Why did the International Association for the Study of Pain form in 1973?

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How does the human body perceive and respond to pain? — pain Learn how the human body senses pain and reacts to it.

The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) was formed in 1973 following a meeting of interdisciplinary pain researchers and clinicians organized by American anesthesiologist John Bonica.

The organization emerged as a direct result of a growing scientific interest in pain, which had been significantly stimulated by the gate control theory proposed by Ronald Melzack and Patrick David Wall in 1965. This theory challenged researchers to integrate laboratory and clinical observations to better understand the complex neural mechanisms of pain perception. By establishing the IASP and launching the journal Pain, Bonica and his colleagues formalized pain science as a distinct professional field, moving beyond earlier, limited theories that failed to account for the essential fusion of physiological and psychological components in clinical pain.1