Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. SUBSCRIBE Nov. 28, 2018, 9:34 AM GMT By WEST COLUMBIA, South Carolina — Desperate for relief after years of agony, Jim Taft listened intently as his pain management doctor described a medical device that could change his life. It wouldn’t fix the nerve damage in his mangled right arm, Taft and his wife recalled the doctor saying, but a spinal-cord stimulator would cloak his pain, making him “good as new.” Taft’s stimulator failed soon after it was surgically implanted. After an operation to repair it, he said, the device shocked him so many times that he couldn’t sleep and even fell down a flight of stairs. Today, the 45-year-old Taft is virtually paralyzed, barely able to get to the bathroom by himself. “I thought I would have a wonderful life,” Taft said. “But look at me.” For years, medical device companies and doctors have touted spinal-cord stimulators as a panacea for millions of patients suffering from a wide range of pain disorders, making them one of the fastest-growing products in the $400 billion medical device industry. Companies and doctors push them…