Saturday, November 24, 2007

And let's be careful (with our terminology) out there.


Apparently, we have a whole new forensic syndrome to deal with when it comes to tasers:

Police say medical evidence shows that, without tasers, prolonged and dangerous struggles occur with people suffering from what they term “excited delirium.” It prompted the force to release new rules in August allowing officers to use tasers multiple times to more quickly gain control.

The RCMP define excited delirium as a potentially fatal “state of extreme mental and physiological excitement that is characterized by extreme agitation, hyperthermia, hostility, exceptional strength and endurance without apparent fatigue.”

"Excited delirium?" I'm sorry ... that's a new one on me. An explanation, if you will?

But the term “excited delirium” is not formally recognized by the World Health Organization nor the American Medical Association as an actual psychological or medical condition.

However, the condition is being used increasingly by coroners tasked with attributing causes of death among victims in police custody. David Evans, Ontario's regional supervising coroner for investigations, described it as a “forensic term” not a medical one.

“I think previous to the description of excited delirium, [it] was sometimes called custody death,” he said.

So that's "custody death." That's funny -- I always thought this was "custody death."

I'm so confused.

2 comments:

The Seer said...

Not to throw cold water on your rant about "excited delirium," but when's the last time you took a look at Kathy, Ross, Patrick, Dr. Roy, or, because before long I'm going to run out of space, the BT's in general. I think thiS means that,if you're a Christian, you have a moral duty to taser the BT's, to put them out of their pain.

Unknown said...

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the term "excited delirium" was coined by the head of the Taser company. And, no, it is NOT a recognised medical term.