Reply #20: I said I think they are a contributing factor.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

As often is poor health and heavy drug use, often stimulants and have pushed their hearts to extremes by running from police and fighting with the police and police dogs. When someone has taken huge amounts of a stimulant you can't say that the taser is the operative factor. Hard to give tasers all the blame when the suspect smoked 1 gram of crack. It would bet a fair number of these deaths are from positional asphyxia after arrest, of course the 600 lbs of cops aren't laying on them when the paramedics get there. Arrhythmia and dysrhythmia are often used interchangeably, that doesn't mean they are both correct. Again I think tasers are overused and don't draw the same investigation when they are used that a firearm does, which encourages more use. Having said that I would much rather be tased than hit with a night stick. I have posted a bunch of other threads on this recently in the gun and health forums.

David