To start, I can make a parallel with cigarettes and lung cancer. In the 1960s, people started to think that cigarettes might lead to lung cancer. It's very difficult to prove that one particular individual who died because of lung cancer did so because he smoked cigarettes. But on the other hand, it's possible to prove with an epidemiological approach that smoking cigarettes increases the risk of developing cancer.
That's what I tried to show: that there's an increased risk of dying after being tasered when you have heart disease. For this vulnerable population with heart disease, with other medical conditions, I think there's an increased risk of dying.
I think we should try to minimize the use of tasers. It's so easy. It's like a mute command on your remote control for your TV; if you're tired of listening to a guy, you push a button and that's it.
That's not what we want to do. We want to use the taser when somebody is going to hurt somebody else or is going to hurt himself and really needs the restraint. I understand that in some circumstances you need to restrain some people, and my colleague here who has worked in hospitals can tell us more about other types of restraints that are used for people who are agitated.
As a first line, I think we should try to reduce as much as possible the use of the taser. That's my point.