I don’t think there are any active proposals at the moment.
Pain is most definitely changeable, it’s just very costly to do so. Lots of different medical, lifestyle and psychological therapies are tried. I think the best current solution for chronic pain is to have an interdisciplinary pain clinic that has physiotherapists, psychologists, doctors with an interest in pain medicine, some kind of medical or allied health folk with an interest in addiction medicine. And then you want to diagnose the type of pain, and give the minimum amount of opiods possible yet the maximum amount of pain relief. I’ve visited a bunch of these kinds of clinics as a medical student. All of this stuff is extremely costly, and still doesn’t work very well, given the cost. It’s not effective altruism. And this has been an active area of research for a long time. Hundreds of doctors in any country would class themselves as pain-specialists. There are pain-specialised-teams that visit patients in any major hospital. All of this is good, but it’s far from a priority. What’s interesting is that pain teams and pain specialists have emerged to a significant degree from the specialty of anaesthesia, who are really the original people who could reduce pain. If you want to look at where pain-reduction is cost-effective, it’s getting the first anaesthetists. Having surgeries done with anaesthesia compared to without is terribly important, and it would seem critical to make sure that in areas of the developing world, basic operations can be safely performed, and local and general anaesthesia are available when required. Chronic pain could be of personal or selfish interest, but from a point of view of effectiveness, it’s a disaster.
I think the problem is that a lot of pain is caused by being aware of the pain, and likewise a lot of mental ill-health is caused by ruminating about pain and suffering, so I think that if someone was going to work in this kind of area, it’d be very important for them to be a person who has very robust mental health themselves. The part that seems globally worrying is if people try to run awareness campaigns about the amount of pain, or writing pain reports, which could make worse-off more people who already have bad ruminations about these kinds of things.
There’s good evidence to be found that interdisciplinary clinics are effective for chronic pain, though it’s easy to see their cost-effectiveness, and likewise it’s easy to discern that a lot of research has been committed to pain research (including much of the specialty of anaesthetics). The ideas about worries about people ruminating about pain is more complicated, but is a notion that has evolved from discussions with thoughtful EAs.
I don’t think there are any active proposals at the moment.
Pain is most definitely changeable, it’s just very costly to do so. Lots of different medical, lifestyle and psychological therapies are tried. I think the best current solution for chronic pain is to have an interdisciplinary pain clinic that has physiotherapists, psychologists, doctors with an interest in pain medicine, some kind of medical or allied health folk with an interest in addiction medicine. And then you want to diagnose the type of pain, and give the minimum amount of opiods possible yet the maximum amount of pain relief. I’ve visited a bunch of these kinds of clinics as a medical student. All of this stuff is extremely costly, and still doesn’t work very well, given the cost. It’s not effective altruism. And this has been an active area of research for a long time. Hundreds of doctors in any country would class themselves as pain-specialists. There are pain-specialised-teams that visit patients in any major hospital. All of this is good, but it’s far from a priority. What’s interesting is that pain teams and pain specialists have emerged to a significant degree from the specialty of anaesthesia, who are really the original people who could reduce pain. If you want to look at where pain-reduction is cost-effective, it’s getting the first anaesthetists. Having surgeries done with anaesthesia compared to without is terribly important, and it would seem critical to make sure that in areas of the developing world, basic operations can be safely performed, and local and general anaesthesia are available when required. Chronic pain could be of personal or selfish interest, but from a point of view of effectiveness, it’s a disaster.
I think the problem is that a lot of pain is caused by being aware of the pain, and likewise a lot of mental ill-health is caused by ruminating about pain and suffering, so I think that if someone was going to work in this kind of area, it’d be very important for them to be a person who has very robust mental health themselves. The part that seems globally worrying is if people try to run awareness campaigns about the amount of pain, or writing pain reports, which could make worse-off more people who already have bad ruminations about these kinds of things.
Thanks for expanding, and telling me the source of your opinion, even if not giving much in the way of evidence.
There’s good evidence to be found that interdisciplinary clinics are effective for chronic pain, though it’s easy to see their cost-effectiveness, and likewise it’s easy to discern that a lot of research has been committed to pain research (including much of the specialty of anaesthetics). The ideas about worries about people ruminating about pain is more complicated, but is a notion that has evolved from discussions with thoughtful EAs.