article: Options sought in balancing painkillers

[Starbuck49]

http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8NQQ4S03.htm

Options sought in balancing painkillers

Scientists are hunting new ways to help millions of pain sufferers -- from addiction-resistant narcotics to using brain scanners for biofeedback -- amid a worrisome rise in abuse of today's top prescription painkillers.

The good news: Only a tiny fraction of patients who are appropriately prescribed the most powerful painkillers -- drugs known as opioids, including morphine, Vicodin, fentanyl and Oxycontin -- ever will become dependent on them.

Opioids "are not dangerous if you know how to use them properly," stressed Dr. Nora Volkow, chief of NIH's National Institute on Drug Abuse. "We need to develop the knowledge that maximizes our ability to use them properly."

Amid fears that rising painkiller abuse will spark a backlash against pain sufferers, Volkow organized a two-day meeting involving several hundred scientists and primary care physicians, to bring the latest science on pain and addiction to doctors struggling to balance the drugs' clear benefits and potential harm.

[steedo]

This is funny, I posted the same article on 03/13/07. Follow this link to read what fellow forum members had to say about it.

http://www.medhelp.org/forums/Addiction/messages/35343.html

[Starbuck49]

well,  I missed it!  OK  what I found was encouragement.. that   maybe the addiction worry was less than I thought.. but it looks like those of you who are seriously addicted, and know it, are proof that the 2% may not be accurate.  time will tell.. but I found it helpful to me.

after all as 78 million people enter 60+ & elder years  over the next decade ( me included)  better pain management will be demanded by Boomers, and the "taint" of taking pain meds/drugs will have to dampen down.