Pepper spray is all over the news, following the Occupy Wall Street protests, particularly following the widely disseminated images and videos of protestors being sprayed in NY, Portland, and UCDavis . Before that, I knew and occasionally used its main ingredient, capsaicin, as a treatment for my patients with shingles, an extremely painful Herpes zoster infection. And I knew about the many of the serious side effects of pepper spray, well-described by Deborah Blum .
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