Pain clinics are sprouting up throughout the country. They bring the problems of pain into open study. People go to pain clinics when the mainstream medical skills fail to fix the basic problem. A pain clinic referral is usually the last item on the list. It is made when nothing else works.
Pain control is as much a clinical as an ethical and political issue.
This project intends to openly study all three aspects. Then, perhaps, more people will suffer less in life once the outdated and unfounded fears of adequate pain control are changed. We are looking for responsible and honest control of pain. It's interesting that so many of the troublesome attitudes towards more aggressive pain treatment have already been discussed in the literature. This project might uncover some new ideas, but we would be satisfied to begin to use those that already exist.