Iraq - testing ground for the wild, whacky and downright dangerous

Remember how they said those high voltage taser guns were like, totally safe? And remember how all of a sudden people, even a police department, started suing the manufacturers because they had been linked with heart attacks and deaths of people that got zapped. And now each taser gun has unique identifying "flack" that is blasted out when you fire it so that whoever used it can be tracked down - and presumably held liable for the damage.

I can imagine the testing they did... get a bunch of animals and maybe a few super fit tough guys to volunteer for a zapping, get some medical opinions that its safe and then role it out. After all its a weapon, weapons don't have to be safe anyway, so what's the point? Maybe they did more testing than this but who is ultimately to say a taser is a safe thing to be zapping people with, never mind the potential benefits (compared with say, shooting the person full of lead). If such a device was being used for medical uses can you imagine it would have to endure some very rigorous testing and a hospital would leave it to life or death situations before using it.

Anyway, I'm not really surprised to read at Engadget that the military is thinking of rolling out a big microwave on wheels to effectively cook people, in a non-lethal kind of way, who are involved in some disturbance. Like the Taser the argument is it is better than shooting people and better than letting a disturbance get out of hand and potentially cause more problems. That's fine, if it's really safe... but I'm willing to guess that the kind of testing that has gone on for this device - on fit military volunteers - is not going to replicate its average in the field deployment situation. Iraqis men, women and children will become guinea pigs for this new device. If it doesn't work they'll suffer but are unlikely to be bringing lawsuits against the US. If it does work as planned the creators will be able to brag about how it was used so successfully in Iraq and avoid a bunch of really expensive testing at home.

Testing new equipment at times of war is not uncommon, heck we did it at Hiroshima and look what happened there. But personally I don't think we should be deploying stuff that we wouldn't roll onto our own streets and to me this looks like a really bad idea as there is a really fine and body specific line better causing extreme pain with radio energy and actually cooking someone's body parts to cause permanent damage - like cataracts and internal tissue damage.