The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL produces a wide range of publications, including the Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine series. These volumes are edited transcripts of Witness Seminars at which significant figures in twentieth-century medicine discuss discoveries and events in recent medical history. Twenty-two published volumes are available from December 2004. For further details see: www ucl.ac.uk/histmed/witnesses.html Unrelieved pain caused by cancer has been accepted as unnecessary by both clinicians and politicians over the last 50 years. Major innovations in the understanding of pain and our ability to treat it are discussed in this Witness Seminar, 'Innovation in Pain Management' (volume 21), chaired by Professor David Clark. Clinicians and international healthcare planners describe the development of the pain clinics, the introduction of the hospice in Britain, and the globalization of innovative technologies for pain relief and advances in research during the latter part of the twentieth century. Participants include Professor Sir Michael Bond, Dr Suresh Kumar, Dr Colin Murray Parkes, Dame Cicely Saunders, Professor Jan Stjernsward, Dr Robert Twycross and Professor Duncan Vere.