Look, I,ll confess, the drug companies give me gas. The research they buy and the doctors they control are so shamelessly the antithesis of science that they should give any scientifically-oriented soul one bout of gas after another. So anyone out there who is a Real scientist, or interested in Real science, fess up. Tell it like it is about the gas attacks.

We can even bond together and help build the Gas Society -- but more about this shortly.

In my case, I simply cannot digest the corporate-stained medical news easily on any given day. Having acknowledged this basic fact, I recall how my mother predicted early in my journalism career that I would be fighting gas attacks all day and night if I continued to challenge "authority" and question those in power. She perhaps wisely suggested that I might avoid gas attacks if I began to write about such important topics as camping. That was long ago, but today I'm beginning to recognize that she spoke with great wisdom.

Why, for example, do I need to get angry and blow myself up like a balloon at the mere mention of more drug research about anti-depressants. So, look, here I am sitting in front of the TV and watching some medical reporter on CNN talk about St. John's Wort. He's saying that it was shown not to be any better than placebo in patients who suffered with major depression. I,ve got to tell you, the very moment I heard that, I felt a gas attack coming on. Why? Because I had already read the study, which also indicated that antidepressant, Zoloft, also didn,t do significantly better than placebo. Well, the gas attack took on heavy proportions when I didn,t hear the CNN medical reporter say just that. He was focusing attention only on supplements -- and by golly -- there he was, standing in front of several rows of nutritional supplements. Very convenient. Rather than deal with the complexity of using placebos in trials and the potential problems they pose for research, this segment was nothing less than a thinly veiled assault against nutritional supplements. Now, see, just writing this has got me all fired up and I feel another gas attack coming on. It just doesn,t stop, day in and day out.

That reminds me of the time I produced a piece on TV for ABC News -- World News Tonight With Peter Jennings -- which revealed that when all was said and done, the so-called gift to humankind, Prozac, wasn,t a lot better than placebo. Eli Lilly wasn,t pleased to hear about this and so one of their gas-producers phone me at the office and berated me for not getting my facts straight. I won,t tell you exactly what I told him because we do want to keep things reasonably civilized here. However, he got the point and didn,t call back when I suggested that Eli Lilly should immediately forward all its data to ABC News showing that what we put on TV wasn,t true.

The sad part of this story is that I got myself all worked up and, of course, felt that bloating building up again. Another damn gas attack. You know what I'm talking about - the kind that's advertised on TV by the drug companies. They know a lot about gas attacks.

But so do WE. By WE, I mean the Gas Society. Look, why wait? I might as well tell you the truth: There is a Gas Society and it already has a huge membership. It's been organizing for years and it is international in scope. The motto is this: "They give us gas. We give it back." One day soon, the Gas Society will go public in a big way. That's going to be the day when millions of us in the Society reverse the flow of gas back to the drug companies and their bought doctors and overwhelm them with the "force."

Stay tuned for further announcements!