May 4, 2021 • 47 mins
Robert is joined by Ben Bowlin to discuss Excited Delirium.
FOOTNOTES:
- https://www.brookings.edu/blog/how-we-rise/2020/08/10/how-excited-delirium-is-misused-to-justify-police-brutality/
- https://www.startribune.com/patients-sedated-by-ketamine-were-enrolled-in-hennepin-healthcare-study/486363071/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9645173/
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05805-7
- http://www.missouriena.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/White-Paper-Report-on-Excited-Delirium-Syndrome.pdf
- https://www.floridatoday.com/in-depth/news/2019/10/24/excited-delirium-custody-deaths-gregory-edwards-melbourne-taser/2374304001/
- https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/excited-delirium-and-the-dual-response-preventing-in-custody-deaths
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/chokehold-police-excited-delirium/2020/07/17/fe907ec8-c6bc-11ea-b037-f9711f89ee46_story.html
- https://www.startribune.com/hcmc-doctor-says-his-police-taser-work-saves-live-but-others-see-conflict-of-interest/509447402/?refresh=true
- https://www.startribune.com/after-conflict-of-interest-concerns-hcmc-to-sever-agreement-with-taser-manufacturer/511528142/
- https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/tasers-delirium-defense/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Genocide ship. Okay, fuck um Sophie helped me out here.
I was just shouting genocide. That's not a good way
to open a podcast. Um No, that's basically the same
as shouting genocide. Um. This is Behind the Bastards in
the podcast not once been introduced like an actual professional.
(00:26):
One time you did it like so proci But you
were doing a bit. Oh, I was doing a bit.
That must have been the ascid episode. I've forgotten which
episode was the won't tell me? Will tell me your series?
Of Which episode do you think Robert was fully on
acid for when we recorded? It's one of the older episodes. Yeah,
(00:48):
I mean, and if you're really really Behind the Bastards
fan trying to figure out which one I was just
fucking blazed on two c I for. But that's a
story for another day. This is Behind the Bastards podcast,
worst people all the history. Tell you all about him?
My guest today, Mr Ben Bolan, Ben, how are you doing?
(01:08):
I'm so excited, you know, guys, it's it's it's a
wild time. I snuck into this office where I'm sitting
in the darkness at turn Off Video because wifi' is weird,
because everything is kind of terrible in general. Uh, but uh,
you know, it's a it's a bright light, uh, to
to be together with you guys today. I wanted to
(01:30):
tell you I was talking Robert was Sophie earlier. I
really enjoyed the episode you guys did on the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion. I thought that was a
protocol stand. I'm really sad that that doesn't have his
(01:52):
video on because I would have loved seen your face too.
Oh yeah, yeah, because I thought it was stuffed people.
UM need to know about the genesis or the evolution
of that kind of stuff and just how dangerous it is.
So I wanted to just shout out that episode in particular. Um,
(02:16):
and I do wish I had I wish I had
the video on. I think all three of us are
far flung across the country right now, but it's really
great to see you guys scattered to the winds. Yeah,
it's great to kind of see you and your Mark
Ruffalo icon. Yeah, Ben, this is actually speaking of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This has been a
(02:36):
great week for genocide, or I should say this has
been a great week for recognizing historical genocides media. Yeah,
well what what where? This has nothing to do with
the episode, but I think it's nothing pretty rad. Joe Biden,
recognized for the was the first American president last week
to recognize the genocide of the Armenians that started in
(02:58):
nineteen fifteen and hasn't really ended by a lot of accounts, um,
which no other president had the had the cojones to
do up until now. And the best thing that well,
not the best thing about it, but a rad thing
about it, is that urda One, the dictator of Turkey,
um shot back at the United States by threatening to
recognize the genocide of the Native Americans that the US committed.
(03:22):
And so we're now in this it's like Cold war
nuclear brinksmanship, but with the recognition of historic crimes against humanity.
And I'm yeah, yeah, let's keep recognizing genocides. Yeah, like, hey,
watch out, buddy. I might also start telling the truth
to school children. Yeah, I'll talk about all the horrible things.
(03:45):
You're cut good, let's throw be in here, fuck it,
let's recognize all the genocides. Um. So yeah, this is
actually one of those weird times where like stupid political
dick measuring is seeming seems to be objectively Pause. Now
everybody's talking about different genocides committed by imperial powers, which
(04:05):
I'm supportive of, so good, good speaking of genocide, Ben, Wow,
you can make a case that American policing has a
lot in common with different genocidal regimes throughout history, namely
in the use of state power to oppress specific racial
(04:25):
and religious groups. M m m m. That's kind of
what we're talking about. Not not not quite, but we're
talking about Have you ever heard of the term excited delirium? Ben,
I have actually heard of the term excited delirium. Though,
I am going to be honest with you, Robert Sylphe,
(04:45):
I am not caught up with the textbook definition there.
What are we talking so excited delirium? In short, just
to introduce the concept is a lot of doctors would
argue is a faked disease invented by police to justify murder.
And that's what we're talking about today. Now the story
gets much more complicated and shady than that. This is
(05:08):
a wheel really gonna piss you off? Um, But I
think I should start um with kind of the most
recent touch point for the term excited delirium, which was
the killing of George Floyd by now convicted murderer Derek
Chauvin UM, formerly a police officer. When Derek Chauvin put
his knee in his entire body weight on George Floyd's
(05:28):
neck for like eight minutes or so, uh, the other
cops present with him knew that something was wrong. One officer,
a fellow named Lane, asked Chauvin should we roll him
on his side. Chauvin declined, saying no, staying put where
we got him. Officer Lane then said, I am worried
about excited delirium or whatever. Now, first off, that's a
(05:49):
very casual or whatever or whatever. Right, yes, whatever. Whenever
somebody adds or whatever at the end of a sentence,
that means they don't care. That's like when somebody adds
for you at the end of a compliment that means
they don't like you. Yeah, it's it's Can you imagine
(06:09):
like going into the doctor and being like, yeah, your
kidneys are probably shutting down or whatever, like you you
would you would not feel great about that doctor. Yeah. Um.
So the way he used it, excited delirium may kind
of seem like a nonsense term to you, even if
you are a medical professional. I know we have a
number listening, because most doctors do not recognize excited delirium
(06:30):
as a thing. If you don't know the history I'm
about to go over today, that term probably flew over
your head. Is just a piece of cop jargon. Um,
someone who isn't a doctor trying to diagnose a man
struggling to breathe. But the reality of what that term
means and how it's used is actually much more sinister
than that. You might be aware that the initial press
release the Minneapolis Police sent out after Floyd's death was
(06:51):
man dies after medical incident during police interaction, um, which
is yeah, medical and sid it. I mean technically that's
like you shoot somewhat to death and you're like, well,
he had a medical incident as a result of the
lack of blood in his body, and it's like, that's
not inaccurate, but let's tell THEO. But anyway, you're probably
(07:14):
aware that Chauvin's defense attorney, in a constellation of right
wing bad faith actors, blamed Mr. Floyd's death on a
drug overdose. What you might not be aware of is
that the term excited delirium is more or less an
invented condition created mostly by a mixture of cops and
the Axon Corporation who make tasers in order to blame
mostly black men murdered by the police for their own deaths.
(07:36):
The whole story of this is bug fuck and it
will make you want to do things that put the
burning of the Third Precinct to shame. Um. The most
immediate precursor to excited delirium, the modern term was something
called Bell's mania, and Bell's mania was first described in
eighteen forty nine by Dr Luther beav Luther V. Bell
in a publication with the no ship real name, The
(07:59):
American Journal of Insanity. I mean, do the page numbers
go sequentially or like, how how weird are they getting
with it? You know? And then I guess it's a
pretty boring journal. I kind of want to put out
a journal that just cut it, that's just titled You're
(08:21):
not gonna believe this fucking ship just weird physics and
deep sea fish wild right, Yes, yes, And there's like
always one article about poop, just so we can keep
it on the nose enough. So Luther Bell published an
article in the American Journal of Insanity based on his
work at the psychiatric ward at the Clean Hospital in Boston.
(08:44):
He observed forty patients admitted with what he called fever
in delirium, and noted that many of them went from
experiencing hallucinations, agitation, and fever to death within several weeks
of admission. Now Bell was taking notes on a very
real phenomenon, or at least a series of different aminons
that kind of presented in similar ways. The most likely
cause from most of the symptoms he was observing was
(09:06):
basically a lack of antipsychotic medications, which didn't exist at
the time he was doing his work. When those were
developed in the nineteen fifties, Bell's mania grew markedly less
common as a diagnosis. Doctors today now recognized that most
of Bell's patients who died were likely suffering not from
any kind of mania, but from infectious or autoimmune encephalitis,
(09:27):
something that also became much easier to recognize and treat
in the early nineteen twenties. These were a lot of
people who are put in institutions with poor sanitary standards.
They died as a result of that, but because they
were kind of acting erratic and agitated and you know,
shrieking and stuff. He just kind of like, oh, this
is some sort of mania, right. The realities they have
fucking encephalitis in most cases, and um antipsychotic medications would
(09:49):
have dealt with most of the rest of the things.
But at the time, you know, Bell is not a
bad guy here, He's he's doing the best or not
to my knowledge based on what I can read, he
seems like he's doing the best he can to diagnose
the symptom and he just gets it wrong because it's
sucking eighteen fifty and no one knew anything, you know, right,
this is also people forget you know, we put um there.
(10:09):
There are people who have done such excellent, meaningful work
in the world of medicine, but we forget that medicine
as an institution has these deep systemic problems. Like what
was the guy's name, Samuel Weiss, the guy who got
the ship beat out of him for asking doctors to
wash their hands. Yeah, that was a huge controversy. So
(10:34):
I'm like, I I know, like there, I love that
you said bad faith actors, man, because there are people
who are working in good faith assiduously with the best
information they have at the time. So I feel like
what you're saying about Dr Luther Bell is that he's
not trying to be a dick, right and he not
(10:57):
to knowledge. Yeah, not not to what we what we
understand from the record. And uh, I would I would
ask you, you know, I know we're going somewhere with this,
but I want to think about this like one of
the big questions because I think I see where we're
going here, Robert. One of the big questions is how
would he feel about the way the successor of his
(11:20):
ideas being used? Right? Yeah, And I don't know enough
about Bell to tell you that, um, but it's it's
it's going to go to some unexplained, unexpected places. He certainly,
I don't think saw this coming when he was he
was doing his best to kind of diagnose what he
thought was a single syndrome. Um And kind of that
story I just told Bell diagnosed of this mania in
(11:42):
the eighteen fifties, and then in the nineteen fifties, because
of better medications, it goes away. That would probably be
the end of the story of Bell's mania if it
weren't for a friend of the pod cocaine. Yes, in
the eighties cocaine. In seventies, cocaine became markedly more common
as a drug of abuse. Uh and in nineteen eighty five,
(12:04):
in particular, Miami was rocked by a sudden spate of
deaths among black female sex workers. Thirty two women in
total died, and upon initial examination, their deaths seemed inexplicable.
The only hint medical examiners in police had was the
fact that they all had some amount of cocaine and
other drugs in their system. Charles Wetley, a forensics pathologist, decided,
(12:26):
based on nothing really, that a combination of cocaine use
and sexual intercourse had killed the women. Whatley decided that
with chronic cocaine use quote, the male of the species
becomes psychotic and the female of the species dies in
relation to sex, which is an incredible It's the coke
(12:47):
and fucking that's killing them. It makes men crazy and
it makes women die. Wow. Well, and this is nineteen
eighty five, right, Bell had we have an excuse for
him getting stuff wrong. It's eighteen fifty people most of
medicine involved tax saws than Charles Whatley. There's no excuse
to be saying this ship um he wrote, quote, my
(13:10):
gut feeling is that this is a terminal event that
follows chronic use of crack cocaine affecting the nerve receptors
in the brain. What Lee started using the term excited
delirium to refer to this deadly cocaine fueled mania he
was pretty sure had to exist. Of course he was
fucking wrong. Better medical examiners and detectives looked into the deaths,
(13:30):
exhumed a number of bodies and found that the women
had all been exphyxiated by a serial killer. Excited delirium
had not caused their deaths. But Whatley was off to
the races now, and the condition he'd more or less
invented provided a perfect scapegoat for cops who were increasingly
getting flak overall the black people they murdered in custody.
So that's and and Whatley really pulls back to excited
(13:52):
delirium to say, like, I'm not the first guy recognizing this.
You know, there's a history of the medical uh and
it went away in the nineteen fifties, but then cocaine
brought it back act And this is you know, you
can't divorce this entirely from the War on drugs, Right,
You've got Reagan and the White House. People are starting
to flip out about the dangers of cocaine and crack.
In particular, crack is you know, more associated with the
(14:13):
used by by use for people who aren't white and rich,
so it gets really demonized, and Wetley provides a way
to blame people for their own deaths when in the
case like the thing that the name excited delirium comes
from a bunch of female black sex workers getting murdered
by a serial killer, and Wetley's immediate jump is like, no,
it must be their fault. You know, he'd like completely
(14:34):
misses what it actually happened. Yeah, yeah, it's real fucked up.
It's mind boggling to me because this is something that
is that is new information. The idea that one could
take this meta level of victim blaming, like to the extreme,
it's over nine thousand level of victim blaming and then
(14:55):
say uh, and then have it been picked up as
a convenient cause. I mean, you know, we've always all
of us actually on the shows that and that hang
out together and actual friends were all very well aware
of the the problems with the official narrative of the
crack cocaine epidemic. But you know, it's like the big question, uh,
(15:18):
the big question about arms races too, right, like who's
manufacturing the guts? Right, Who's who's growing the coca plants?
Because it's certainly not someone in like a you know,
Los Angeles. Uh. So it feels like it feels like
this is beyond incompetence. I would argue, it feels like
this guy is intentionally skipping some cognitive steps to find
(15:44):
this interesting. Yeah, we're we're gonna be talking about wet
Ley a bit later in the episode, so keep it.
Put a pin in that one, ben So got it.
The excited delirium diagnosis spreads like wildfire after Since there
were also an awful lot of cocaine overdoses in this period,
very few people noticed anything fishy. One group of researchers
(16:06):
in nineteen ninety seven, writing for the Journal of Forensic Science,
did decide to investigate the troubling rise and excited delirium deaths.
Quote from a registry of all cocaine related deaths in
Dade County, Florida, from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen ninety
fifty eight. Excited delirium deaths were compared with a hundred
and twenty five victims of accidental cocaine overdose without excited
(16:27):
delirium compared with controls e d d s. Excited delirium
deaths were more frequently black, male, and younger. They were
less likely to have a low body mass index, and
more likely to have died in police custody, to have
received medical treatment immediately before death, to have survived for
a longer period, to have developed hyperthermia, and to have
died in summer months. In other words, most accidental cocaine
(16:49):
toxicity deaths were of white people who died suddenly, generally
not near police, because they were partying and doing a
bunch of cocaine right, and they just dropped dead suddenly
because their heart blows up. Right. Meanwhile, black excited delirium
cocaine overdose deaths were nearly all black people who had
been restrained by law enforcement immediately prior to their death.
The study also noted that these excited delirium cocaine overdoses
(17:13):
tended to have much less cocaine in their system than
the white cocaine overdoses, so these are all getting blamed
on cocaine. But the excited delirium deaths are overwhelmingly black,
overwhelmingly involved police use of force, and they have a
lot less cocaine in their systems than the people who
are just dying of cocaine good stuff. Does it add
up right, say the quiet part out loud, Yes, Yeah,
(17:36):
it's It was pretty obvious to the to the researchers
paying attention from the beginning what was happening. But again
most people don't really catch on at this stage. Now,
if you can read between the lines just a little bit,
the picture is very clear. Cops were arresting black people
for drug possession and restraining them, Like Derek Chauvin. A
lot of these cops restrained their suspects in a way
that caused death. Then they blamed that death on cocaine
(17:59):
and wrote the deaths off as excited delirium cocaine overdoses.
Dtor Michael baden Of, a prominent forensic pathologist who studies
deaths in police custody and was once the chief medical
Examiner for New York City, explained to Brookings, quote, this
is the germination of excited delirium. The same people who
did these prostitution deaths now applied excited delirium to cocaine
(18:20):
users in Miami and people who died while being subdued
by police. By the late nineteen nineties, good doctors had
started to realize what was going on, and a series
of studies were published analyzing all these excited delirium deaths.
It became increasingly clear that the key commonality in most
of these deaths was not cocaine or any behavior on
the part of the deceased, but the fact that they
(18:41):
had been put in police custody and that less lethal
weapons like mace or taser's had been used on them.
One analysis and the Canadian Medical Association Journal found quote
in all twenty one cases of unexpected death associated with
excited delirium, the deaths were associated with restraint for violent
agitation and hyperactivity, with a person either in a prone
position eighteen people eighty six percent or subjected to pressure
(19:04):
on the neck three people fourteen percent. All those who
died had suddenly lapsed into tranquility shortly after being restrained.
The excited delirium was caused by a psychiatric disorder in
twelve people fifty seven percent, and by cocaine induced psychosis
in eight percent, thirty eight and eight people, thirty eight percent,
eighteen people, eighty six percent were in police custody when
(19:25):
they died. Four nineteen percent had been sprayed with mace,
and heart disease was found in another four At autopsy,
the blood level of cocaine and those whose excited delirium
was cocaine induced was similar to levels found in recreational
cocaine users and lower than levels found in people who
died from cocaine intoxication. Now, it's hard to know the
precise scope of the problem, but excited delirium deaths are
(19:48):
based on the evidence we have extremely common. Eleven percent
of all deaths and police custody in Maryland are attributed
to excited delirium. In the last decade, at least fifty
three people have died in custom in Florida. Some council
were like eighty five and we're blamed on what was
more or less a fake cause of death, excited delirium. Today,
law enforcement officers are routinely taught in training that excited
(20:10):
delirium is a condition characterized by sudden aggression and distress,
generally brought on by the use of illegal substances and
often ending in sudden death. Excited delirium is not recognized
as a thing by the American Medical Association, the American
Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, or the European Society
of Emergency Medicine, which represents doctors in thirty countries. It
(20:33):
is not listed in the diagnosis in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders the d s M five.
As far as I can tell, only two organizations of
physicians recognize it as a thing, the American College of
Emergency Physicians and its British counterpart. And the story of
why that is is pretty shady. But before we get
(20:55):
into that, you know what else is shady, Ben, the
products and services support this podcast. We are back, and
I've just promised been that that um, this is going
to get a lot worse, uh so much worse. Um
And I'm making that promise to all of you. By
(21:16):
the end of this again, you'll be thinking about crimes, um,
which is you know, always always the goal here at
behind the bastards, uh, make you think about crimes, theoretical
minecraft crimes. So we're talking about I mentioned earlier, basically
all the vast majority of like reputable international medical organizations
(21:40):
where it's like a bunch of doctors and nurses and stuff. Uh,
do not recognize excited delirium as a thing. That d
s M does not recognize it as a thing, But
the American College of Emergency Physicians in its British counterpart
do And the why of that is a very shady story.
But before we get into that really quickly, maybe not
so quickly, I want to at least analyze the supposed
features of this condition that most doctors don't believe exists.
(22:02):
According to the American College of Emergency Physicians, excited delirium
is characterized by quote, bizarre behavior generating phone calls to police.
So if the cops get called on you, that's a
sign you might have excited delirium. Um. Next ship, Yeah,
Next is failure to respond to police presence, and continued
(22:25):
struggle despite restraint. The syndrome, apparently in Taos, individuals with
superhuman strength and makes them impervious to pain. If you're thinking, boy,
it seems like people are using medical jargon to justify
racism and brutality. You're right, that is very much out. Yeah,
it's nice but terrible. Everyone who resists has an illness
(22:47):
that kills them. So if they resist and we beat
them to death, it's their illness that made them resist,
the police that killed them, not us beating them to death.
That's cop logic. Oh, you know, the whole time we
were on the break, this was making me think of
you know, I can't be the only person in the
crowd today thinking this makes me think of the way,
(23:07):
like hysteria got described as a legit medical condition, right yeah,
but while um skipping ahead a little bit. While hysteria
was often at least treated by you know, vibrators, um,
excited delirium is treated with tasers, you also said. You
also said as stute listeners will notice you use the
(23:30):
phrase less lethal instead of the entirely misleading phrase non lethal. Right, No,
there is uh actually no such thing as a non
lethal weapon. Um. If it's a weapon, it can kill people.
It might be hard to kill people, but it will
kill them. Um if you if you really go at it.
We should probably lay at a few specific cases of
(23:51):
excited delirium deaths to explain just how often like this
diagnosis is applied. One A good example is the case
of Gregory Lloyd Edwards, a thirty eight year old U. S.
Army veteran with PTSD who was exhibited. He was agitated
and aggressive and stuff. You know. He was dealing with
some ship when he was arrested. In order to quote
(24:12):
unquote restrain him, police beat tasted, pepper sprayed and strapped
him into a restraint chair at the Brevard County Jail.
From an article by Florida Today. Quote when deputies found
Edwards unresponsive in his cell at the Brevord County Jail
about twenty five minutes after their confrontation with him ended,
he was strapped in a restraint chair, his hands cuffed
behind his back, with a fine mesh spithood over his
(24:32):
head and pepper spray still on his face. Notwithstanding his
restraint was deemed to be of secondary importance when Breford's
medical examiner, Dr Sajid Kaiser established a cause of death.
According to the autopsy report, Edwards died of excited delirium
and complications due to hyperactive and violent state with subsequent restraint.
His widow, Kathleen Edwards, was both perplexed and frustrated by
(24:55):
Kwaiser's found finding sitting in a cracker barrel restaurant with
her small daughter. She said she never heard of the
term before. What is that? Like? I know what delirium is,
and I know what being excited is, But what is
excited delirium? How does that kill you? That's a good question.
Eighty five people in Florida have died from excited delirium
over the last ten years. Florida Today to Day review
(25:17):
of those deaths, which took place from two thousand nine
to two thousand nineteen, to try and analyze just how
it was applied. They note that medical reports for deaths
and police custody are quote almost exclusively. The only places
where the term apply appears in medical reports throughout the state,
so the only almost the only time the diagnosis of
excited delirium is given is when people have died in
(25:39):
police custody. Most of these cases did involve illegal drugs,
usually cocaine or methamphetamine, but use of force by law
enforcement was just as common. Sixty excited delirium deaths in
Florida involved police use of force. In another fifteen percent
of cases, it was unclear whether or not police used force.
(25:59):
Of excited delirium deaths are men. Thirty six percent of
Florida's eighty five excited delirium deaths were black men. While
seventy percent of excited delirium deaths involved some sort of
sim of sim of stimulant narcotic, All but one of
the deaths that did not involve drugs involved use of
force by law enforcement from Florida Today quote. One such
(26:20):
case took place on February ninth, the two eighteen, when
twenty year old Aaron Parker was reportedly found naked, bleeding
and sweating profusely, and lying in the medium of a
Tallahassee street. Police tried to handcuff Parker and admit him
under the Marchmon Act, the drug abuse equivalent of the
Baker Act. The Tallahassee Police Department said Parker began throwing punches,
prompting a sergeant to deploy his taser. He was then
(26:40):
given a sedative by e MS. Parker had to be
resuscitated en route to the hospital. He died a week later.
His death is reportedly still under investigation, and police withheld
use of force information from the public for a week
following his death. The medical examiner ruled Parker's death and
accident due to excited delirium associated with probable drug use.
Ker's toxicology turned up positive only for cannabinoids, not stimulants.
(27:05):
So this guy gets beaten and taste by police, dies
on the way to the hospital. The medical examiner says,
it's an excited delirium, probably because of all the drugs
he was doing, and then they found out he just
had a little bit of pot in the system. Like that.
I'm quoting this because it's representative of a lot of
these debts. Wow, and you know that. What's what's interesting
(27:25):
there is, you know, the immediate question would be, is
there someone who has a cause of death listed as
excited delirium without in any way touching on uh, you know,
the like law enforcement finding them and and doing these
horrific things to them, Like, is there is there someone
(27:48):
I'm just interested. Yeah, there are some excited delirium deaths
that don't involve police use of force and do involve
drugs a lot. Like some medical examiners will say, well,
it seems like it was a drug overdose or someone
whose heart stopped because you know, they or on drugs,
and excited delirium is an odd thing to apply to that. Well,
we'll get into that a little bit. It is not
always diagnosed for people who die in police custody, but
(28:10):
it is predominantly diagnosed for people who die in police custody.
More than three quarters of excited delirium deaths are ultimately
determined to be accidents. Only seven percent are declared to
be homicides. This is significant because when a death is
declared a homicide, there has to be an investigation, but
it means a homicide at death. Being a homicide means
(28:31):
that a person's death was the result of another human
being's actions. This is why police like to have them
declared excited delirium, because then a death that was the
result of a person's action gets declared not that, and
there doesn't have to be an investigation. This is why
Minneapolis police tried to declare George Floyd's death caused by
a medical incident, because then it's not a homicide. Then
(28:51):
there's no investigation. Right. That's the value of this diagnosis
to law enforcement. It's cool stuff. Yeah, having a hard
time articulating just how horrific that is because you can
get you tell me and I'm I'm here for it.
(29:14):
I'm here for it, but I'm just thinking like this
is essentially at least in some cases. I think you've
I think you've made a very solid argument that this
functions as a not a necessarily get out of jail card,
but to stay out of jail card for law enforcement.
Would you agree with that? Yeah, And it's it's a
it's a sweep it under the rug diagnosis. It's a
(29:36):
we call this is this was just the result they
took drugs, So number one, it's their fault. And number two,
we don't have to be investigated for how our behavior
may have contributed to their deaths. That's why you do it.
Dr Wetley, who popularized the term excited delirium, continues to
be one of the most prominent voices in medicine supporting
(29:58):
the existence of excited delirium as a deadly syndrome. He
and other doctors like him theorized that the debt these
deaths are caused by an excess of catechola means catechola
means whatever. I'm not a doctor, a category of neurotransmitters
that includes adrenaline. Again, I'm not a doctor, so I
can't weigh in on this one way or the other.
But other doctors have waited on this, and one of
them is Dr Michael Baden. He has issues with Dr
(30:22):
Wetley's reasoning quote. This is Baden. If an overproduction of
adrenaline is behind excited delirium, why hasn't excited delirium been
cited as the cause of death for a police officer
or a soldier since they're also exposed to highly stressful
situations daily. Right? Why is it only people who die
in police custody? Almost only people who die in police
custody who get this diagnosis if it's caused by overproduction
(30:45):
of adrenaline, Because, like I'm gonna guess, a lot of
fucking Marines would be dropped into this if it was
an overproduction of adrenaline issue. You know it's He makes
a good point. He adds, in general, I am of
the strong opinion that excited delirium is a boutique kind
of diagnosis created, unfortunately by many of my forensic pathology colleagues,
specifically for persons dying when being restrained by law enforcement.
(31:08):
So that's doctor again. I can't really weigh in specifically
on and called Dr Whatley wrong. I'm not a doctor,
but doctor Michael Bayden is a doctor, and he's weighing in.
I think you're being very fair. Yeah, I mean, I
just I I try not to like delve too deeply
into medicine because I'm not a fucking doctor, which is
why I try to see what other doctors are saying,
and a lot of them are frustrated by this. Now,
I will say other credible physicians are somewhat more measured
(31:30):
in their phrasing than Dr Baden was. Dr Russell Vega,
chief medical examiner for Florida's twelfth District, described excited delirium
mass quote more of a behavioral state than an underlying
medical diagnosis, and in general, medical examiners are statutorially tasked
with and thus more focused on determining and recording the
underlying medical condition than the behavioral state at the time
(31:51):
of death. That is polite doctor speak for saying medical
examiners shouldn't care how someone acted before they died. They
should care about what killed them, which is about is
like restrained away as kind of questioning Dr Wetley's logic
as you're going to get. Dr Stephen J. Nelson is
the chair of the Florida Medical Examiner's Commission and the
Medical examiner for Florida's tenth district. He said that he
(32:12):
avoids using excited delirium in his district. Quote, it's like saying,
somebody dies from cardio respiratory arrest. Well, yeah, everybody dies
because their heart and their lungs stopped working. So it's
not really helpful. So if you've been paying attention throughout
all this so far, you should have a couple of
big questions, chief among them, why do some real doctors
back up excited delirium as a thing? If medical consensus
(32:34):
seems to agree that it does not work the way
cops say it does, even if it might be a
legitimate way to describe behavior, it's not a medical diagnosis,
why do some doctors disagree with that? Well, then that's
gonna bring us two friend of the pod, the Axon Corporation,
makers of the Taser now the original taser. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
(32:54):
we all know that sound. The original Taser was invented
in the mid nineteen seventies, and the first Taser corporate
ration was founded in nine It changed its name to
ax On pretty recently, used to be called the Taser Corporation.
I'm just going to call them Axon for our purposes
today because it's easier. From the beginning, the major selling
point for Taser was that their weapons were less than lethal. Today,
(33:14):
Axon's website has a whole page titled how Safe our Tasers,
on which they currently claim that their weapons have saved
two hundred and forty eight thousand, nine hundred and seventy
four lives to date nineties. They say that ninety nine
point seven five percent of Taser uses result in no
serious injury. Now, given that their business is providing a
(33:35):
less lethal option for a force option for police, Axon
stands to lose a lot of money each time somebody's
heart stops because they get tased repeatedly. So decades ago,
they decided to make sure that that would not happen.
Step one was to hire as many doctors as they
could buy, men and women who would take ax On
money to carry out studies proving the safety of tasers
(33:56):
and who would be willing to take to the stand
in order to defend America's favorite a extrocution tool from
claims that people sometimes died when shot with it. One
of their first paid experts was Dr Wetley, the same
man who popularized excited delirium as a diagnosis back in
the mid nineteen eighties. That's right, he's an ax On employee.
There we go, Oh, well done. I didn't want to.
(34:18):
I didn't want a positive guest because they didn't want
to seem prejudiced or unfailed. But uh so, so it's
kind of like, um uh, it's kind of like a
company that makes that makes ship proof pants is saying
new studies find shipping your pants randomly is amazing on
(34:38):
multiple levels. Right, provides a wide variety of health benefits. Right,
that's terrible. So this is our bastard. Uh well, one
of them. There's a bunch of them. Actually, a lot
of doctors are taking that axe on cash, it turns out.
Um now, I don't know precisely when Dr Wetley started
(35:00):
working for as On. In two thousands seventeen, Reuters interviewed
him as part of an incredibly detailed investigation they did
into taser deaths, a really wonderful piece of work. Dr
Whatley claimed that the company had approached him quote more
than a decade ago, which conveniently could mean anything from
the early adds to the late nineties, when Taser started
taking off. We don't know exactly when now. Quote from
(35:22):
Reuter's Whatley said that excited delirium is a genuine condition
and that the vast majority of deaths involving taser's he
studied were caused by it. I've never seen a case
where I could say that a taser actually contributed to
the death, he said. As far as interfering with the
heart rhythm, he added, there's never been any convincing evidence
that that can actually take place. Now, one person who
(35:42):
disagrees was Dr Whatley is doctor Werner Spitz, one of
the foremost forensic pathologists in the country. He testified at
the O. J. Simpsons civil trial and at one point
was called into review the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy.
Spitz has seen a number of cases where a taser
caused death, and when informed of doctor Least claim to
the contrary, he told Reuters quote, if you fire a
(36:04):
taser into the precordial area where the heart is, whether
the front or back, the electric current may very well
interfere with the electrical impulses that go to the heart.
But I mean, I'm sure we can trust Dr Wetley
on this. You know, he doesn't have a conflict of interest,
no reliable, credible, it's good ship. All his all his
(36:26):
friends and family members get tasers for Christmas. You're right,
because they're so safe. Yeah, uh safe. You know what
else is safe? This is a This is a shift
from the first ad break the RNA next nine missile
by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon with the R nine X.
Have you ever been thinking, ben, I want to kill
(36:48):
most of the people in that car, but not all
of the people in the other cars around them. Yeah.
There are a lot of Honda Odyssees in Atlanta, and
you know it's it's it's tough to tell when you
look through the window because there could be like nine
to twelve people in there. You never know there could
be and maybe you only want to kill three to four.
That's why we have the R nine X, as Lockheed
Martin and Raytheon say, the R nine X, it'll funk
(37:12):
up a Honda Odyssey. Al Right, here's some other ads.
We are back. Uh, we're back, and we're talking about
whether or not it's possible to be killed by a taser,
which a lot of doctors say absolutely. There's hundreds of
evidence of cases where that's happened in which Dr Charles Wetley,
(37:34):
paid employee of the Axon Corporation, says, no. Never imagine
if guns were I mean, gun companies have fought hard
to be immune not just like liability for what their
products are used for, but to be immune to liability
if they make guns that like fire when they're not
supposed to. Like look up tourists, you know, they there
(37:55):
was a case where like their safeties didn't work and
a bunch of people had their guns fire randomly into
their legs and died, and tourists wasn't liable because again
it's America. Weapons manufacturers have the inherent right to argue
that their weapons don't harm people even when they do.
And that's cool. I guess which can I just say,
you see things like this happen on a daily basis,
(38:18):
and I don't know about you guys, but I can't
even slide on like overdue finds at the library, you
know what I mean, like Blockbuster knowing my luck will
probably come find me at some point because I never
gave back Police Academy. You know, they'll fucking taste the
ship out of you over that Police Academy DVD. At
least it's not police academy too. You know, if you
(38:39):
die over police academy, that's okay. Dying over police academy
too is a bridge too far. Yeah, yeah, no, it's
it's given me a dark night of the soul more
than once, to be honest. But but you're right, like
the temerity too, especially if you're a medical professional, right
you one could make the argument that, Okay, funding I
(39:03):
have received or my employer does not affect my professional opinion.
I think it's a bullshit argument, but it's an argument
people can make. But to do that on top of
this sort of layer cake of you know, pardon me,
of of actively ignoring a mountain of evidence, that just
(39:25):
seems like, I don't like, at what point do you
get your license revoked? You know what I mean? It
seems like never, And it's like, yeah, it's it's very
shady where that's a big part of the story that
we're going to get into because Whatley is not the
only doctor who's double dipping in this way. Now. When
I first started digging into this subject and was trying
(39:46):
to I was trying to answer the question, is excited
delirium real or is it something that the cops invented um,
and that article in Florida Today that I've quoted from
brought me to Dr Deborah Mash, who's a professor emeritus
at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. According
to the article, she's been studying the concept of excited
delirium for decades. She is one of the most prominent
(40:07):
medical voices who will argue that it is a real syndrome.
I can't argue with her credentials, but from the beginning
some of her arguments sounded odd to me. Quote, people
are in a psychiatric state, and that condition is a delirium.
This delirium that people experience, which is why police get
involved in the first place. So that's odd, uh that
(40:27):
that Like again, she's going back to that, like excited delirium.
One of the ways we recognize that is if the
cops get called on you, which seems like a weird
thing for a medical diagnosis to be. Now, Mash has
published a variety of peer reviewed articles making the case
for excited delirium is a real thing, and as far
as I can tell, I think she's the first person
who traced it to Bell's mania. It might have been Wetley.
(40:49):
I'm not exactly certain on that. They both I think
will make that argument. Mash has published a variety of
peer reviewed articles in which she makes the case for
excited delirium being well documented in founded in medicine and
medical history, tracing its early description to Bell's mania. Um.
Florida Today asked her for her take on the Gregory
Edwards case. That's the vet with PTSD who died after
(41:11):
being tased and restrained and maced. She agreed that Edwards
was suffering from excited delirium, but she also called his
death unnecessary, arguing that he should have been taken to
a hospital rather than being put into custody. And she
threats an interesting needle here, sort of throwing some soft
blame on law enforcement for the man's death, but she
stopped short of actually saying that anything in particular they did,
(41:33):
or any tool that they used killed him. The feeling
you get reading her answer is that his excited delirium
killed him because he did not receive medical treatment for it. Now,
this sounds a lot more reasonable than the standard law
enforcement line he died because he was on drugs, But
it really is just a variant of the same thing.
His death was unnecessary, but he was not killed as
(41:55):
a direct result of police use of force. Bad faith
that argument, right, it does seem like a bad faith argument.
Would you be surprised to know that Dr Deborah Marsha's
mentor is one doctor Charles Wetley, Absolutely fucking not. Yeah,
(42:19):
him her mentor um And he's probably the person who
recommended that the Axon Corporation hire her to be an
expert witness in more than a dozen lawsuits. Oh yeah, Yeah,
that's that good ship. That's that good good griftin ship. Yeah.
(42:41):
It's like these people are like the evil the taser
doctors are like the evil version of the pot doctors.
Right in California, before it was legal, we used to
have all these pot doctors who were like clearly doctors
who had been disgraced or wanted to retire. It would
just be like, I'm I used to be a fucking oncologist.
I saw too many people die. Now I like drunk
in a room and tell people give people pot prescriptions.
(43:03):
And that was fine, Like, I have no issue with
those doctors. Actually it was amazing because anytime I wanted
because I used to smoke a ton back then, and
it was it wasn't like I'm not just getting wasted
during the day, I'm taking prescribed medicine, sir. Like you
just go down to Venice Speech and there'd be some
guys in and white coats, the doctors, and yeah, my
(43:25):
favorite was the doctor was like horribly sunburned, long white hair,
looked like an old hippie, wearing like board shorts and
a T shirt with a lab coat over them. And
outside of his office on Venice Beach there was like
bolted to the wall of a day glow painting of
the Mona Lisa with a blunt in her hand, and
it just felt very medical and super subtle to write,
(43:49):
very subtle. Yeah, these taser doctors are are not more
subtle than the pot doctors. But where the While the
pot doctors are like, I'm tired of practicing medicine. I
just want to make enough money to retire telling people
they could smoke pot, these guys are like, I'm not
tired of medicine, but I would like to make money
justifying deaths due to police use of force and tasers
(44:13):
by claiming that tasers didn't kill them, drugs did, which
is a lot worse um, so you'll see Doctor Deborah
Mash quoted a lot as a subject matter expert on
excited delirium UM. That Florida Today article quoted Mash at length,
but did not note her financial relationship with ax On.
The thing that makes Dr Mash brilliant is her ability
(44:35):
to express total sympathy for victims and seemed like she's
not defending the cops while averting all responsibility from the cops.
She told Reuters that the Edwards case was heartbreaking and
avoided the obviously chutty move of blaming the victim directly. Instead,
she blamed budgetary constraints and the health care system. Quote,
he was failed by healthcare providers, and the jails don't
(44:57):
have the money for the staffing that they need. They
need the nurse practitioners who are trained in psychiatry to
identify the problem. See, it's not the cops fault, it's
that it's the fact that they don't have enough money
to have nurses in the jails. We're got to give
the cops more money and then these people won't be
dying because obviously the cops will spend that money on
nurses and not on more tasers. Oh god, you know,
(45:21):
I'm golf clapping at the matrix. Dodge sound goes in.
It's impressive, Like she's not a dumb person, which is
why ax On Paser Mash is so valuable to ax
On that she's become their point woman in Florida whenever
someone gets killed by a taser. But Axon is a
big company and they employ a number of other medical
(45:41):
experts in different states. And in part two of this episode, Ben,
we're going to talk about the saga of Dr Jeffrey Hoe.
But that's gonna have to come Thursday, um, because because
we are done for the day, given a give a
nice little bit of background. Who so, Ben, you got
(46:02):
some plugs for us? How you doing you get some plugs? Oh? Yeah?
First off, I'd like to thank everybody at Axon. Uh
they're they're paying me for a period on this show
and parts now. Uh yeah yeah. So if if you
like Behind the Bastards, we uh, I hope you check
(46:22):
out stuff they don't want you to know. It's a
show I do with a critical thinking applied to corruption
and conspiracy theories. You can also check out the show
Ridiculous History, which is exactly what it sounds like we
were not super freaking creative with the name. To be
honest with you, Uh, and you can also find uh
find me on Twitter or Instagram where I am at
(46:44):
ben Bolan. This is amazingly depressing. Robert. Yeah, it's it's
pretty much a bummer. Yes, and I hope everybody makes
it safely to Thursday. Yes, avoid the cops, don't get tased,
and if you get excited to don't be delirious. I guess,
don't be delirious. Eat Derito's. Oh boy, we even't had
(47:08):
a Doritos plug in a minute, we'll catch Hill on Thursday.
We'll talk about Dr Jeffrey Ho. We'll we'll throw out
some ads from our new sponsor, Linco Industries, maker of
the Bearcat G three, which is of course, the most
popular wheeled armored response vehicle by American law enforcement squat teams. Lynco.
If you are a small police department who needs a
vehicle that can take an explosion for no real reason,
(47:32):
your best bet is Linco. That's the episode. Uh, good times,
m
Genocide ship. Okay, fuck um Sophie helped me out here.
I was just shouting genocide. That's not a good way
to open a podcast. Um No, that's basically the same
as shouting genocide. Um. This is Behind the Bastards in
the podcast not once been introduced like an actual professional.
(00:26):
One time you did it like so proci But you
were doing a bit. Oh, I was doing a bit.
That must have been the ascid episode. I've forgotten which
episode was the won't tell me? Will tell me your series?
Of Which episode do you think Robert was fully on
acid for when we recorded? It's one of the older episodes. Yeah,
(00:48):
I mean, and if you're really really Behind the Bastards
fan trying to figure out which one I was just
fucking blazed on two c I for. But that's a
story for another day. This is Behind the Bastards podcast,
worst people all the history. Tell you all about him?
My guest today, Mr Ben Bolan, Ben, how are you doing?
(01:08):
I'm so excited, you know, guys, it's it's it's a
wild time. I snuck into this office where I'm sitting
in the darkness at turn Off Video because wifi' is weird,
because everything is kind of terrible in general. Uh, but uh,
you know, it's a it's a bright light, uh, to
to be together with you guys today. I wanted to
(01:30):
tell you I was talking Robert was Sophie earlier. I
really enjoyed the episode you guys did on the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion. I thought that was a
protocol stand. I'm really sad that that doesn't have his
(01:52):
video on because I would have loved seen your face too.
Oh yeah, yeah, because I thought it was stuffed people.
UM need to know about the genesis or the evolution
of that kind of stuff and just how dangerous it is.
So I wanted to just shout out that episode in particular. Um,
(02:16):
and I do wish I had I wish I had
the video on. I think all three of us are
far flung across the country right now, but it's really
great to see you guys scattered to the winds. Yeah,
it's great to kind of see you and your Mark
Ruffalo icon. Yeah, Ben, this is actually speaking of the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This has been a
(02:36):
great week for genocide, or I should say this has
been a great week for recognizing historical genocides media. Yeah,
well what what where? This has nothing to do with
the episode, but I think it's nothing pretty rad. Joe Biden,
recognized for the was the first American president last week
to recognize the genocide of the Armenians that started in
(02:58):
nineteen fifteen and hasn't really ended by a lot of accounts, um,
which no other president had the had the cojones to
do up until now. And the best thing that well,
not the best thing about it, but a rad thing
about it, is that urda One, the dictator of Turkey,
um shot back at the United States by threatening to
recognize the genocide of the Native Americans that the US committed.
(03:22):
And so we're now in this it's like Cold war
nuclear brinksmanship, but with the recognition of historic crimes against humanity.
And I'm yeah, yeah, let's keep recognizing genocides. Yeah, like, hey,
watch out, buddy. I might also start telling the truth
to school children. Yeah, I'll talk about all the horrible things.
(03:45):
You're cut good, let's throw be in here, fuck it,
let's recognize all the genocides. Um. So yeah, this is
actually one of those weird times where like stupid political
dick measuring is seeming seems to be objectively Pause. Now
everybody's talking about different genocides committed by imperial powers, which
(04:05):
I'm supportive of, so good, good speaking of genocide, Ben, Wow,
you can make a case that American policing has a
lot in common with different genocidal regimes throughout history, namely
in the use of state power to oppress specific racial
(04:25):
and religious groups. M m m m. That's kind of
what we're talking about. Not not not quite, but we're
talking about Have you ever heard of the term excited delirium? Ben,
I have actually heard of the term excited delirium. Though,
I am going to be honest with you, Robert Sylphe,
(04:45):
I am not caught up with the textbook definition there.
What are we talking so excited delirium? In short, just
to introduce the concept is a lot of doctors would
argue is a faked disease invented by police to justify murder.
And that's what we're talking about today. Now the story
gets much more complicated and shady than that. This is
(05:08):
a wheel really gonna piss you off? Um, But I
think I should start um with kind of the most
recent touch point for the term excited delirium, which was
the killing of George Floyd by now convicted murderer Derek
Chauvin UM, formerly a police officer. When Derek Chauvin put
his knee in his entire body weight on George Floyd's
(05:28):
neck for like eight minutes or so, uh, the other
cops present with him knew that something was wrong. One officer,
a fellow named Lane, asked Chauvin should we roll him
on his side. Chauvin declined, saying no, staying put where
we got him. Officer Lane then said, I am worried
about excited delirium or whatever. Now, first off, that's a
(05:49):
very casual or whatever or whatever. Right, yes, whatever. Whenever
somebody adds or whatever at the end of a sentence,
that means they don't care. That's like when somebody adds
for you at the end of a compliment that means
they don't like you. Yeah, it's it's Can you imagine
(06:09):
like going into the doctor and being like, yeah, your
kidneys are probably shutting down or whatever, like you you
would you would not feel great about that doctor. Yeah. Um.
So the way he used it, excited delirium may kind
of seem like a nonsense term to you, even if
you are a medical professional. I know we have a
number listening, because most doctors do not recognize excited delirium
(06:30):
as a thing. If you don't know the history I'm
about to go over today, that term probably flew over
your head. Is just a piece of cop jargon. Um,
someone who isn't a doctor trying to diagnose a man
struggling to breathe. But the reality of what that term
means and how it's used is actually much more sinister
than that. You might be aware that the initial press
release the Minneapolis Police sent out after Floyd's death was
(06:51):
man dies after medical incident during police interaction, um, which
is yeah, medical and sid it. I mean technically that's
like you shoot somewhat to death and you're like, well,
he had a medical incident as a result of the
lack of blood in his body, and it's like, that's
not inaccurate, but let's tell THEO. But anyway, you're probably
(07:14):
aware that Chauvin's defense attorney, in a constellation of right
wing bad faith actors, blamed Mr. Floyd's death on a
drug overdose. What you might not be aware of is
that the term excited delirium is more or less an
invented condition created mostly by a mixture of cops and
the Axon Corporation who make tasers in order to blame
mostly black men murdered by the police for their own deaths.
(07:36):
The whole story of this is bug fuck and it
will make you want to do things that put the
burning of the Third Precinct to shame. Um. The most
immediate precursor to excited delirium, the modern term was something
called Bell's mania, and Bell's mania was first described in
eighteen forty nine by Dr Luther beav Luther V. Bell
in a publication with the no ship real name, The
(07:59):
American Journal of Insanity. I mean, do the page numbers
go sequentially or like, how how weird are they getting
with it? You know? And then I guess it's a
pretty boring journal. I kind of want to put out
a journal that just cut it, that's just titled You're
(08:21):
not gonna believe this fucking ship just weird physics and
deep sea fish wild right, Yes, yes, And there's like
always one article about poop, just so we can keep
it on the nose enough. So Luther Bell published an
article in the American Journal of Insanity based on his
work at the psychiatric ward at the Clean Hospital in Boston.
(08:44):
He observed forty patients admitted with what he called fever
in delirium, and noted that many of them went from
experiencing hallucinations, agitation, and fever to death within several weeks
of admission. Now Bell was taking notes on a very
real phenomenon, or at least a series of different aminons
that kind of presented in similar ways. The most likely
cause from most of the symptoms he was observing was
(09:06):
basically a lack of antipsychotic medications, which didn't exist at
the time he was doing his work. When those were
developed in the nineteen fifties, Bell's mania grew markedly less
common as a diagnosis. Doctors today now recognized that most
of Bell's patients who died were likely suffering not from
any kind of mania, but from infectious or autoimmune encephalitis,
(09:27):
something that also became much easier to recognize and treat
in the early nineteen twenties. These were a lot of
people who are put in institutions with poor sanitary standards.
They died as a result of that, but because they
were kind of acting erratic and agitated and you know,
shrieking and stuff. He just kind of like, oh, this
is some sort of mania, right. The realities they have
fucking encephalitis in most cases, and um antipsychotic medications would
(09:49):
have dealt with most of the rest of the things.
But at the time, you know, Bell is not a
bad guy here, He's he's doing the best or not
to my knowledge based on what I can read, he
seems like he's doing the best he can to diagnose
the symptom and he just gets it wrong because it's
sucking eighteen fifty and no one knew anything, you know, right,
this is also people forget you know, we put um there.
(10:09):
There are people who have done such excellent, meaningful work
in the world of medicine, but we forget that medicine
as an institution has these deep systemic problems. Like what
was the guy's name, Samuel Weiss, the guy who got
the ship beat out of him for asking doctors to
wash their hands. Yeah, that was a huge controversy. So
(10:34):
I'm like, I I know, like there, I love that
you said bad faith actors, man, because there are people
who are working in good faith assiduously with the best
information they have at the time. So I feel like
what you're saying about Dr Luther Bell is that he's
not trying to be a dick, right and he not
(10:57):
to knowledge. Yeah, not not to what we what we
understand from the record. And uh, I would I would
ask you, you know, I know we're going somewhere with this,
but I want to think about this like one of
the big questions because I think I see where we're
going here, Robert. One of the big questions is how
would he feel about the way the successor of his
(11:20):
ideas being used? Right? Yeah, And I don't know enough
about Bell to tell you that, um, but it's it's
it's going to go to some unexplained, unexpected places. He certainly,
I don't think saw this coming when he was he
was doing his best to kind of diagnose what he
thought was a single syndrome. Um And kind of that
story I just told Bell diagnosed of this mania in
(11:42):
the eighteen fifties, and then in the nineteen fifties, because
of better medications, it goes away. That would probably be
the end of the story of Bell's mania if it
weren't for a friend of the pod cocaine. Yes, in
the eighties cocaine. In seventies, cocaine became markedly more common
as a drug of abuse. Uh and in nineteen eighty five,
(12:04):
in particular, Miami was rocked by a sudden spate of
deaths among black female sex workers. Thirty two women in
total died, and upon initial examination, their deaths seemed inexplicable.
The only hint medical examiners in police had was the
fact that they all had some amount of cocaine and
other drugs in their system. Charles Wetley, a forensics pathologist, decided,
(12:26):
based on nothing really, that a combination of cocaine use
and sexual intercourse had killed the women. Whatley decided that
with chronic cocaine use quote, the male of the species
becomes psychotic and the female of the species dies in
relation to sex, which is an incredible It's the coke
(12:47):
and fucking that's killing them. It makes men crazy and
it makes women die. Wow. Well, and this is nineteen
eighty five, right, Bell had we have an excuse for
him getting stuff wrong. It's eighteen fifty people most of
medicine involved tax saws than Charles Whatley. There's no excuse
to be saying this ship um he wrote, quote, my
(13:10):
gut feeling is that this is a terminal event that
follows chronic use of crack cocaine affecting the nerve receptors
in the brain. What Lee started using the term excited
delirium to refer to this deadly cocaine fueled mania he
was pretty sure had to exist. Of course he was
fucking wrong. Better medical examiners and detectives looked into the deaths,
(13:30):
exhumed a number of bodies and found that the women
had all been exphyxiated by a serial killer. Excited delirium
had not caused their deaths. But Whatley was off to
the races now, and the condition he'd more or less
invented provided a perfect scapegoat for cops who were increasingly
getting flak overall the black people they murdered in custody.
So that's and and Whatley really pulls back to excited
(13:52):
delirium to say, like, I'm not the first guy recognizing this.
You know, there's a history of the medical uh and
it went away in the nineteen fifties, but then cocaine
brought it back act And this is you know, you
can't divorce this entirely from the War on drugs, Right,
You've got Reagan and the White House. People are starting
to flip out about the dangers of cocaine and crack.
In particular, crack is you know, more associated with the
(14:13):
used by by use for people who aren't white and rich,
so it gets really demonized, and Wetley provides a way
to blame people for their own deaths when in the
case like the thing that the name excited delirium comes
from a bunch of female black sex workers getting murdered
by a serial killer, and Wetley's immediate jump is like, no,
it must be their fault. You know, he'd like completely
(14:34):
misses what it actually happened. Yeah, yeah, it's real fucked up.
It's mind boggling to me because this is something that
is that is new information. The idea that one could
take this meta level of victim blaming, like to the extreme,
it's over nine thousand level of victim blaming and then
(14:55):
say uh, and then have it been picked up as
a convenient cause. I mean, you know, we've always all
of us actually on the shows that and that hang
out together and actual friends were all very well aware
of the the problems with the official narrative of the
crack cocaine epidemic. But you know, it's like the big question, uh,
(15:18):
the big question about arms races too, right, like who's
manufacturing the guts? Right, Who's who's growing the coca plants?
Because it's certainly not someone in like a you know,
Los Angeles. Uh. So it feels like it feels like
this is beyond incompetence. I would argue, it feels like
this guy is intentionally skipping some cognitive steps to find
(15:44):
this interesting. Yeah, we're we're gonna be talking about wet
Ley a bit later in the episode, so keep it.
Put a pin in that one, ben So got it.
The excited delirium diagnosis spreads like wildfire after Since there
were also an awful lot of cocaine overdoses in this period,
very few people noticed anything fishy. One group of researchers
(16:06):
in nineteen ninety seven, writing for the Journal of Forensic Science,
did decide to investigate the troubling rise and excited delirium deaths.
Quote from a registry of all cocaine related deaths in
Dade County, Florida, from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen ninety
fifty eight. Excited delirium deaths were compared with a hundred
and twenty five victims of accidental cocaine overdose without excited
(16:27):
delirium compared with controls e d d s. Excited delirium
deaths were more frequently black, male, and younger. They were
less likely to have a low body mass index, and
more likely to have died in police custody, to have
received medical treatment immediately before death, to have survived for
a longer period, to have developed hyperthermia, and to have
died in summer months. In other words, most accidental cocaine
(16:49):
toxicity deaths were of white people who died suddenly, generally
not near police, because they were partying and doing a
bunch of cocaine right, and they just dropped dead suddenly
because their heart blows up. Right. Meanwhile, black excited delirium
cocaine overdose deaths were nearly all black people who had
been restrained by law enforcement immediately prior to their death.
The study also noted that these excited delirium cocaine overdoses
(17:13):
tended to have much less cocaine in their system than
the white cocaine overdoses, so these are all getting blamed
on cocaine. But the excited delirium deaths are overwhelmingly black,
overwhelmingly involved police use of force, and they have a
lot less cocaine in their systems than the people who
are just dying of cocaine good stuff. Does it add
up right, say the quiet part out loud, Yes, Yeah,
(17:36):
it's It was pretty obvious to the to the researchers
paying attention from the beginning what was happening. But again
most people don't really catch on at this stage. Now,
if you can read between the lines just a little bit,
the picture is very clear. Cops were arresting black people
for drug possession and restraining them, Like Derek Chauvin. A
lot of these cops restrained their suspects in a way
that caused death. Then they blamed that death on cocaine
(17:59):
and wrote the deaths off as excited delirium cocaine overdoses.
Dtor Michael baden Of, a prominent forensic pathologist who studies
deaths in police custody and was once the chief medical
Examiner for New York City, explained to Brookings, quote, this
is the germination of excited delirium. The same people who
did these prostitution deaths now applied excited delirium to cocaine
(18:20):
users in Miami and people who died while being subdued
by police. By the late nineteen nineties, good doctors had
started to realize what was going on, and a series
of studies were published analyzing all these excited delirium deaths.
It became increasingly clear that the key commonality in most
of these deaths was not cocaine or any behavior on
the part of the deceased, but the fact that they
(18:41):
had been put in police custody and that less lethal
weapons like mace or taser's had been used on them.
One analysis and the Canadian Medical Association Journal found quote
in all twenty one cases of unexpected death associated with
excited delirium, the deaths were associated with restraint for violent
agitation and hyperactivity, with a person either in a prone
position eighteen people eighty six percent or subjected to pressure
(19:04):
on the neck three people fourteen percent. All those who
died had suddenly lapsed into tranquility shortly after being restrained.
The excited delirium was caused by a psychiatric disorder in
twelve people fifty seven percent, and by cocaine induced psychosis
in eight percent, thirty eight and eight people, thirty eight percent,
eighteen people, eighty six percent were in police custody when
(19:25):
they died. Four nineteen percent had been sprayed with mace,
and heart disease was found in another four At autopsy,
the blood level of cocaine and those whose excited delirium
was cocaine induced was similar to levels found in recreational
cocaine users and lower than levels found in people who
died from cocaine intoxication. Now, it's hard to know the
precise scope of the problem, but excited delirium deaths are
(19:48):
based on the evidence we have extremely common. Eleven percent
of all deaths and police custody in Maryland are attributed
to excited delirium. In the last decade, at least fifty
three people have died in custom in Florida. Some council
were like eighty five and we're blamed on what was
more or less a fake cause of death, excited delirium. Today,
law enforcement officers are routinely taught in training that excited
(20:10):
delirium is a condition characterized by sudden aggression and distress,
generally brought on by the use of illegal substances and
often ending in sudden death. Excited delirium is not recognized
as a thing by the American Medical Association, the American
Psychiatric Association, the World Health Organization, or the European Society
of Emergency Medicine, which represents doctors in thirty countries. It
(20:33):
is not listed in the diagnosis in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders the d s M five.
As far as I can tell, only two organizations of
physicians recognize it as a thing, the American College of
Emergency Physicians and its British counterpart. And the story of
why that is is pretty shady. But before we get
(20:55):
into that, you know what else is shady, Ben, the
products and services support this podcast. We are back, and
I've just promised been that that um, this is going
to get a lot worse, uh so much worse. Um
And I'm making that promise to all of you. By
(21:16):
the end of this again, you'll be thinking about crimes, um,
which is you know, always always the goal here at
behind the bastards, uh, make you think about crimes, theoretical
minecraft crimes. So we're talking about I mentioned earlier, basically
all the vast majority of like reputable international medical organizations
(21:40):
where it's like a bunch of doctors and nurses and stuff. Uh,
do not recognize excited delirium as a thing. That d
s M does not recognize it as a thing, But
the American College of Emergency Physicians in its British counterpart
do And the why of that is a very shady story.
But before we get into that really quickly, maybe not
so quickly, I want to at least analyze the supposed
features of this condition that most doctors don't believe exists.
(22:02):
According to the American College of Emergency Physicians, excited delirium
is characterized by quote, bizarre behavior generating phone calls to police.
So if the cops get called on you, that's a
sign you might have excited delirium. Um. Next ship, Yeah,
Next is failure to respond to police presence, and continued
(22:25):
struggle despite restraint. The syndrome, apparently in Taos, individuals with
superhuman strength and makes them impervious to pain. If you're thinking, boy,
it seems like people are using medical jargon to justify
racism and brutality. You're right, that is very much out. Yeah,
it's nice but terrible. Everyone who resists has an illness
(22:47):
that kills them. So if they resist and we beat
them to death, it's their illness that made them resist,
the police that killed them, not us beating them to death.
That's cop logic. Oh, you know, the whole time we
were on the break, this was making me think of
you know, I can't be the only person in the
crowd today thinking this makes me think of the way,
(23:07):
like hysteria got described as a legit medical condition, right yeah,
but while um skipping ahead a little bit. While hysteria
was often at least treated by you know, vibrators, um,
excited delirium is treated with tasers, you also said. You
also said as stute listeners will notice you use the
(23:30):
phrase less lethal instead of the entirely misleading phrase non lethal. Right, No,
there is uh actually no such thing as a non
lethal weapon. Um. If it's a weapon, it can kill people.
It might be hard to kill people, but it will
kill them. Um if you if you really go at it.
We should probably lay at a few specific cases of
(23:51):
excited delirium deaths to explain just how often like this
diagnosis is applied. One A good example is the case
of Gregory Lloyd Edwards, a thirty eight year old U. S.
Army veteran with PTSD who was exhibited. He was agitated
and aggressive and stuff. You know. He was dealing with
some ship when he was arrested. In order to quote
(24:12):
unquote restrain him, police beat tasted, pepper sprayed and strapped
him into a restraint chair at the Brevard County Jail.
From an article by Florida Today. Quote when deputies found
Edwards unresponsive in his cell at the Brevord County Jail
about twenty five minutes after their confrontation with him ended,
he was strapped in a restraint chair, his hands cuffed
behind his back, with a fine mesh spithood over his
(24:32):
head and pepper spray still on his face. Notwithstanding his
restraint was deemed to be of secondary importance when Breford's
medical examiner, Dr Sajid Kaiser established a cause of death.
According to the autopsy report, Edwards died of excited delirium
and complications due to hyperactive and violent state with subsequent restraint.
His widow, Kathleen Edwards, was both perplexed and frustrated by
(24:55):
Kwaiser's found finding sitting in a cracker barrel restaurant with
her small daughter. She said she never heard of the
term before. What is that? Like? I know what delirium is,
and I know what being excited is, But what is
excited delirium? How does that kill you? That's a good question.
Eighty five people in Florida have died from excited delirium
over the last ten years. Florida Today to Day review
(25:17):
of those deaths, which took place from two thousand nine
to two thousand nineteen, to try and analyze just how
it was applied. They note that medical reports for deaths
and police custody are quote almost exclusively. The only places
where the term apply appears in medical reports throughout the state,
so the only almost the only time the diagnosis of
excited delirium is given is when people have died in
(25:39):
police custody. Most of these cases did involve illegal drugs,
usually cocaine or methamphetamine, but use of force by law
enforcement was just as common. Sixty excited delirium deaths in
Florida involved police use of force. In another fifteen percent
of cases, it was unclear whether or not police used force.
(25:59):
Of excited delirium deaths are men. Thirty six percent of
Florida's eighty five excited delirium deaths were black men. While
seventy percent of excited delirium deaths involved some sort of
sim of sim of stimulant narcotic, All but one of
the deaths that did not involve drugs involved use of
force by law enforcement from Florida Today quote. One such
(26:20):
case took place on February ninth, the two eighteen, when
twenty year old Aaron Parker was reportedly found naked, bleeding
and sweating profusely, and lying in the medium of a
Tallahassee street. Police tried to handcuff Parker and admit him
under the Marchmon Act, the drug abuse equivalent of the
Baker Act. The Tallahassee Police Department said Parker began throwing punches,
prompting a sergeant to deploy his taser. He was then
(26:40):
given a sedative by e MS. Parker had to be
resuscitated en route to the hospital. He died a week later.
His death is reportedly still under investigation, and police withheld
use of force information from the public for a week
following his death. The medical examiner ruled Parker's death and
accident due to excited delirium associated with probable drug use.
Ker's toxicology turned up positive only for cannabinoids, not stimulants.
(27:05):
So this guy gets beaten and taste by police, dies
on the way to the hospital. The medical examiner says,
it's an excited delirium, probably because of all the drugs
he was doing, and then they found out he just
had a little bit of pot in the system. Like that.
I'm quoting this because it's representative of a lot of
these debts. Wow, and you know that. What's what's interesting
(27:25):
there is, you know, the immediate question would be, is
there someone who has a cause of death listed as
excited delirium without in any way touching on uh, you know,
the like law enforcement finding them and and doing these
horrific things to them, Like, is there is there someone
(27:48):
I'm just interested. Yeah, there are some excited delirium deaths
that don't involve police use of force and do involve
drugs a lot. Like some medical examiners will say, well,
it seems like it was a drug overdose or someone
whose heart stopped because you know, they or on drugs,
and excited delirium is an odd thing to apply to that. Well,
we'll get into that a little bit. It is not
always diagnosed for people who die in police custody, but
(28:10):
it is predominantly diagnosed for people who die in police custody.
More than three quarters of excited delirium deaths are ultimately
determined to be accidents. Only seven percent are declared to
be homicides. This is significant because when a death is
declared a homicide, there has to be an investigation, but
it means a homicide at death. Being a homicide means
(28:31):
that a person's death was the result of another human
being's actions. This is why police like to have them
declared excited delirium, because then a death that was the
result of a person's action gets declared not that, and
there doesn't have to be an investigation. This is why
Minneapolis police tried to declare George Floyd's death caused by
a medical incident, because then it's not a homicide. Then
(28:51):
there's no investigation. Right. That's the value of this diagnosis
to law enforcement. It's cool stuff. Yeah, having a hard
time articulating just how horrific that is because you can
get you tell me and I'm I'm here for it.
(29:14):
I'm here for it, but I'm just thinking like this
is essentially at least in some cases. I think you've
I think you've made a very solid argument that this
functions as a not a necessarily get out of jail card,
but to stay out of jail card for law enforcement.
Would you agree with that? Yeah, And it's it's a
it's a sweep it under the rug diagnosis. It's a
(29:36):
we call this is this was just the result they
took drugs, So number one, it's their fault. And number two,
we don't have to be investigated for how our behavior
may have contributed to their deaths. That's why you do it.
Dr Wetley, who popularized the term excited delirium, continues to
be one of the most prominent voices in medicine supporting
(29:58):
the existence of excited delirium as a deadly syndrome. He
and other doctors like him theorized that the debt these
deaths are caused by an excess of catechola means catechola
means whatever. I'm not a doctor, a category of neurotransmitters
that includes adrenaline. Again, I'm not a doctor, so I
can't weigh in on this one way or the other.
But other doctors have waited on this, and one of
them is Dr Michael Baden. He has issues with Dr
(30:22):
Wetley's reasoning quote. This is Baden. If an overproduction of
adrenaline is behind excited delirium, why hasn't excited delirium been
cited as the cause of death for a police officer
or a soldier since they're also exposed to highly stressful
situations daily. Right? Why is it only people who die
in police custody? Almost only people who die in police
custody who get this diagnosis if it's caused by overproduction
(30:45):
of adrenaline, Because, like I'm gonna guess, a lot of
fucking Marines would be dropped into this if it was
an overproduction of adrenaline issue. You know it's He makes
a good point. He adds, in general, I am of
the strong opinion that excited delirium is a boutique kind
of diagnosis created, unfortunately by many of my forensic pathology colleagues,
specifically for persons dying when being restrained by law enforcement.
(31:08):
So that's doctor again. I can't really weigh in specifically
on and called Dr Whatley wrong. I'm not a doctor,
but doctor Michael Bayden is a doctor, and he's weighing in.
I think you're being very fair. Yeah, I mean, I
just I I try not to like delve too deeply
into medicine because I'm not a fucking doctor, which is
why I try to see what other doctors are saying,
and a lot of them are frustrated by this. Now,
I will say other credible physicians are somewhat more measured
(31:30):
in their phrasing than Dr Baden was. Dr Russell Vega,
chief medical examiner for Florida's twelfth District, described excited delirium
mass quote more of a behavioral state than an underlying
medical diagnosis, and in general, medical examiners are statutorially tasked
with and thus more focused on determining and recording the
underlying medical condition than the behavioral state at the time
(31:51):
of death. That is polite doctor speak for saying medical
examiners shouldn't care how someone acted before they died. They
should care about what killed them, which is about is
like restrained away as kind of questioning Dr Wetley's logic
as you're going to get. Dr Stephen J. Nelson is
the chair of the Florida Medical Examiner's Commission and the
Medical examiner for Florida's tenth district. He said that he
(32:12):
avoids using excited delirium in his district. Quote, it's like saying,
somebody dies from cardio respiratory arrest. Well, yeah, everybody dies
because their heart and their lungs stopped working. So it's
not really helpful. So if you've been paying attention throughout
all this so far, you should have a couple of
big questions, chief among them, why do some real doctors
back up excited delirium as a thing? If medical consensus
(32:34):
seems to agree that it does not work the way
cops say it does, even if it might be a
legitimate way to describe behavior, it's not a medical diagnosis,
why do some doctors disagree with that? Well, then that's
gonna bring us two friend of the pod, the Axon Corporation,
makers of the Taser now the original taser. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
(32:54):
we all know that sound. The original Taser was invented
in the mid nineteen seventies, and the first Taser corporate
ration was founded in nine It changed its name to
ax On pretty recently, used to be called the Taser Corporation.
I'm just going to call them Axon for our purposes
today because it's easier. From the beginning, the major selling
point for Taser was that their weapons were less than lethal. Today,
(33:14):
Axon's website has a whole page titled how Safe our Tasers,
on which they currently claim that their weapons have saved
two hundred and forty eight thousand, nine hundred and seventy
four lives to date nineties. They say that ninety nine
point seven five percent of Taser uses result in no
serious injury. Now, given that their business is providing a
(33:35):
less lethal option for a force option for police, Axon
stands to lose a lot of money each time somebody's
heart stops because they get tased repeatedly. So decades ago,
they decided to make sure that that would not happen.
Step one was to hire as many doctors as they
could buy, men and women who would take ax On
money to carry out studies proving the safety of tasers
(33:56):
and who would be willing to take to the stand
in order to defend America's favorite a extrocution tool from
claims that people sometimes died when shot with it. One
of their first paid experts was Dr Wetley, the same
man who popularized excited delirium as a diagnosis back in
the mid nineteen eighties. That's right, he's an ax On employee.
There we go, Oh, well done. I didn't want to.
(34:18):
I didn't want a positive guest because they didn't want
to seem prejudiced or unfailed. But uh so, so it's
kind of like, um uh, it's kind of like a
company that makes that makes ship proof pants is saying
new studies find shipping your pants randomly is amazing on
(34:38):
multiple levels. Right, provides a wide variety of health benefits. Right,
that's terrible. So this is our bastard. Uh well, one
of them. There's a bunch of them. Actually, a lot
of doctors are taking that axe on cash, it turns out.
Um now, I don't know precisely when Dr Wetley started
(35:00):
working for as On. In two thousands seventeen, Reuters interviewed
him as part of an incredibly detailed investigation they did
into taser deaths, a really wonderful piece of work. Dr
Whatley claimed that the company had approached him quote more
than a decade ago, which conveniently could mean anything from
the early adds to the late nineties, when Taser started
taking off. We don't know exactly when now. Quote from
(35:22):
Reuter's Whatley said that excited delirium is a genuine condition
and that the vast majority of deaths involving taser's he
studied were caused by it. I've never seen a case
where I could say that a taser actually contributed to
the death, he said. As far as interfering with the
heart rhythm, he added, there's never been any convincing evidence
that that can actually take place. Now, one person who
(35:42):
disagrees was Dr Whatley is doctor Werner Spitz, one of
the foremost forensic pathologists in the country. He testified at
the O. J. Simpsons civil trial and at one point
was called into review the autopsy of President John F. Kennedy.
Spitz has seen a number of cases where a taser
caused death, and when informed of doctor Least claim to
the contrary, he told Reuters quote, if you fire a
(36:04):
taser into the precordial area where the heart is, whether
the front or back, the electric current may very well
interfere with the electrical impulses that go to the heart.
But I mean, I'm sure we can trust Dr Wetley
on this. You know, he doesn't have a conflict of interest,
no reliable, credible, it's good ship. All his all his
(36:26):
friends and family members get tasers for Christmas. You're right,
because they're so safe. Yeah, uh safe. You know what
else is safe? This is a This is a shift
from the first ad break the RNA next nine missile
by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon with the R nine X.
Have you ever been thinking, ben, I want to kill
(36:48):
most of the people in that car, but not all
of the people in the other cars around them. Yeah.
There are a lot of Honda Odyssees in Atlanta, and
you know it's it's it's tough to tell when you
look through the window because there could be like nine
to twelve people in there. You never know there could
be and maybe you only want to kill three to four.
That's why we have the R nine X, as Lockheed
Martin and Raytheon say, the R nine X, it'll funk
(37:12):
up a Honda Odyssey. Al Right, here's some other ads.
We are back. Uh, we're back, and we're talking about
whether or not it's possible to be killed by a taser,
which a lot of doctors say absolutely. There's hundreds of
evidence of cases where that's happened in which Dr Charles Wetley,
(37:34):
paid employee of the Axon Corporation, says, no. Never imagine
if guns were I mean, gun companies have fought hard
to be immune not just like liability for what their
products are used for, but to be immune to liability
if they make guns that like fire when they're not
supposed to. Like look up tourists, you know, they there
(37:55):
was a case where like their safeties didn't work and
a bunch of people had their guns fire randomly into
their legs and died, and tourists wasn't liable because again
it's America. Weapons manufacturers have the inherent right to argue
that their weapons don't harm people even when they do.
And that's cool. I guess which can I just say,
you see things like this happen on a daily basis,
(38:18):
and I don't know about you guys, but I can't
even slide on like overdue finds at the library, you
know what I mean, like Blockbuster knowing my luck will
probably come find me at some point because I never
gave back Police Academy. You know, they'll fucking taste the
ship out of you over that Police Academy DVD. At
least it's not police academy too. You know, if you
(38:39):
die over police academy, that's okay. Dying over police academy
too is a bridge too far. Yeah, yeah, no, it's
it's given me a dark night of the soul more
than once, to be honest. But but you're right, like
the temerity too, especially if you're a medical professional, right
you one could make the argument that, Okay, funding I
(39:03):
have received or my employer does not affect my professional opinion.
I think it's a bullshit argument, but it's an argument
people can make. But to do that on top of
this sort of layer cake of you know, pardon me,
of of actively ignoring a mountain of evidence, that just
(39:25):
seems like, I don't like, at what point do you
get your license revoked? You know what I mean? It
seems like never, And it's like, yeah, it's it's very
shady where that's a big part of the story that
we're going to get into because Whatley is not the
only doctor who's double dipping in this way. Now. When
I first started digging into this subject and was trying
(39:46):
to I was trying to answer the question, is excited
delirium real or is it something that the cops invented um,
and that article in Florida Today that I've quoted from
brought me to Dr Deborah Mash, who's a professor emeritus
at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. According
to the article, she's been studying the concept of excited
delirium for decades. She is one of the most prominent
(40:07):
medical voices who will argue that it is a real syndrome.
I can't argue with her credentials, but from the beginning
some of her arguments sounded odd to me. Quote, people
are in a psychiatric state, and that condition is a delirium.
This delirium that people experience, which is why police get
involved in the first place. So that's odd, uh that
(40:27):
that Like again, she's going back to that, like excited delirium.
One of the ways we recognize that is if the
cops get called on you, which seems like a weird
thing for a medical diagnosis to be. Now, Mash has
published a variety of peer reviewed articles making the case
for excited delirium is a real thing, and as far
as I can tell, I think she's the first person
who traced it to Bell's mania. It might have been Wetley.
(40:49):
I'm not exactly certain on that. They both I think
will make that argument. Mash has published a variety of
peer reviewed articles in which she makes the case for
excited delirium being well documented in founded in medicine and
medical history, tracing its early description to Bell's mania. Um.
Florida Today asked her for her take on the Gregory
Edwards case. That's the vet with PTSD who died after
(41:11):
being tased and restrained and maced. She agreed that Edwards
was suffering from excited delirium, but she also called his
death unnecessary, arguing that he should have been taken to
a hospital rather than being put into custody. And she
threats an interesting needle here, sort of throwing some soft
blame on law enforcement for the man's death, but she
stopped short of actually saying that anything in particular they did,
(41:33):
or any tool that they used killed him. The feeling
you get reading her answer is that his excited delirium
killed him because he did not receive medical treatment for it. Now,
this sounds a lot more reasonable than the standard law
enforcement line he died because he was on drugs, But
it really is just a variant of the same thing.
His death was unnecessary, but he was not killed as
(41:55):
a direct result of police use of force. Bad faith
that argument, right, it does seem like a bad faith argument.
Would you be surprised to know that Dr Deborah Marsha's
mentor is one doctor Charles Wetley, Absolutely fucking not. Yeah,
(42:19):
him her mentor um And he's probably the person who
recommended that the Axon Corporation hire her to be an
expert witness in more than a dozen lawsuits. Oh yeah, Yeah,
that's that good ship. That's that good good griftin ship. Yeah.
(42:41):
It's like these people are like the evil the taser
doctors are like the evil version of the pot doctors.
Right in California, before it was legal, we used to
have all these pot doctors who were like clearly doctors
who had been disgraced or wanted to retire. It would
just be like, I'm I used to be a fucking oncologist.
I saw too many people die. Now I like drunk
in a room and tell people give people pot prescriptions.
(43:03):
And that was fine, Like, I have no issue with
those doctors. Actually it was amazing because anytime I wanted
because I used to smoke a ton back then, and
it was it wasn't like I'm not just getting wasted
during the day, I'm taking prescribed medicine, sir. Like you
just go down to Venice Speech and there'd be some
guys in and white coats, the doctors, and yeah, my
(43:25):
favorite was the doctor was like horribly sunburned, long white hair,
looked like an old hippie, wearing like board shorts and
a T shirt with a lab coat over them. And
outside of his office on Venice Beach there was like
bolted to the wall of a day glow painting of
the Mona Lisa with a blunt in her hand, and
it just felt very medical and super subtle to write,
(43:49):
very subtle. Yeah, these taser doctors are are not more
subtle than the pot doctors. But where the While the
pot doctors are like, I'm tired of practicing medicine. I
just want to make enough money to retire telling people
they could smoke pot, these guys are like, I'm not
tired of medicine, but I would like to make money
justifying deaths due to police use of force and tasers
(44:13):
by claiming that tasers didn't kill them, drugs did, which
is a lot worse um, so you'll see Doctor Deborah
Mash quoted a lot as a subject matter expert on
excited delirium UM. That Florida Today article quoted Mash at length,
but did not note her financial relationship with ax On.
The thing that makes Dr Mash brilliant is her ability
(44:35):
to express total sympathy for victims and seemed like she's
not defending the cops while averting all responsibility from the cops.
She told Reuters that the Edwards case was heartbreaking and
avoided the obviously chutty move of blaming the victim directly. Instead,
she blamed budgetary constraints and the health care system. Quote,
he was failed by healthcare providers, and the jails don't
(44:57):
have the money for the staffing that they need. They
need the nurse practitioners who are trained in psychiatry to
identify the problem. See, it's not the cops fault, it's
that it's the fact that they don't have enough money
to have nurses in the jails. We're got to give
the cops more money and then these people won't be
dying because obviously the cops will spend that money on
nurses and not on more tasers. Oh god, you know,
(45:21):
I'm golf clapping at the matrix. Dodge sound goes in.
It's impressive, Like she's not a dumb person, which is
why ax On Paser Mash is so valuable to ax
On that she's become their point woman in Florida whenever
someone gets killed by a taser. But Axon is a
big company and they employ a number of other medical
(45:41):
experts in different states. And in part two of this episode, Ben,
we're going to talk about the saga of Dr Jeffrey Hoe.
But that's gonna have to come Thursday, um, because because
we are done for the day, given a give a
nice little bit of background. Who so, Ben, you got
(46:02):
some plugs for us? How you doing you get some plugs? Oh? Yeah?
First off, I'd like to thank everybody at Axon. Uh
they're they're paying me for a period on this show
and parts now. Uh yeah yeah. So if if you
like Behind the Bastards, we uh, I hope you check
(46:22):
out stuff they don't want you to know. It's a
show I do with a critical thinking applied to corruption
and conspiracy theories. You can also check out the show
Ridiculous History, which is exactly what it sounds like we
were not super freaking creative with the name. To be
honest with you, Uh, and you can also find uh
find me on Twitter or Instagram where I am at
(46:44):
ben Bolan. This is amazingly depressing. Robert. Yeah, it's it's
pretty much a bummer. Yes, and I hope everybody makes
it safely to Thursday. Yes, avoid the cops, don't get tased,
and if you get excited to don't be delirious. I guess,
don't be delirious. Eat Derito's. Oh boy, we even't had
(47:08):
a Doritos plug in a minute, we'll catch Hill on Thursday.
We'll talk about Dr Jeffrey Ho. We'll we'll throw out
some ads from our new sponsor, Linco Industries, maker of
the Bearcat G three, which is of course, the most
popular wheeled armored response vehicle by American law enforcement squat teams. Lynco.
If you are a small police department who needs a
vehicle that can take an explosion for no real reason,
(47:32):
your best bet is Linco. That's the episode. Uh, good times,
m
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Robert Evans
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