Slashdot Mirror
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.
Don't tase me dude!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
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."
No it isn't. A taser is a lot less lethal then a 9mm pistol.
First, FTFY, that's an assertion not a fact.
Second, not when a taser discharge is treated the same as other firearm discahrges by police forces. This of course requires an actual procedure in place to ensure weapon discharges are investigated, but with the Australian Police forces they are.
So a 9mm pistol or baton is going to be much better.
The problem is procedural, abuse will occur unless each discharge is investigated. Choice of weapon doesn't matter here.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
"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.
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?
If police can't subdue people with their bare hands and training, then they shouldn't be police.
Subdual is accomplished through pain deterrence; I.E. "I will keep hurting you until you stop resisting."
People on meth have wildly malfunctioning nervous systems, including specifically pain receptors.
Pain may not be a deterrent. Repeated impacts with a nightstick may not be a deterrent, even if such impacts do significant structural damage to the body. That's the 'joy' of chemical enhancement, be it narcotic or adrenal : You can be dead and just not know it yet.
A weapon that *overrides* the nervous system, OTOH, is nearly 100% effective at short term restraint.
If I go to a party and someone slips a narcotic in my drink, I'd rather be tazed by the police (whom I think are big cuddly blue bears that want to hug and dance with me) than to be shot with a bullet or beaten into unconsciousness and/or death because I was mentally incapable of following the officers' commands.
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."
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"
A gun isn't very good at subduing someone. If they run they know you won't shoot them. A gun might even make an officer more vulnerable to physical attack by tying up his hands when he has no justification to shoot an unarmed suspect. But in most cases the taser isn't used as a less-lethal substitute for a gun, but for the officer's hands. And hands are certainly less lethal than a taser.
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.
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
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.