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Tamás Ungar on Vital Signs and the Subjectivity of Pain

Tamás Ungar in "The Surprising Link Between Broken Families And America’s Opioid Crisis" at The Federalist (May 25, 2017).

Others are missing the point, just as administrators sorely missed the point back in the 1980s when pain became the “fifth vital sign.” In medicine, vital signs are treated quite differently from symptoms. Since pain has no objective measure like the rest of the vital signs do — like temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure — doctors naturally resisted. They faced litigation and bureaucratic intimidation for undertreating pain.