I was over at the LawDog's looking around and saw this post on emergency medicine.
The AED (Automatic External Defibrilator) is a great, wondrous, magnificent device. It saves lives. It is simple to use. It costs about a grand. If you are having a heart attack, you would gladly spend that grand for one.
Any fool can use an AED, if that fool has had the course. I think they should send a trained monkey out with every AED sold. All the first responder would have to do is whistle and point, and the monkey would spring into action. That would be cool to watch.
If you haven't had the course yet, go get the course. It's easy, it's fast, and it might save a life. AED's are very cool. Having a monkey trained to use it would be cooler yet.
The makers of AED's are having a few problems recently with about a 20% recall rate:
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Hope all the buyers updated or replaced the older ones.
There alot of new ones available now, that automatically make a diagnosis, and then adminster a shock if necessary - Phillips Heartstart Onsite springs to mind. Keep in mind that these things use very expensive, non standard batteries, that have to be replaced every coupla years - you don's start to see ones with rechargables until you get into the $3K range, because they're not meant to be used regularly, they're considered a first aid item.
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