>The procedure is no riskier than an epidural, Meloy says. But epidurals can cause complications such as backache in up to a fifth of women. In the second stage, a self-contained device resembling a pacemaker will be implanted beneath the skin, switched on and off with a remote control.
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>Meloy, a pain specialist at Piedmont Anesthesia and Pain Consultants in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, stumbled on the idea while performing a routine pain-relief operation on a woman. During this procedure,two electrodes are inserted in the patient's spine and tiny pulses of electricity are applied. Patients are kept conscious throughout the operation so that they can say when they feel less pain. During one such operation, the patient began exclaiming emphatically. When Meloy asked what was up, she said, "You're going to have to teach my husband to do that."
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Let's imagine some of the possibilities here. Husbands can hide the
remote control for some really baroque foreplay. _Slashdot_ would start
linking to sites which provide complicated stimulus patterns for really
adventurous implantees. Third-world interrogators can reward their
subjects with just as much efficiency as inflicting pain, thus leading
Amnesty International into all kinds of rhetorical problems. BDSM people
with a technical bent can do stimulus-response training, so their
less-BDSM-inclined partners can _learn_ the joys of bondage.
Manufacturers of garage-door openers could double as sex therapists. And
_Best Buy_ would begin to resemble a Tangiers fleshpot right out of
_Naked Lunch_.