THE LESSON FROM THE ILL-FATED WAR on pain is a simple one: It’s all about the data. When Friedrich Sertürner feared that in morphine he had opened up a Pandora’s box and let loose a monster, his warnings were ignored. When Heinrich Dreser claimed that heroin was safe, he had only tested it on a handful of people for a few weeks. And when Russell Portenoy launched a national campaign promoting opioid use, he based his claims on 38 patients, 12 of whom had taken OxyContin. As Clara Peller said in her now iconic television commercial for Wendy’s hamburgers, “Where’s the beef?” If you’re going to
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