> "I'm saying, 'Could you turn off the machine? Call 911. Do something. Turn this damn thing off!'" [pleaded the victim's wife].
The journalist missed a golden opportunity for education here: most MRI scanner magnets cannot be turned off like that. For the few that can, it's going to cost >$50,000 just to refill the liquid helium, not to mention the real and opportunity costs associated with rendering the machine offline for days or weeks.
If people don't know about the magnet, or don't know that it can't be turned off (or perhaps assume it's "off" because the scan was over, as I would guess happened here), accidents happen.
The journalist missed a golden opportunity for education here: most MRI scanner magnets cannot be turned off like that. For the few that can, it's going to cost >$50,000 just to refill the liquid helium, not to mention the real and opportunity costs associated with rendering the machine offline for days or weeks.
If people don't know about the magnet, or don't know that it can't be turned off (or perhaps assume it's "off" because the scan was over, as I would guess happened here), accidents happen.