Thus the gargantuan, garish title of Ken Garber’s article in the last issue of Technology Review (Vol. 106, No. 9, November 2003), which could not but attract my attention. According to the American Pain Foundation, quoted by Garber and captioned by the editor, more than fifty million Americans now suffer from persistent, severe pain. “That’s one person in six,” I mutter to myself. “Biologically impossible!” But then I check myself. Pain is such a personal thing. Who am I to judge? Who is anyone but the person in question to judge? A second later I am ready for a bold prediction: “One person in five within a generation, one person in four within two…”