going to my happy place for a few moments before blogging again

Its been a while since I blogged here. Every new event in the unfolding pharmaceutical research, 'black bag payoffs' & marketing scandals : Charles Nemeroff, the Seroquel 'sex for favorable drug research' scandal*, the Zyprexa settlements, the alleged misdeeds of Dr Joseph Biederman-- all these have caused me to believe that the way we as a society approach child and adolescent mental health treatment is going to change. When mental health treatments really change, when unbiased research on psych meds is really done, I am hoping my son will be one of the benefactors.

*Not as well known as the Nemeroff and Biederman fiascos - so I am posting a small additional blurb here.. 'lest we forget too quickly' and the other links get taken down

     Former AstraZeneca U.S. medical director for Seroquel, Wayne MacFadden confessed his multiple sexual affairs, and his offer of drugs to one of the women he was sleeping with, to lawyers in December 2007.

The confessions include descriptions of sex in hotel rooms paid for by AstraZeneca, illicit distribution of Vicodin, and a kinky relationship in which one of his colleagues asked to be "punished" for looking at a study that had negative results for Seroquel.

      MacFadden told that woman: "You will be punished (in the usual fashion!) when I see you ... but perhaps more harshly this time!!!"

      He made the confession to the lawyers -- who are suing AstraZeneca for allegedly failing to warn patients that side effects of the drug include significant weight gain and diabetes -- as part of a deposition prior to the current litigation going on in Florida.

      Between 2002 and 2006, MacFadden said he had slept with two executives who worked for AstraZeneca or its research agencies. He offered Vicodin to one of them. He also attempted to get confidential information about Bristol-Myers Squibb's FDA filing for a bipolar depression approval for rival drug Abilify, via a woman he was sleeping with.

Mr  MacFadden- you make me want to puke !
 

Every week I still believe real change is 'right around the corner', so there will be no reason to dust off THIS blog. Plenty of other justly more famous bloggers are scooping me on each late breaking event in these scandals.

I remember Watergate. From my misty perspective here in 2009, seems like it only took a few months to round up the real culprits and serve justice, right ? Of course I know that's not true. deepthroat helped, so did the Post. John Dean cracked. Agnew flopped in his own mess. Incredibly, Tricky Dick gave us the tapes ! But it took over a year, even for the denouement.

So back to bloggery I go ! But first...
a cleansing breath
Om mani padme hummm... that's and old mantra my old friend Bill used to have on a record.
... will an angel of mercy ... look down on me .. and my family ?
In the 'happy place' I get to in meditation and dreams sometimes, I'm walking beside a robust creek on a warm May morning in the semi-Northern latitudes. The creek makes its own music, sings its own sagas on the stones beneath it. Dragonflies laze and skim. there is peace, and no particular place to go, since I am already there, with all my friends, safe inside the gates of eden, in the Dream-Time .