Central Pain can reduplicate the sensation of any torture. The discoverer of the pain tract in humans, Dr. Ron Tasker, has said that in its severest forms Central Pain can be the worst pain known to man. Descriptions from patients draw a picture of horrific suffering so terrible that society must wage a war against the outlaw pain. Because pain medications such as derivatives of opium and their molecular cousins have no effect on Central Pain except sedation, we need new and better pain medications.

These will almost certainly eventually be medications capable of blocking the transmission of the pain signal as it crosses the three junctions (synapses) on the path to the brain. Although more money is spent on pain relief than any other medical problem, basic pain research is a pauper. Pain neurochemists are as rare as hen's teeth. Because of the residual view of pain as "an act of God" rather than a disease, the public as well as their colleagues often ignore or even resent pain researchers.

The history of pain research records the unvarying abuse of the benefactors of mankind, those who attack pain itself. Imprisonment and even the death penalty awaited many who sought to cure pain, as if the treatment of pain were a dark art, rather than pain itself being the enemy. It is difficult to find a greater tragedy than the life of Morton, who discovered ether. Lawyers, colleagues, and the public harassed and castigated this heroic individual and his family until he died, broken. Still, when the sum is totaled, Morton and his like will be ranked with the angels, as it were, for the good they have done mankind.

The fact that brain science is slowly becoming fashionable offers hope for the pain patient. The evil which has survived so far into modern times is being exposed to the light of day. Good people everywhere will demand a change as the torturer is unmasked.