On September 14, 1999, the New York Times reported guidelines of a pain management regimen for patients with sickle cell anemia. "Drafted by an expert panel sponsored by the American Pain Society...the guidelines are the first in a series of research-based recommendations for treating pain in several diseases, including arthritis and cancer," reporter Warren E. Leary writes. Since Sickle Cell Anemia is a life-long affliction, a scale of pain intensity was developed for use in treating pain in children. This "Oucher Scale" grades upward from zero to 100. Each level in the scale is accompanied by a child’s face showing rising levels of anguish. A child can point to the face that reflects the pain he or she is having.

The report continues: "Dr. Lennette J. Benjamin, clinical director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, a member of the drafting panel, said: ‘I see patients every day who have suffered a lifetime of needless pain simply because their doctors and others treating them don’t understand or practice the principles of good pain management...Unrelieved pain leads to longer hospitalizations, greater suffering and complications and more deaths’."

On February 27, 2000, the New York Times reported still another effort to gauge the severity of pain and suffering by Dr. A Vania Apkarian at the State University of New York's Upstate Medical University in Syracuse and Dr. Nikolaus Szeverenyl, a radiological physician in Albany.

The Times reported that: "Volunteers in their studies are subjected to varying degrees of discomfort and their brains' responses are recorded in an electroencphalgram or imaged by a C. T. scan or M.R.I. But even with such a complex assortment of electronic gadgetry, results depend ultimately on the subjects' description of the degree of pain they feel, which is signaled by how far they separate their opposed thumb and forefinger" on a scale of 1 to 10. In this way, the two physicians hope that they can create a "quantitative analysis to characterize the brain's representation of pain."

The Times account goes on to report that measuring the many manifestations of pain, objective and subjective, has proven so complex that an International Association for the Study of Pain has been organized. Pain, the article points out, is both a sensation and an emotional experience influenced to a signiicant degree by the emotional predispositions of the sufferer.

A more tongue-in-cheek piece appeared in Men’s Health (www.menshealth.com) in November 1999. The reporter interviewed physicians using "a 2-inch strip of paper called the ‘visual analog scale’ or VAS. During a procedure, patients rate their pain by marking the strip close to the left (a pinch) or right (being burned alive, or listening to the music from Rent.)"Asked by the reporter to rank pain intensities on the scale, physicians provided the following analogs:

VAS 1: Having a Mole Removed VAS 6: A spinal tap. VAS2: A digital rectal exam VAS 7: A penis catheter VAS 3: Five stitches VAS 8: A rabies shot. VAS 4: Removing wisdom teeth VAS 9: A barium enema. VAS 5: A colonoscopy VAS 10: Testicular torsion