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As doctors have become less fearful and more skilled in using narcotic painkillers, a debate has erupted over whether it is appropriate to supply these drugs to chronic-pain sufferers other than cancer patients. "Any chronic pain might be appropriate -- diabetes, sickle cell, arthritis," contends Dr. Russell Portenoy, director of analgesic studies at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. But, he concedes, "it's a controversial area." And controversial with patients too. Even in the cancer ward, says Foley, "patients say, 'I don't want to take that drug because it's morphine.' " An education program is needed, she says, to explain that suffering is not virtuous, that pain relief can speed healing and that narcotics, if used appropriately, do not lead to addiction. "We need to change the attitudes of both physicians and patients."