​Overview

​Are you a fan of tacos and curious about groundbreaking pain management research in One Health? Then this is the event for you! Come join us for a talk from Jacob Shwartz-Lucas, Executive Director of the Animal Pain Research Institute.

​The Near Future of Relief Across Species

​Two hundred years ago, surgery without pain was unimaginable. Yet anesthesia was just around the corner. The effects of ether, the first widely recognized anesthetic, were demonstrated in chickens in the 1500s. Yet, it sat virtually unused for 300 years, while everything from leg amputations to tooth extractions were carried out with much cruder forms of relief. What if there are similarly powerful options currently lying in wait for treating chronic pain, anxiety, and even depression?

​Initially limited to large invasive surgeries, anesthesia showed that the goal is not to eliminate sensation but to manage pain precisely—keeping what is necessary while removing what is harmful. Techniques like epidurals and local anesthetics now routinely enable fine-grain control of pain's intensity, location, and duration to meet individual needs. New nonaddictive therapies—including safer pharmaceuticals and gene therapies—could similarly open transformative possibilities for both human and veterinary medicine.

​There are also already-available options for screening against disorders and clinically excessive distress when making animal breeding decisions. Given that many of the key mechanisms and genes are shared across species, therapeutic interventions have remarkable potential to improve health and wellbeing across species. What is needed is a field to foster not only scientific advancement, but to leverage existing technical options, and to ensure that these options are used in a manner that is both ethical and socially acceptable.

​https://www.animalpainresearchinstitute.org/about

​Logistics

​Doors - 6:30 PM
Tacos - 7:00 PM

​Talk + Q&A - 8:00 PM