Taser Zaps Critics - So Far

Zapping someone with 50,000 volts will never, ever, under any circumstances, help kill him. That's long been the assertion of executives at Taser International, Inc., makers of the controversial stun guns. Never mind the negative news coverage. Or the barrage of lawsuits. Or dozens and dozens of deaths that have allegedly been linked to police use of the weapons. Or the coroners' reports, for that matter. The company stands firm. And its defense, so far, has been surprisingly successful.

Taser International scored yet another legal victory when one such lawsuit was dismissed in Arizona last week. A slightly gloating press releasenotes:

This is the forty-fifth (45th) wrongful death or injury lawsuit that has been dismissed or judgment entered in favor of TASER International. TASER International has not lost any product liability lawsuit.

"We were very pleased that the court granted our motion for summary judgment and dismissed TASER International from this lawsuit," commented Doug Klint, Vice President and General Counsel of TASER International. "Our strategy of fighting this litigation with an aggressive defense continues to get results," continued Klint.

Another press release, shortly afterwards, was pleased to note that seven new studies of the effects of Tasers -- looking at different aspects of physiology including ECG, respiratory function, and acidosis
-- all confirmed the general safety of Taser devices. (The abstracts are available here.)

A
third press release reported, "Cleveland Clinic Study Demonstrates
TASER X26 Does Not Affect Short-Term Function of Implantable Pacemakers and Defibrillators", based on this report.

According to an investigation by CrunchGear, the company's "aggressive defense" really can be quite aggressive:

*In early 2006, Ruggieri published an article in the peer-reviewed Journal of the National Academy of Forensic Engineers. The study, “one of the few scientific studies of Taser’s electric jolt in which the company did not participate,” as The Arizona Republic put it, concluded that Tasers were far more powerful than the company acknowledged and that the devices are capable of causing fatal heart rhythms. Not taking the criticism lightly, the company sued Ruggieri for defamation, claiming he lacked the expertise to make such judgments, even though his story passed through the rigors of the peer-review screening process. *

Or take the company's response to an Amnesty International report, which had the temerity to suggest that "some medical experts question whether the Taser shocks may exacerbate a risk of heart failure."
Taser International fired back:

Anyone living in the real world in which law enforcement officers worldwide have to make split-second life or death decisions knows that Amnesty
International's report and position is out of step with the needs of law enforcement concerning our proven life-saving technology.
Furthermore, we are particularly disappointed by Amnesty
International's complete disregard for the health and safety of the men and women of law enforcement who put their lives on the line every day.

Taser International adopts these tactics because they know just how much is at stake. If they can win public acceptance, electric shock weapons have a bright future. The technology is moving fast and it will soon move far beyond short-range single-shot weapons used at present to much longer range devices with new capabilities for warfare as well as law enforcement. When that happens, you won't just be looking at a few thousand units here and there, but whole arsenals of shock weapons.

If Taser loses the 46th lawsuit, or the 47th, it could all be at risk.

These is a much bigger picture here, too. Taser is the first high-tech nonlethal weapon to be used on a large scale. In the coming years we will see a wide range of new weapons, which, like powerful electric shocks, sound dangerous to the layman: the microwave-like Active Denial System, the laser flashbang Pulsed Energy Projectile, acoustic weapons, dazzlers, new chemical nonlethals....
All of these will not just need technological development, they will also have to travel the same path of legal and medical challenge as the
Taser. If Taser fails, then new nonlethal weapon programs will face an uncertain future.

(Note: Yes, technically it should be TASER rather than Taser, as it is apparently an acronym for Thomas A Swift's Electric Rifle derived from this story from 1911).