---

• n  a medicine used to relieve pain

• Drug researchers have long searched for a painkiller as effective as morphine, without morphine's potent addictive powers.
• I'll give you some of this"--indicating a bottle of Ritalin stuffed into the front pocket of his backpack--"for some of that painkiller.
• Physicians, to whom morphine is familiar as the best painkiller known to medical science, and addicts, whom in the end it turns into pain-racked skeletons, found much interest in .

• analgesic
• anodyne
• pain pill

News & Articles

---

• Patient Drug Suits Curbed as U.S. Supreme Court Backs Takeda
  The U.S. Supreme Court limited the ability of patients to sue drugmakers, overturning a $21 million award to a woman who suffered debilitating injuries after taking a generic painkiller.
  June 24, 2013 - Bloomberg
• Rosenblum: Skyrocketing opiate abuse among Indians needs attention
  Painkiller addiction is an ugly trend that public health officials finally are getting their arms around. But they need to widen their embrace quickly, to incorporate a quiet demographic desperately in need of support and resources.
  June 23, 2013 - Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
• Nektra Therapeutics Gains on Trial of New Painkiller
  Nektar Therapeutics (NKTR) rose the most in 11 months after a study of its new slow-release painkiller showed it may not lead to abuse of the drug.
  June 19, 2013 - Bloomberg

Quotes

---

• Gideon Koren in Globe and Mail
  It is shocking to think that an otherwise healthy toddler who needed an adenotonsillectomy died as a result of the prescribed painkiller,Dr. Koren said.
• Barack Obama in Washington Times
  Then Mr. Obama adds, ruefully, "Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller."
• Matthew McConaughey in Ecorazzi
  We were jamming! She was sweating,McConaughey said. "No painkiller, let's go. She just clicked into that gear that only a woman has at a time like this. We'd been up for 40-something hours, and we went from dead tired to a really...