dr. william maxnor. he is at the university of north carolina at chapel hill. dr. maxnor comes today with significant experience in pain management research. christian beasley, the executive director of the national association will share with us her personal story with chronic pain, she was appointed to serve on the pain research coordinating committee at nih, the committee was formed to coordinator research. and next we have dr. john serno a professor at new york university medical center and practitioner at rusk rehabilitation medicine. the author of four books a pain will share his work with respect to treating chronic pain. i'll thank all of you for coming here, your statements will be made a part of the record in their entirety and i ask if you can sum up in five or seven minutes, it's probably a little light down there, i do not get nervous if it goes over, unless it's a long time, if you are summing up five, six, seven, eight minutes that is fine with me. like i said, your statements will be all made a part of the record in their entirety. please proceed. >>

dr. maxnor. what ms. beasley said here is very important. she said it's logical to ask why not see a different doctor or get better treatment. the answer was recently summarized by a leading pain official, quote, overall, currently available treatments provide modest improvements in pain and minimum improvements in physical and emotional functioning the quality of evidence is mediocre and has not improved substantially during the last decade." not to pick on you or anything, but you said here, on this page here, you said," i submit that we now possess the tools and knowledge to conquer this epidemic and bring relief to millions worldwide." well i read this, what was in the lancet, and saying that it has not improved during the last decade and there are other things not being looked at. so i don't know that we have the tools and knowledge right now unless we start looking at all these other methodologies, again, i'm talking about chronic pain that is not the result of cancer, or putting my hand in a fire or -- tooth problems or things like th