The design of the human body is, indeed, remarkable. So many different functions are built in, some physical and others intellectual. Experiencing the machine running at its best is a joy. Except, even the best of machines breaks down sooner or later. That's when we are grateful for the advancing state of medicine which now seems to offer an impressive range of different treatments for most of the diseases and disorders that can come our way. Even surgery to repair injured flesh and bones has been radically improved. There was a time when an accident would finish a person's active life. Now surgeons have machines to perform surgery without major cuts into the body. They can replace broken parts. It's remarkable what can be done.

There's just one area that needs work. We all benefit from having pain messages to alert us to seek medical assistance. It's particularly impressive that these messages can so precisely localize the problem. We can go up to a doctor and point to the place that hurts (assuming it's not obvious). All we then need is the means to stop any further pain messages. Indeed, when you look back at the history of medical science, there have always been just two major searches that have come to nothing. The first was for a fountain of youth or the philosopher's stone to give us immortality. The second was for a sure-fire way of controlling pain without unfortunate side effects. Let's face it, we can put people into a coma so they feel nothing or send them floating off in a narcotic cloud where nothing matters any more. But they are too extreme. What we really need is a simple switch marked "pain" and when we turn it, the pain goes away and we can get on with our lives like nothing happened.

So this leaves us in the unfortunate position of having excellent short-term pain relief but, the moment we want to resume our lives, we have to reduce the drug intake and the pain comes back into our lives. This brings us into the area of medicine called pain management. This assumes that all the standard procedures have been followed to treat the underlying cause of the pain, and then redefines the pain as a problem in its own right. Just as we would treat a disease, so doctors should now look to treat the pain in its own right. Except, when it comes to our local hospitals, that's not what happens.

The doctors who first started the treatment of the physical cause of the pain hear us say the pain is still there, and prescribe more painkillers. They start off with the highly effective Ultram which, for most of the walking-wounded gives a reasonable degree of relief. If we still complain, they prescribe a bigger dosage of Ultram. If that seems not enough, we are offered the narcotics. In other words, the doctors become a part of the problem. In the next article, we will examine why this is the case and what the alternatives are.