*But I just looked into your brain with this scanner, and you don't have any pain. So no insurance payoff for you, you goldbricker.
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090216/A_NEWS/902160318
"STOCKTON - Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Robert England has received a U.S. patent for a process he developed to objectively determine the presence of chronic pain.
England's process involves the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to capture an image of the brain. It looks at neuron activity when the patient with chronic pain receives stimulation - such as excessive squeezing of a finger or mild electrical shock - and compares it against the neuron activity in the brains of pain-free people.
The validation and measurement of chronic pain, a controversial issue in medical, legal and insurance circles, is accomplished without any input from the patient - for whom pain is highly subjective.
"Now we will be able to move on to the next step of introducing a commercially available process that will aid the medical community in objective identification and measurement of chronic pain. This process is able to turn subjective complaints into objective findings," said England, 72, who for the past 10 years has volunteered his physician services with the St. Joseph's Medical Center CareVan mobile health clinic in Stockton's low-income neighborhoods.
After graduating from Stanford University, England received his medical degree at the University of Michigan and a master's degree in public health from the University of California, Los Angeles. (...)
England observed that as the fMRI was being developed into a tool to see pain in the brain, it provided a way to determine lying and deception. He thought he could take it a step further.
"On Nov. 18, 2003, California's new worker's compensation rules (on chronic pain) said you have to have positive, objective findings to have a case, but as an attorney you know that pain is subjective. I figured out that if you can see pain in the brain, you should be able to measure pain," England said. (...)
