Editor’s Note: IASP will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2024. Even though the anniversary is still a few years away, it already has us thinking about the history of IASP and the evolution of pain research over the past five decades. So we are beginning a new series of podcasts that will cover both of those topics, featuring senior leaders in the field who have made major contributions to pain research and care and/or to IASP.
In our first such podcast, pioneering pain researcher and IASP honorary member Howard Fields, MD, PhD, an emeritus professor at the University of California, San Francisco, reminisces about the International Symposium on Pain, a 1973 meeting held in Issaquah, Washington, that would lead to the formation of IASP; the advent of the gate control theory of pain and what the pain research landscape was like at that time; his career path; and why he’s excited about the future of pain research.
