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Tasers are likely preventing deaths
Posted in Company Blog by Mat Packer.
Currently, there is a great deal of attention being paid to the use of Tasers by police forces around the world. In the USA, we have two very divided camps. One side says that there have been no proven detrimental effects from the use of Tasers to subdue violent people and the other side says that every week a death is recorded that is attributable to the use of Tasers.
Closer to home, we have the NSW Police Service currently conducting a twelve month trial. The New South Wales Government is refusing to commit to key recommendation’s made in a report by the NSW Ombudsman. The report advocates a two-year ban on any further distribution of the stun gun to police and recommends another independent review of the weapon’s dangers.
So, what are the dangers? Sabin Russell from the San Francisco Chronicle writes:
When 50,000 volts of electricity from a Taser surge across the body, it can instantly incapacitate a person — more safely than a blow from a police baton or a blast of pepper spray, its manufacturer contends.
But cardiologists are concerned that, in certain cases, the device might also interrupt the rhythm of the human heart, throwing it into a potentially fatal chaotic state known as ventricular fibrillation. Rather than pump blood in sequence through its four chambers, a heart in ventricular fibrillation writhes uncontrollably. It is a common cause of sudden death.
Dr. Zian Tseng, a cardiologist at the University of California, believes Tasers are potentially dangerous because a jolt of electricity, at just the right moment in the heartbeat cycle, can trigger ventricular fibrillation.
He ought to know. He uses a precisely timed jolt to throw the hearts of his patients into ventricular fibrillation on a regular basis.
Tseng installs implantable electric defibrillators into the chests of heart patients who are at risk of sudden cardiac arrest. The devices are miniature versions of the electric paddles used to jolt a stalled heart back into its proper rhythm. Vice President Dick Cheney is the most prominent American with such a device implanted in his chest.
Before Tseng can wheel a patient out of the operating room, he must test the new defibrillator by stopping the heart, and watching to see if the life-saving implant does its job.
“There are vulnerable periods in the cardiac cycle, when shocks can cause dangerous arrhythmias,” Tseng said. Known as a T-wave on the heart monitor, the brief pause in pumping takes up about 3 percent of a heartbeat’s cycle. Tseng times his jolt of electricity for that moment, to stop a heart, so the defibrillator can automatically start it again.
People using Tasers, he said, risk jolting a person at precisely the wrong instant. “I think they are dangerous,” he said. “If you are shocking someone repeatedly, it becomes a bit like Russian roulette. At some point, you may hit that vulnerable period.”
Cardiologists also know that the window in which a jolt of electricity can halt a heart expands significantly when a patient is treated with certain drugs, or when the body is flooded with the fear hormone, adrenaline. Patients with heart problems are also more vulnerable to the condition.
Executives at Taser International are aware of the heart’s vulnerability to ventricular fibrillation, but they insist their device is safe. The electrical current used in an operating room to stop a heart is 30 times higher than that produced by a Taser, said Mark Kroll, an electrical engineer and board member of the Scottsdale, Ariz., firm. Medically induced fibrillation involves applying a current directly to the inside of the heart, he added, while a Taser’s current is applied to the clothing and skin.
“The current delivered by a Taser is too weak to induce ventricular fibrillation,” he said. Ventricular fibrillation (VF) is the most common cause of so called Cardiac Arrest in the general population. In fact, 85% of Cardiac Arrests are VF. The only way to return a persons heart rhythm to its normal rhythm is by using a defibrillator.
These days’ defibrillators are appearing in all sorts of places. Airports, Railway Stations Gyms, Health Clubs, many public places and even at your local watering hole. So why can’t police officers carry a defibrillator, either in there patrol car or carried on the same belt as the Taser. A defibrillator is currently available that weighs 495 grams and is 133mm x 126mm x 35 mm. The defibrillator is called Easyport and is currently used by bicycle paramedics in Victoria and South Australia.
There is obviously a lot of argument from both sides going around at the moment and I guess that the jury will be out for some time on this issue. Is it better to use a Taser or a gun to subdue a dangerous person? Personally, I think so but not at the cost of a life. If the risk can be mitigated by a police officer carrying a miniature defibrillator as well as the Taser I think it will go a long way to helping both sides of the argument.
Feel free to comment below.