Challenges in experimental pain studies in human volunteers

This month the BJA features a volunteer study investigating the effects of low dose neuraxial clonidine from Stanford University. One of the authors of this paper, Dr Yehuda Ginosar, talks about the challenges surrounding the design and interpretation of volunteer studies in experimental pain. Dr Ginosar and Dr Thomas review the results and inferences from this particular study, and go on to discuss some of the general ethical considerations and practical issues with experimentation on human volunteers.