The Bioethics of Pain Management

This book sets out to characterize the subjective experience of pain and its undertreatment, and puts forward public policy recommendations for ameliorating the undertreatment of pain. Goldberg argues that the US medical establishment's overwhelming focus on opioid analgesics is flawed, and that the general intolerance for the subjectivity of pain is part of a specific American culture of pain tha implicates not only physicians and health care providers, but also pain sufferers, caregivers, and policymakers. Concentrating primarily on bioethics, history, and public policy, the book brings a truly interdisciplinary approach to an urgent practical ethical problem.