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[Guest guest]

> Message: 3

> Date: Mon, 04 May 1998 02:31:30 +0000

>

> Subject: Vicki's request, Kit's intro, moderator note

>

> Hi folks,

>

> Vicki lost something on the list (its those nasty computer bugs, I

> supppose). We have a pretty simple way of retreiving anything on the list

> from ONElist (if it works, of course) All of our stuff is archived for

> people who just want to get header summaries. You just have to log into

> ONElist.com, select our list, retrieve archived headers & then retrieve the

> particular day's posts (They all come as one piece of text).

>

> Here I am having a pretty poor night myself, and I logged into our

list to

> find a very moving introduction from Kit that I can particularly relate to.

> I don't know for sure that MS Contin or Methadone would liberate either Kit

> or me, but the politics of medicine seem to prevent us from ever finding

> out. High doses of Methadone have been used routinly for many years with

> addicts for maintenance & detox, but we are generally 'spared " the

> opportunity so as not to make us addicts. The medical profession seems very

> good at ignoring a large-scale, bullet-proof research study published in

> the New England Journal of Medicine following (as I recall) about one

> thousand chronic pain patients treated with 'addictive' meds for a

> substantial timeslice, resulting in a less than 1% addiction rate AND a

> finding that those who were found addicted in the study had previously been

> drug addicts! If you're a bit lost in data,

> this solid study suggests that chronic pain patients given narcotics show a

> LOWER susceptibility than the general population, to drug addiction.

> Along the same lines, the US TV show 60 minutes (about 2 years ago)

did a

> documentary on persecution of doctors treating chronic pain with narcotics,

> AND astounding successes they had with patients. Because it is unlikely

> that people quietly suffering at home are not going to exert effective

> political influence, we and those few doctors willing to treat severe &

> extreme chronic pain appropriately are made to suffer needlessly.

> Perhaps when the collective participation in the several net pain

lists

> hits 100,000 we will be able to get the public & political/medical

> establishments to take our needs and rights to a reasonable quality of life

> seriously. (My soap box has been put away for the rest of the day).

>

> Ken

>

>