SCIENCE STARTS PAYING MORE ATTENTION TO THE HURT OF DISEASE AND DEVELOPING NEW METHODS FOR COPING WITH... PAIN.(Life & Leisure)

Byline: PAT ANSTETT Knight-Ridder

The pain never stops, even when he tries to sleep.

The worst are sharp spasms that feel "like an army of men giving you charley horses all over your body," says Earl Butts, 46, of South Rockwood, Mich.

A heavy equipment mechanic and welder for a waste disposal firm, he was severely injured in 1980 when a crane lowered its boom and hit electrical lines. Working in an office nearby, Butts was knocked unconscious and suffered permanent damage to the nerves in his spine. Nothing gave him relief until doctors implanted a pump in his back.

The device releases a soothing bath of medicines that reduce and numb pain throughout his body, says Dr. Donald Austin, his neurosurgeon at Detroit's Harper Hospital.

Butts, a father of two, no longer uses a wheelchair and can tinker in his barn and hunt with friends. "I'm proof that there's help out there," he says. "I pray there will be other advances that would bring me more relief."

Pain control for people like Butts is emerging as one of the most important topics in medicine. Royal Oak, Mich., pathologist Jack Kevorkian's assistance in eight suicides since 1990 helped trigger the discussion by focusing attention on medicine's failure to control pain. All eight people had severe disabilities or were dying and could find too little relief, he says.

Many professionals who work with dying or chronically ill people revile Kevorkian for promoting suicide as the best escape from pain. But doctors acknowledge that far too many people suffer needlessly. Many doctors and the public are ignorant of pain-relief advances or are reluctant to use them because of outdated concerns about addiction.

"Doctors for too long have been fixated on finding a cure," says Dr. Howard Brody, a Michigan State …