practicing cardiologist and assistant professor of medicine at the university of north carolina. he is also the chief medical officer of cardio ready, a company providing defibrillator services. obviously if you re going to have to use one of these things you want to be sure that it is reliable, that it is going to work the first time and maybe the only time you will get a chance to use it. how concerned should we be? well, we know that sudden cardiac arrest is the number one cause of death in the u.s. today, second only to all types of cancers combined. so it is a huge public health problem. defibrillators are the difference between life and death. and they work 99% of the time. over this time period that we are discussing there have been some incidents where the machine didn t work or batteries were expired or pads may have been expired. jon: so it s my understanding that part of the problem here is that the defibrillator companies, one of the things the fda wants them to do is rel