milk molecule diluted 30C times has more healing power than 875 mg of amoxicillin, you might be an altie.
If you consider someone to be a "doctor" because they have a diploma-mill ND, you might be an altie.
If you believe it's perfectly logical that some alt-med clinic tucked away in a remote corner of some South American country (or on the outskirts of Tijuana) has been able to achieve amazing cure rates for many usually highly fatal cancers for years, all without publishing any data and without attracting the attention of any Western medical or science institutions or media whatsoever, then you must be an altie.
If seeing a company charge exhorbitant prices for herbs or other alternative medicine treatments doesn't bother you in the least but you castigate pharmaceutical companies (which spend hundreds of millions of dollars and many years to get each new drug developed, tested, and approved) for price-gouging, you are very likely an altie.
If you say your healer "is too busy people making people healthy" to conduct evidence-based trials but have never met a single person helped by them, you might be an altie.
If you excuse your healer and other alternative medicine practitioners from conducting evidence-based clinical trials of their treatments on the grounds that there is no money to support well-designed clinical trials testing alternative medicine even though the yearly budget for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is over $120 million, you just might be an altie.
If you believe that there really are herbal cures for diabetes and cancer, but the government forbids their sale because pharmaceutical companies need to make money from their "expensive drugs that don't work," there's a good chance that you're an altie.
Goddamn alties.