Washington must get serious about the treatment of chronic pain, columnist Jane Brody writes in The New York Times. DEA efforts to regulate medicine have produced a climate in which many physicians are reluctant to prescribe painkillers. "There are a few bad apples," Brody admits, but the implications of the current policy on heavy painkillers affect nearly everybody. Brody quotes Dr. Timothy J. Moynihan who notes that "77 percent of patients suffering unrelieved, pronounced pain during the last year of life."
Other than a problematic government policy, which includes controversial prosecutions of pain management specialists, the real issue, the columnist argues, is that we have no accurate way of measuring pain. As a consequence, physicians are forced to rely on the word of patients. Brody believes the solution is not outside intervention but better pain management training to teach doctors to recognize the signs of dependence and addiction. The forthcoming Supreme Court decision on Oregon's assisted suicide law could interject the DEA into many more pain management cases at the end of life.
- see this article from The New York Times