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Testing the Safety of Tasers On Meth-Addled Sheep
Funded in part by Taser International, a recent study was done to learn the effects of being tasered while on methamphetamines. Since someone would probably complain about researchers going around and tasering meth addicts, they used sheep instead. From the article: "The less-lethal device of choice was the Taser X26, a standard law enforcement tool which can fire at suspects from a distance of 35 feet. Researchers shocked sixteen anesthetized sheep after dosing the animals with an IV drip of methamphetamine hydrochloride. Some of the smaller sheep weighing less than 70.5 pounds suffered exacerbated heart symptoms related to meth use. But neither the smaller nor larger sheep showed signs of the ventricular fibrillation condition, a highly abnormal heart rhythm that can become fatal."
"But neither the smaller nor larger sheep showed signs of the ventricular fibrillation condition" is all well and good but I have to wonder if the fact that the sheep were sedated might not help out with this.
"But neither the smaller nor larger sheep showed signs of the ventricular fibrillation condition" is all well and good but I have to wonder if the fact that the sheep were sedated might not help out with this.
Also did they attempt to duplicate the "purity" of black market drugs?
Sixteen sheep? This is a terrible study. We're talking about actually electrocuting human beings and their proof that it doesn't hurt humans permanently is a study with only a sample size of 16.
I wonder when was the last time the FDA accepted a drug on the market with a sample size of 16?
Don't tase me dude!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I wonder if they figured out what would happen if they tazed the sheep 20 or so times in short succession.
The 'less lethal' argument is complete bullshit. The fact is that police are far more likely to use 'less' lethal weapons, on the assumption that there is much lower burden on them to prove the need for weapons use. There are many more situations completely out of the control of police that turn 'less' lethal weapons into 'completely' lethal weapons.
- heart conditions, pacemakers etc ( yes, young people can have pacemakers )
- pregnancy
- short period of time since last taser assaults ( we've all seen videos of repeated taser assaults )
If police can't subdue people with their bare hands and training, then they shouldn't be police. Giving them so-called 'non' or 'less' lethal weapons only leads to more deaths due to a massive increase in the use of the weapons, combined with a very worrying deathrate ( hundreds of deaths per year according to Amnesty International ). As for police in the US where everyone has a gun ... I have no answer for that. Do whatever the hell you want over there. In sane countries where it's illegal to carry around lethal weapons, I expect the police to also be unarmed.
Try 70, from last year alone. And, really, is anyone going to roll out the trope that the police would have actually used a firearm on these people if it wasn't for their electrocution compliance devices?
"Remember when I said I would never lie? Well, that was the first time."
..which is why your cat will get high as a kite on catnip but you won't.
You're using it wrong.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Just wait until we get some good designer drugs with no major physical downsides
Nature has already provided these for us in many forms.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
That the study was conducted at the behest of Taser International on a handful of sheep who were anesthetized (which at the very least meant that stress levels were far lower than those of conscious subjects ) gives me no cause for suspicion at all.
Stop talking sense! We must think of the poor wittle animals.
How we know is more important than what we know.
"But neither the smaller nor larger sheep showed signs of the ventricular fibrillation condition" is all well and good but I have to wonder if the fact that the sheep were sedated might not help out with this.
Since the study was funded by Taser International, Inc (a for profit corporation), and that company might be about to go the way of the Asbestos companies very very soon. It was absolutely imperative that no sheep got hurt, or killed, during that test.
Look, we are the superior species and the best way to demonstrate that is to use our intelligence to torture these defenceless creatures. As a bonus we are able to use this torture as a pretext to sell devices which allow us to profit from enabling fellow superiors to torture same-species victims. It's all good. Win win win. Muhahahahaha etc..
Requiem for the American Dream
Really, if you want me to care about people being tasered to quickly, don't bring out the example of meth addicts. I am likely not to give a damn.
The point is not that people are being tasered too quickly.
The reason we're discussing this at all is because people keep dying after getting tasered and the cause of death keeps getting listed as "excited delirium" instead of "Taser caused or contributed to the individual's death".
Here's an old slashdot article on the matter and nothing has really changed since then except that the body count has increased. IMO, "excited delirium" is the new "Cigarettes are safe for you. No really, here's the study we funded that says so."
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
.... because "People in large masses may as well be sheep. Their collective intelligence drops to that of the weakest-minded member of the group. They bleat, they panic and are easily herded to safety, or to the slaughter." - Alan Gunn
I, for one, welcome our new fascist, taser-bearing overlords. Oh, wait....
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
There's that, and an extraordinarily small sample size. Not to mention the sheep were supposedly all in good health, unlike possible human victims.
As far as a medical study goes to prove or disprove reports of complications in field conditions with actual humans, it's a worthless piece of shit. (And I'm being nice about it.)
It's obviously propaganda as opposed to credible science.
Not to sound like a tinfoil hat wearer, but do you think funding of the study by the Taser company and it being done by stockholders in the same company might have something to do with it?
"which is why your cat will get high as a kite on catnip but you won't."
Have you ever had catnip tea before? Smoking it doesn't do shit but ingesting it most certainly does.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
On those rare occasions I have fallen over as an adult it hurts. Fortunately I have avoided serious injury because I was able to protect myself to some extent with my arms, and by bending my body to move my head out of danger.
When you're tasered you will certainly fall down, and you will certainly be unable to protect yourself. Even when the police officers who use the taser have to be tasered themselves as part of their training, the situation is unreal because they are placed on gym mats to soften their fall, and in any case other officers are present to control the fall. To make it more realistic they should be placed on a concrete surface with no colleagues in support. That way, they could enjoy the random head injury experience of the average victim.
I am surprised more taser victims haven't died from head injuries.
The study that appears in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine openly lists a few caveats. Aside from being partially funded by Taser International, the study authors include two physicians who represent medical consultants and stockholders of the company. One of the two is also the medical director of Taser International.
Medical director of Taser International?? Really? WTF?
It's bro.... Don't tase me bro....
You ignorant fuckwit....
In this case it is don't tase me baaah!
This study can be used in the fly over states when grandparents or the young or pregnant woman seek a legal remedy after been subjected to "legal" electrical pain compliance.
Always follow the funding trail of any US "study".
"Court OKs Repeated Tasering of Pregnant Woman" http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/pregnant_woman_tasered/
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Right, who was supposed to bring the mint sauce?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
AKA
Doctor Shock
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Actually, if you were to give an alcoholic, a meth addict and an opiate addict free access to their drug of choice as well as food, shelter and other basic necessities chances are that ten years later the opiate addict would be the healthiest of the three, most likely he/she wouldn't just be a little healthier than the other two others either. Basically ethyl alcohol is poison, not in the war on drugs "drugs are bad, mmkay?" sense but actually poisonous. As for methamphetamine, well the lifestyle that comes with the drug doesn't exactly lend itself to leading a long and healthy life. As for opiate addicts, while it's likely they'd often forget about things like basic hygiene and eating and they might suffer from constipation it's not like just being high on opiates does anywhere near the damage to your body that alcohol or methamphetamine does.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
It may well be that 'excited delirium' is the cause of death. What I want to know though, is just how many people have been diagnosed with 'excited delirium' outside of a mortuary? And what is the percentage of sufferers of 'excited delirium' who haven't been tasered? Something like this:
All numbers pulled out of my ass.
But somehow I doubt we'll see any kind of statistics like this.
Also, I'm curious to know what kind of commonalities there are between the sufferers of excited delirium. Obviously it's some kind of disease or illness, so what kind of medications can you take to fight it? Are there any preventative measures, like diet? Or is the trick simply to avoid getting tasered or beaten up by the police?
Exactly, those being subjected to the results of a "positive report" are always subjected involuntary as well.
I always found the idea of tasering and advertizing it as "oh, it can't hurt, it's just unpleasant" a bit boundary shifting: before lawenforcement et al had to reason "if I shoot, I have to make certain I'm in a situation where I have no other choice because I can kill this person". With tasering, the bounderies shifted "oh it can't harm, s/he is being annoying, lets buzz them like cattle into complying to the authority I impose."
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
It was absolutely imperative that no sheep got hurt, or killed, during that test.
Sheep might have gotten hurt and killed during another test.
But Taser International certainly isn't going to tell us about that study.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Not to sound like a tinfoil hat wearer, but do you think funding of the study by the Taser company and it being done by stockholders in the same company might have something to do with it?
Taser safety print: "Safe to use on meth-addled bodies*"
Fine print: "*sheep only"
Ya seriously, I totally agree. This is not real world, it is junk science. Tasers have killed people. I think that is clear enough to say that they should be categorized as potentially lethal force. It doesn't matter if you are on meth, cocaine, have previous heart conditions or they just taze you 10 times.
Ya seriously, I totally agree. This is not real world, it is junk science.
Tasers have killed people. I think that is clear enough to say that they should be categorized as potentially lethal force. It doesn't matter if you are on meth, cocaine, have previous heart conditions or they just taze you 10 times.
Any serious agency has already classified or reclassified them as "less-lethal" rather than LTL ("less-than-lethal") in recent years. This is to indicate that it's less lethal than using a firearm. The problem isn't with Taser devices, the problem is with ignorant cops and bad policy. The Taser was, and is, meant to be used when previously you _would have shot_ the assailant. Not when they are noisy, not when they resist, not when they are inconvenient.
There are many situations like this:
Consider a traffic stop. The subject exits his car and presents a knife, and exhibits signs of meth intoxication. You have 10 feet between you. At this time you have two choices: shoot (and almost certainly kill) the subject, or risk being killed. Now law enforcement is _supposed_ to be able to choose hidden option C: shoot them, but hopefully in a less-lethal way, while still preserving your own life.
It's unfortunate that Taser is taking a beating in public opinion because we have cowboy deputies and local cops running amok with "lightning guns."
Oh, and this study is garbage (and kinda hilarious.)
before lawenforcement et al had to reason "if I shoot, I have to make certain I'm in a situation where I have no other choice because I can kill this person". With tasering, the bounderies shifted "oh it can't harm, s/he is being annoying, lets buzz them like cattle into complying to the authority I impose."
That's exactly why less lethal options like Tasers are attractive. It gives the police an option that falls somewhere between billy clubs and bullets. It means that even if someone is out of arms reach, they still have an option to take them down without killing them. And it drastically reduces the number of lethal force encounters.
Your point though about shifting boundaries is spot on. All less lethal options need to come with proper training and accountability for those that abuse them.
There is no question that conducted energy weapons are much safer than the weapon alternatives available to police. Gun-fired bean bags or even batons are much more likely to cause injury or even death than electric shock guns. The fine line here is that police are somehow mixing up the concept of "safer than a baton" with "no risk at all." Being struck by an energy weapon is not pleasant. If I were to go jolting random passers-by in the street, I would be charged with assault. Even that simple fact should be enough to cause police to think twice about using them. The fact that the RCMP had clearly decided to use their energy weapon before even seeing Robert Dziekanski, as Paul Pritchard's video makes plain [In the video, the sequence of conversation by the arriving RCMP is: "Are we going to user Tasers?" "Yes." "Where is he?"], tells us something unpleasant about their attitude towards the use of these things: they act as if there is absolutely no risk at all. But there is risk. People die from being shocked by these weapons.
Taser International aggressively defends their weapon's safety record, influencing investigations [Taser v. Kohler, Ohio, 2006.11.7421] and conducting PR campaigns to promote their image as safe. They have a reason to defend their use. Fully 25% of Taser International's revenue comes from cartridges for their weapons. [Taser International 2007 annual report] Taser International has a strong incentive to see not only that their weapons are issued to law enforcement organizations, but also that those weapons are then used as often as possible. A quarter of their income comes from the cartridge that is used each time one of their weapons is fired at someone. The vendor will do what it can to encourage the use of the weapons and defend the safety and reliability record that justifies this use.
Electric shock weapon proponents have gone so far as to invent a new hypothetical medical condition named "excited delirium" that is said to be the actual cause of death in cases where an electric shock weapon was used. The so called "thin skull" legal doctrine applies here though. This doctrine says that if a victim has an unusually susceptibility, such as a thin skull, this in no way diverts the blame from a blow to the head that causes injury. The fact that the injury might have been greater to the thin-skulled victim than to a "normal" person does not lessen the degree of fault with the blow -- or the electric shock.
Suppose one in a thousand people were severely allergic to pepper spray, such that upon being sprayed those people would lapse into anaphylactic shock, and possibly die. Even though safe for the vast majority, this small risk of severe reaction and possible death would have to be taken into account by the police when using the stuff. We have this situation with electric shock weapons. Out of 1,000 normal looking folks walking the street, 3 of them will drop dead if you give them a jolt from one of these things. You may call it "excited delirium" if you want -- or call it thin skull. But if someone's alive before getting shocked and dead afterward, it is clear where the blame belongs.
There is a small degree of danger in using these weapons, probably about the same level of danger as feeding a peanut butter sandwich to an elementary school kid. It's not enough to ban the use of the things by any stretch. But it should be enough to make the law enforcement forces much less cavalier about using them than they seem to be. There is a real risk in using these weapons and the police have to take that seriously.
I always found the idea of tasering and advertizing it as "oh, it can't hurt, it's just unpleasant" a bit boundary shifting: before lawenforcement et al had to reason "if I shoot, I have to make certain I'm in a situation where I have no other choice because I can kill this person". With tasering, the bounderies shifted "oh it can't harm, s/he is being annoying, lets buzz them like cattle into complying to the authority I impose."
You are right about the boundary shifting, but you are wrong to make the comparison to firearms. Tasers are displacing the billy club, the use of which was more likely to lead to serious physical injury and/or death but which still represented a less than lethal step on the use of force continuum.
Firearms represent deadly force, the use of which is typically reserved for situations where the life of an officer or third party is at risk. If you slug a police officer he can't (justifiably) shoot you. If you hit him over the head with a baseball bat and he's about to pass out he probably can. In scenario A his life isn't in danger. In scenario B it is.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Why not pigs. In general pigs are often used because their structure is much more like a human. Also they know stress much more like humans and can even die from that same stress. Oh, then perhaps people might not die from the tazering itself, but by the stress caused by repeated tazering.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Not to mention the already almost-failing heart of a long time addict?
Keep the sheep on meth for a year or so, then taser them and let's see how they fare.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem with the taser replacing the club is that when you hit somebody with a club, everybody knows if you hit hard enough, you can kill somebody, it also leaves bruises. The problem with the taser is that everybody knows 'the company that makes them says they are not lethal at all under any circumstance' and you can't see whether somebody's been hit with a taser. In the beginning of the taser-era, officers would call an ambulance before or after tasering somebody. These days it seems they don't even bother anymore (depending on the type of tasers they use).
The taser has not been tested in any viable study I know off against either human targets or human replica's. As MythBusters and many electrical engineers will tell you, a shock across the heart of just 1mA can kill you, 100mA is lethal. As every geek knows I = V/R and tasers bolt out about 50-100kV which means your skin-to-heart resistance needs to put up a resistance of 500k (if my calculations are correct). Your body resistances ranges anywhere from 300ohms-6Mohms. When your skin is moist (sweating, ...) as is common with drug-addicts and people running from the law your body's resistance will drop. If a taser hits you near the heart in those conditions, they can be theoretically very lethal.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
So 1.5 x 15 x 10 = 225 Joules delivered "per shot"
Now a cattle "electric fence", similar voltage, 3 joule unit will give a pulse every couple of seconds.
A 3 joule "energizer" will power many kilometres of electric fence.
Defibrillator will give up to around 360 joules per pulse, which is ballpark enough to make a corpse sit up.
10 to 50 joules is regarded as dangerous.
Electric fence + human is invariably hand / arm contact, not across the chest like a taser, even so, you won't like a 3 joule pulse every second, not actual real pain, but most unpleasant.
Taser delivers HV energy at a rate 75 times higher than a cattle fence energizer.
Which is a bit like saying that a 44 magnum (1,000 ft/lb) delivers energy at a rate 75 times higher than a 12 ft/lb air gun.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
It's my job to write, review, and use protocols that involve in vitro and in vivo testing. In vivo covers animal and human testing. By no means an expert, but at least very familiar with testing for safety and efficacy.
A sample size of 16 is not extraordinarily small. It's actually very common. Because it depends on they type of study, the type of statistics, and the confidence you're aiming for. Large animal studies are expensive. Sometimes more so than human studies. Not to mention there is a strong push to limit the number of animals used to the absolute minimum for ethical reasons (which results in the interesting phenomena of using one animal for two unrelated tests. For example, these same sheep might have had bullet proof vests strapped to them next and shot. Two different tests, but only 1 set of animals. But that a whole different story).
For a lot of tests, 1 to 5 animals is pretty common. They are often screening tests, looking for any evidence of a problem. Going up to 10 animals gives you some useful data for statistical analysis. 16 is not an unreasonable number. At some point, your statistical error drops below the error of using an animal model (i.e. 1 actual meth head might tell you more than 100 sheep).
The massive studies you are thinking of are when you are comparing two treatments. Trying to prove the superiority of one treatment over another takes a huge amount of data. Those are the ones you hear about on the news, which might be where your confusion comes from.
Also, most studies are funded by companies. They are the ones most interested in knowing and showing the results. I have yet to see bad results hidden. The reasoning there is if you are selling bad product, best to find out first and fix it or stop selling it. Bad results don't stay hidden, so it's stupid to try. When publishing good results, you fully disclose the methodology and any conflicts. It's science, so if the study is done right, conflicts don't matter. It can be replicated.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The sheep were sedated? Interesting. It tells me, that in their own view, tasering conscious sheep would be considered animal curelty. When techniques of animal cruelty are applied to humans, it's called torture or worse.