It had seemed to the casual observer that Bausch & Lombh had seen the worst of the bad press surrounding the recent fusarium keratitis outbreak. However, the Wall St. Journal reported today that doctors and eye clinicians had known nine years ago that multipurpose solutions were prone to health risks.

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Now that the most recent session of the Florida Legislature is history, it’s interesting to note that the Florida Legislature passed a bill restricting the use of Taser stun guns to situations in which subjects are resisting and pose a danger of flight or harm. They also mandated special training for those who wil use the controversial weapon.

Bowing to public pressure, Bausch & Lomb will take out ads today in the nation’s leading newspapers asking people not to use their eye contact solution ReNu with MoistureLoc until an investigation into its safety is completed. The unprecedented move comes as a result of findings that the contact lens solution contains a fungus, Fusarium, that can lead to blindness. Bausch & Lomb said it is voluntarily implementing the withdrawal, which does not cover other company products or ReNu with MoistureLoc made in factories outside the United States.
The company stopped shipments of MoistureLoc in the United States on Monday when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed it was scrutinizing 109 reports of Fusarium keratitis infections in patients in 17 states over the past 10 months.

Implanted devices designed to shock the heart into a normal rhythm may not be as effective in women as they are in men, researchers said on Monday.
Researchers at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and the University of Connecticut evaluated five previous trials of Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and found that ICDs cut the risk of death by 24 percent in men compared with 12 percent in women. ICDs are stopwatch-sized devices placed in the chest to regulate a dangerously fast heart beat with a jolt of electricity.
However, the researchers are not sure why the difference between men and women.

There’s an excellent feature article published in the Fort Worth weekly concerning the controversial Taser stun gun. The article recounts the instances in which a Taser is used. One of the most compelling aspects of the article is the individual accounts of the circumstances in which people have been Tasered. This allegedly non-lethal stun gun has been used in non-violent situations such as when a 66 year old grandmother was honking her horn trying to park her car. By the way, she was in her own driveway at the time she was tasered. In spite of these accounts, the majority of police departments and of course, Taser International continue to insist that the weapons are safe and should be used liberally-all evidence to the contrary.

In the wake of Samuel Hair’s death in Fort Pierce, local community leaders are calling for the resignation of police chief Eugene Savage. They’re also calling for the firing of the police officer who fired the taser shot that killed Mr. Hair. In a February 27th letter to the City Manager, the leaders also asked for closer monitoring of those officers who are allowed to use the taser stun gun weapon.
I couldn’t agree more with this approach. Tasers are not being properly used because they’ve been aggressively marketed as a panacea for police officers. Taser International have made exaggerated claims concerning their utility and the police are responding to this marketing effort.

A 48-year-old Fort Pierce man is in critical condition after police shocked him with a Taser gun.
Investigators said the man asked police to take him to a mental facility. Police say he had been shocked twice in the leg.

Heart device maker Guidant Corp. said Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration found a deficiency in how the company is identifying quality problems at its St. Paul, Minn. cardiac rhythm management plant.

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A 22 year old female was tasered during a routine traffic stop. The police video shows the woman prior to the shooting as she was talking on her cellphone. The police officer tasered her for not complying with his request to get out of the vehicle. It’s a pretty gruesome video depiction of taser use.

Gwinnett County (GA) attorneys are blaming Taser International in the death of a jail inmate who died after being repeatedly shocked with a stun gun. The county, which has been sued by the family of Frederick Williams, filed a cross claim this week blaming Scottsdale, Arizona based Taser International for providing false training documents and not warning users that their stun guns could be lethal if used repeatedly. The court documents which were filed in US District Court in Atlanta, also say Taser International’s safety studies were biased because they were conducted by Taser paid researchers instead of independent scientists.