providing treatment to people who have conditions associated with immense pain (10/10 on the pain scale)
But I couldn’t see, from the post, which conditions those were or an explanation for why those merit particular attention. Could you possibly expand on this?
(I’m wondering if you’re appealing to logarithmic pain scales but, even if pain scales were logarithmic (something I doubt and discuss in this working paper) it doesn’t follow that would be the best chronic pain condition to treat: less intense pains could still be more cost-effective to treat.)
The conditions we discuss are cluster headaches (similar to OPIS), trigeminal neuralgia, and complex regionary pain syndrome. We want to emphasize that we are not experts on either of the three but their victims consistently describe extreme pain, unlike anything they have experienced before.
The reason why we estimate that their treatment might be cost-effective comes partly from the intensity of suffering that could be solved and mostly from its neglectedness. To our knowledge, there are none or very few people who seriously work on them and we, therefore, thought that even a small group of researchers could already cure a lot of suffering by developing a better understanding.
Due to this uncertainty, though, we find it hard to compare with other pain-related interventions such as access to pain medication in developing countries.
I note in your conclusion you suggest:
But I couldn’t see, from the post, which conditions those were or an explanation for why those merit particular attention. Could you possibly expand on this?
(I’m wondering if you’re appealing to logarithmic pain scales but, even if pain scales were logarithmic (something I doubt and discuss in this working paper) it doesn’t follow that would be the best chronic pain condition to treat: less intense pains could still be more cost-effective to treat.)
The conditions we discuss are cluster headaches (similar to OPIS), trigeminal neuralgia, and complex regionary pain syndrome. We want to emphasize that we are not experts on either of the three but their victims consistently describe extreme pain, unlike anything they have experienced before.
The reason why we estimate that their treatment might be cost-effective comes partly from the intensity of suffering that could be solved and mostly from its neglectedness. To our knowledge, there are none or very few people who seriously work on them and we, therefore, thought that even a small group of researchers could already cure a lot of suffering by developing a better understanding.
Due to this uncertainty, though, we find it hard to compare with other pain-related interventions such as access to pain medication in developing countries.