STUN GUN STUDY SUSPECT

The mak­ers of Taser elec­tri­cal weapons have always main­tained that their stun guns are 100% safe. The fam­i­lies of the 100 or so peo­ple who’ve died since 1999 after get­ting shocked tend to have a dif­fer­ent point of view. So the Justice Department decided to fund an aca­d­e­mic study, to finally fig­ure out whether the Tasers were really “non-​​lethal” or not.
But the report’s authors seem to have already made up their minds. One of the key advis­ers on the half-​​million dol­lar effort has been moon­light­ing as a paid con­sul­tant for the stun gun man­u­fac­turer, USA Today reveals. And the pro­fes­sor lead­ing the study wrote, before his research got under­way, that “Tasers do not kill.”

Robert Stratbucker, a physi­cian from Omaha, is among four paid advis­ers to a two-​​year study that is being launched by John Webster, a pro­fes­sor of bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing at the University of Wisconsin. Webster’s appli­ca­tion to the Justice Department for a research grant last fall cited Stratbucker as an adviser, but it did not men­tion that Stratbucker… has worked with Taser as the Arizona com­pany has touted its stun guns… Taser, whose Web site lists Stratbucker as the company’s med­ical direc­tor [he even has a taser​.com e-​​mail address — ed.] , has cited his research in pro­mot­ing its stun guns…
Stratbucker’s pres­ence is “a poten­tial con­flict of inter­est,” said Hubert Williams, pres­i­dent of the Police Foundation, a think tank here that researches law enforce­ment issues and wants fed­eral money to do its own stun-​​gun study. “We wouldn’t do it.”

THERE’S MORE: Slate’s today touted the Stratbucker con­nec­tion as a USA Today “scoop.” But Taser’s home­town paper, the Arizona Republic, was on the doctor’s case back in January.

May 12th, 2005 | Less-lethal | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.