Anybody read the 'Worthing Saga' by O.S. Card? It was the first book I read by him, in an out of print edition called 'Worthing Chronicles'. Anyway, the device used by Card in this story is that there are a group of telepaths who ease human suffering telepathically (make a recent death a distant memory, take away pain etcetera). Their progenitor (Worthing) is revived after millenia of being in suspended animation and makes them stop. Most of the book is back story explaining exactly why. Essentialy in the end the reasoning is boiled down to: "without suffering there can be no joy".

An interesting read, and the 'healing at a distance' thought made me think of it. Has anybody else here read this?

I'm not sure I agree with the full line of thinking, but it's an interesting theoretical question: if you could stop suffering, at what point is it wrong to do so?

-Zeke