From the same Wikipedia article - a professional report suggests that “excited delerium” is “folk knowledge”, not real science, not real medical fact.
If Taser is suing coroners and winning, wouldn’t that suggest that the coroners are doing it wrong?
I know that CBC has done a great deal of reporting on Tasers, but my google-fu isn’t good enough to find the program that lists the times that Taser sued coroners. Here in General Questions, can I ask: cite please?
Are you abandoning your claim that Taser invented excited delirium? The American College of Emergency Physicians believes excited delirium syndrome exists. They even acknowledge it can be fatal. Taser also says that people die from drug overdoses and heart disease, does that make you question whether people die from drug overdoses and heart disease?
I understand that deaths proximal to Taser use are widely reported in Canada if they happen in Canada, is that evidence of causation? Does it mean that Tasers are regularly lethal
I know that the internet believes that Tasers are sold as “harmless.” Can you cite to Taser’s advertising that describes it as harmless? Can you cite to anything from a government that purchased Tasers that describes them as harmless? Do you have a cite that it is a form of russian roulette? (I still think that you are at causation at about 6 deaths. If there are 6 deaths in more than a decade, I don’t think those are 1 in six odds.)
Robert is a fantastic example of the rot at the core of the RCMP. The airport had its own ambulance service that could have seen Robert in seconds, but the RCMP called for an ambulance that would take a while to reach Robert. I’ll agree with you that law enforcement uses Tasers more than they should, but this doesn’t mean that Tasers are regularly lethal. (also, the 50,000 volts is what the Taser needs to create a spark through air, the actual voltage applied to people is significantly less.)
Go to Dr. Tseng’s testimony to the Braidwood Committee - it frequently gets reported wrong. He explained that he was the last member of his department at work when a newspaper called to ask whether Tasers could cause death. He took the call and told them that it could cause death, even though he hadn’t done research on the subject. After his opinion was published, Taser called him and offered to fund research. He turned down their offer, then began research. As you can see from the article, this order is misreported. But, Dr. Tseng gets you back to the opinion of Dr. Zipes, which gets you about 6 deaths. Again, not something that can be described as regular. I understand that Patti Gilman maintains what she describes as “A List of the Dead.” She adds people based on proximity, not causation. You can find people who remain on her list even though courts and juries have determined that Taser’s product was not a cause of death. It is trivially easy to find examples on the internet of people blaming Tasers as a cause of death; you can find one peer-reviewed article that suggests Tasers might be a cause of death in a small number of deaths.
Read the actual report. The RCMP was letting its officers diagnose excited delirium. The report correctly describes this as “folk knowledge” in the way that it was passed around the RCMP. It does not describe excited delirium syndrome as folk knowledge in the medical community.