<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by TSAMGR:
["When you defibrillate a person, they are already dead," she
said. "The purpose of the defibrillator is to bring them back to
life. So you can't make them any worse off than they are."
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That's a pretty broad definition of "dead".
I can imagine that if the paddle was placed on a particularly conductive piece of clothing, the current might flow along the clothing instead of into the person (preferrably through the heart).
Now imagine that person wearing (shock of shocks) an underwire bra. Current follows the path of least resistance. Since the underwire has a higher conductance (less resistance) than the human body, the majority of the current flows along the underwire, which dissipates some of the current as heat. Surrounding the underwire is a bra, which now gets hot and... surprise! Catches fire.