Mission Statement - De-Spinning the Pro-Taser Propaganda

Yeah right, 'Excited Delirium' my ass...

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The primary purpose of this blog is to provide an outlet for my observations and analysis about tasers, taser "associated" deaths, and the behaviour exhibited by the management, employees and minions of Taser International. In general, everything is linked back to external sources, often via previous posts on the same topic, so that readers can fact-check to their heart's content. This blog was started in late-2007 when Canadians were enraged by the taser death of Robert Dziekanski and four others in a short three month period. The cocky attitude exhibited by the Taser International spokespuppet, and his preposterous proposal that Mr. Dziekanski coincidentally died of "excited delirium" at the time of his taser-death, led me to choose the blog name I did and provides my motivation. I have zero financial ties to this issue.



Friday, September 17, 2010

Amusing blog hit of the week

Ventura, California arrived from google.com on "www.Excited-Delirium.com: Who is "Dr." Mark W. Kroll" by searching for dr. Mark W. Kroll Expert witness.
20 minutes ago

"Expert witness"

2 comments:

Kate said...

Checking out Mark Kroll, I find that he made a lot from his TASR employee stock options in 2004 and continues to make money despite the stock slump.

For example, TASR Securities Form F4 11/12/04 shows acquisition of 3333 shares at $0.65 and 13334 at $0.75 with same-day divestiture at $54.06 for a net profit of $888,851. Cumulative profit seems to have been about $2,475,947, though F4 4/29/04 records a sale of 9000 shares at $81.12 where the acquisition price isn’t clear and may have come from a split.

Forbes magazine’s profile at
http://people.forbes.com/profile/mark-w-kroll/39056
covers Kroll’s previous four years of total compensation from Taser International
2006 $225,641; 2007 $268,035; 2008 $347,214; and 2009 $339,549; for a total of $1,180,439
So conservatively Kroll has probably made at least $ 3.6 MM from his connection to Taser. If he, as a biomedical engineer-inventor has some patents, the amount might be greater.

So what does Kroll tell the Canadian Medical Association Journal on September 23, 2008 about his links to Taser?
As the lead author of a letter from the TASER International Scientific and Medical Advisory Board countering a Canadian study that found Taser shocks caused cardiac problems in pigs, Kroll declares the following modest-sounding competing interest, and does not acknowledge being a Director of TI.

Competing Interests: Mark Kroll holds stock in TASER International. He has served as a consultant for TASER International and has received travel assistance from TASER International for attending medical conferences. (references to other authors deleted for brevity.)

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/179/7/677-a
in answer to http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/abstract/178/11/1451?ijkey=e9208d871f2a60a95dc7b3e6fa4617cafbcad2a7&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

Excited-Delirium.com said...

He has a nasty habit of failing to disclose, or failing to fully disclose, his extremely close ties to Taser International.

Thankfully, he and his opinions have become of negative value to Taser International. And that may explain why he has gone fairly quiet in recent months (since, oh, roughly 1st of May 2010 - the date when Taser International walked away from Kroll's discredited argument that tasers cannot affect the heart).

It's funny and tragic that his level of "expertise" is such that I, a layman in such things, can point out his technical errors.