Tasers can kill, U.S. study says.

By Derek Abma

Postmedia News

A new study that says Tasers do cause death in at least some instances is being hailed by its author as the first such peer-reviewed evidence of its kind.

But the maker of the stun guns, which are used by several Canadian police forces, is questioning the legitimacy of the study and the objectivity of the man behind it.

Douglas Zipes, a professor of cardiology at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, looked at eight different cases in which a person in the U.S. suffered a cardiac arrest after being Tasered, seven of which resulted in death.

He told Postmedia News the study — published online in the journal Circulation — is the first peer-reviewed study he knows to show definitively that being shocked with a Taser can cause death.

The cases he looked at were ones in which he was called as an expert witness on the effect the Taser.

“In the testimonies that I’ve given, when cross-examined by the Taser (lawyers), they would repeatedly say to me, ‘Well, Dr. Zipes, point to me to one peer-reviewed scientific article showing Taser produces cardiac arrest. And I could never do that because there never was one.

“Now there is one.”

Zipes studied various details of these cases, including accounts from police, medical responders and electronic cardiological data to determine that, in each of these cases, a Taser shock caused cardiac arrest.

The researcher said he is not calling for an end to Taser use by police, but is urging caution in its use.

“Law enforcement, anybody who uses Tasers, needs to be aware that cardiac arrest may occur,” he said. “Try to avoid a chest shot. . . . Know that after you’ve delivered the shock, if the individual is unconscious, non-responsive, this may be cardiac arrest and you may have to do something.”

There have been dozens of deaths in Canada of people who have been Tasered. One of the most high profile cases was of Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant who died after an altercation with RCMP officers at the Vancouver International Airport in 2007.

In this case, and others, police have said a state of “excited delirium” — characterized by a bizarre and violent behaviour, and which can also result in sudden death — is a more likely cause of death than the Taser.

“There’s a great deal of question as to whether there is an entity of excited delirium and whether it’s responsible (for deaths),” Zipes said. “You can postulate multiple diseases. Some of them have high alcohol levels. Some of them have other heart disease. But you have to say that whatever it is caused the cardiac arrest exactly at the same time the Taser shock was delivered, and that coincidence starts to stretch the imagination.”

Steve Tuttle, a spokesman with Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Taser International Inc., which makes Tasers, questioned the legitimacy of the study, given Zipes’ role as a witness in many court cases.

“Clearly, Dr. Zipes has a strong financial bias based on his career as an expert witness,” Tuttle was quoted as saying in the New York Times.

Zipes acknowledged he gets paid $1,200 US an hour for time spent as a witness in these cases, but added: “There is no incentive to write a paper — for which I did not get paid — that educates people about the use of Taser and its potential for cardiac arrest. . . . When you cannot attack the science, you attack the scientist.”

dabma@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/derekabma

PN 5/01/12 15:42:07