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Decisions about a patient's pain treatment are now made much more collaboratively, but even in modern times, the process is fraught with moral judgment, stemming largely from the nature of available pain treatments and an incomplete understanding of how to use them. Patients who ask for more pain drugs are eyed as potential addicts; doctors who prescribe pain medications too frequently fear being arrested for it. (See TIME's special report "How to Live 100 Years...
...dependence. The latter occurs in almost all people who take opioids long-term; over time, they develop a tolerance to the drug, and suffer withdrawal if the drug is abruptly stopped. The point is, they are able to stop taking it eventually. Addiction, however, is defined as the compulsive use of a substance in spite of negative consequences: addicted patients whose pain symptoms have been resolved still can't quit taking the drug...
...them fatal. The overall risk of overdose was small, but it was clearly associated with the dose of the medication originally prescribed: patients receiving the highest doses were nearly nine times more likely to overdose than patients on the lowest doses. "The overall risk among people who continued to use opioids was 0.25% per year [or two overdoses per 1,000 people]," says Michael Von Korff, a co-author of the study and senior investigator at the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle, adding that most people involved in the study were on low doses...
...need only look at some states' experience with term limits to see such a remedy is no magic pill: politicians who are term-limited often just use their temporary offices as stepping stones and don't invest in the institutions...
...from the ongoing siege of Gaza to the intentionally disproportionate responses during both the war in Lebanon against Hizballah in 2006 and the war in Gaza against Hamas in 2009. Such views are stronger in Europe than in the U.S., which is why the scandal surrounding Mossad's alleged use of European passports could gain momentum there...