[Newsbot]

Title: Taser International challenges Braidwood inquiry
Category: Business
Posted By: hurley_108
Date: 2010-07-05 13:57:45
Canadian

[Robair]

Unfair huh. Tell it to the dead guy, we aren't interested.

[bootlegga]

Disgusting! Money is worth more than lives to these assholes. This is a perfect example of why those awful leftists criticize capitalism.

The company's conduct regarding probes into these 'non-lethal' weapons is atrocious.

$1:

For example, when an Ohio medical examiner ruled that three men's deaths were in part caused by the effects of Tasers, the company convinced a judge that any suggestion the Taser was to blame should be removed from the autopsy findings.

I'd love to see this cause the company go into bankruptcy (though I'd have some empathy for the rank and file employees). I think even those greedy assholes at Enron have more ethics than these fuckers.

[samkorn]

I suppose if it was in your interests, and you had enough money to hire the best lawyers, you could make a convincing case that the world was indeed FLAT, that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are REAL and, yes Margaret, that there IS indeed a tooth fairy!!

No, stupid, everybody knows that Tazers don't kill; people do!!

[Khar]

Worth keeping in mind that a large portion of the studies done in this field are, in fact, done by TASER officials or done by activists, both which enter hoping for a specific result. The Braidwood inquiry was only ever advisory, as it said in the article -- while he has good points, it also is only a step closer to having a real thorough juror'd article (ie submitted to a reputable journal) being created, as funded by the government and done by an independent party, or at least, those which are available were not funded well enough to be considered broad and far-reaching. I am not disputing Braidwood -- I am saying that I want more done to solidify out understanding of this area of weaponry once and for all, rather than leaving it a largely nebulous topic of repeatedly clashing heads which only continues to confuse the issue and leave loopholes where there should be none for either side.

I do not support TASER and their actions here -- I am not exactly happy that this has been brought up and it's more or less clear it's been done due to the financial backlash this has caused -- but if this does push more research into the area to better understand what happens, why it happens and how it happens than it could lead to a far more important result. That result being firm evidence of a TASER's effect, and hence the effect of similar weapons, on humans, which would be strong evidence to take the legislation in the right direction.

The problem is that I can pull out links myself from members of the medical profession who lean towards both sides, of members of the legal who lean both ways, biomedical engineers, toxicologists, pathologists, etc, etc, from years past now since this is not the first time that the argument is butting heads, but none of these groups got substantial or necessary fundinging to do much more than a survey on what has happened in the past.

[Proculation]

To people criticizing the Taser, I always say: it's much less deadly than a gunshot. The company should only add a warning like "do not taze a person 10 times in a row" and change the training courses of the officers.