Skip to main content

UW prof will test Tasers on pigs: He suspects drugs, not shocks, caused 70 deaths

The recent controversy over whether Taser guns can kill justifies the use of pigs in a study, said a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher.

Over the past three years, more than 70 people in North America have died after being shocked by Tasers, according to the human rights group Amnesty International. But John Webster questions whether Tasers were really the cause of death. Many of those people were high on drugs, namely cocaine, argued the emeritus professor of biomedical engineering.