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Long Island man wearing 9kg-metal necklace dies after being sucked into MRI machine
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
585 points (99.2% liked)
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Dude was wearing a 20lb chain while his wife was getting an MRI.
She freaked, and yelled for him, and he ran into the room while the machine was still on and fucking died.
This is 100% their fault, I could almost see an argument that the door needs a lock to prevent idiots with 20l s of metal around their neck from running in, but you don't want to lock everyone out in case there's an issue.
There is a lot of conflicting information in the articles im finding about this incident, from her shouting and him running in to him entering the room with the technician, and the technician knew about the chain and had commented on it.
Lmk if you need some examples, but theres a lot.
Im (cynically) inclined to believe that the hospital were the first to give statements and did a quick its-not-our-fault response. Then more people were interviewed. Ill always side with the working class (imo everyone who is not ruling class) rather than the corporations. And in the US the hospital is a corporation for sure.
There's some gross racial spin surrounding this too, see pic below. It was a weighted padlock steel necklace for his weight training, not whatever is implied by yahoo.
Just for your information, the machine, meaning the magnet, is ALWAYS on.
Unless something gets stuck. Then it is shut down and restarted after the thing is removed. Takes hours though, I think the startup was four hours.
They had that happen at the hospital my father worked at, the cleaning lady brought in a stool with steel legs. They tried to remove it by force first, but four men could not do it.
Takes hours and is horrifically expensive.
Surely dialed down in between scans?
No. They are usually superconducting magnets in persistent mode:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_magnet
No it is only turned off during maintenance or by an emergency kill switch.
Huh, I thought this was nonsense, but googling proved you're right. Very cool TIL!
That door should absolutely be locked while in operation. That door being forced open should be an e-stop event.
Someone could walk in there with a firearm or a bowey knife or anything.
Where does it say he ran in? I mean, what you say sounds right, but this doesn't read like "freaking out"
Edit: Sounds like she did not freak out, but called to him to help her stand up after it was complete (bad knee), but before he was authorized to enter. This seems more like an honest mistake and tragedy. https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/20/health/mri-machine-death-long-island
You could put an airlock like metal detector door that only opens the second door, if the first door is closed and there's nothing magnetic inside. People could still go in quickly in emergencies, but nothing that makes it worse can enter.
As much as the machines cost, something like that wired up with a metal detector so that if the machine is on and there's metal in the airlock it will never open would actually be a good solution....
But it would take a society that values human life and absence of suffering over money. Because like someone else pointed out, the hospital ain't the one paying to fix the machine.
Maybe Canada would be interested?
This basically never happens. You want to spend billions guarding against humanity stupidity? Good luck with that.
🙄
MRI’s are still plenty dangerous when they aren’t scanning(“on”). The magnets don’t ever turn off unless you release all the helium which is typically a last resort. They can do it slowly for servicing but it’s costly or rapidly for emergencies but it usually trashes things.
Seems like the simplest solution is having a locking observation booth. Family can watch from the booth or go to the waiting room. This doesn’t prevent staff from responding to anything and actually keeps the family out of the way if there is an emergency. No high tech gizmos required. Are they go to like it? Probably not. Then off to the waiting room.
Thanks for the info!
Honestly tho, it's pretty crazy they let dude roam around a hospital with 20lbs of chain around his neck. That's literally a deadly weapon.
I don't care what story he gave, he should have been told to leave it in his vehicle.
i wonder if he had neck pain, to carrying that much weight on his neck.
idk, maybe the hospital has insurance for idiocy. But the people that broke it almost certainly can't afford an MRI machine, so they ain't paying.
You could spend billions to implement crazy solutions for every possible scenario.
Or you could just tell the guy not to go in there.
“When you make something idiot-proof, the world builds a better idiot.”
You can idiot proof anything but the world just makes better idiots
That would not cost billions. Not even close. It would certainly be far cheaper than the cost of repair.
Did you forget that thousands of hospitals exist just in the US? Or at least did before 2025.
Not all of them have MRI machines, and regardless of its cheaper than repairing them.
Hundreds probably do though. I don't know. I've never heard of anything like this happening. I think it's probably exceedingly rare. I had an MRI and the number of times I heard and read the warnings about metal was exhausting. It feels almost impossible that someone could not know about that specific danger.
"I have no idea what I'm talking about so I'll just assume everything is cheap and easy"
Nah, let them stupids die. I don't want to risk non idiots lives for the chance of saving a moron.
I apologize if im completely misunderstanding, but what "non idiots" are at risk, in what circumstances? Shouldn't there always be a tech?
No apology necessary.
There are emergencies that could happen anywhere, including in an MRI room. Dealing with emergencies, ease of ingress and egress is paramount.
The proposed solutions would hamper access to these rooms during emergencies, putting patients and techs in harms way (the non idiots), in the name of preventing a moron from giving themselves a Darwin award.
I think it would be a net negative, ie. more people would die/get hurt trying to make an idiot proof enclosure.
I’m just thinking about the poor woman. She’s forever going to be haunted with the knowledge that she was the one who called him into the room, and thus led to his death. His decision to come in wasn’t thought out, but that probably won’t relieve her feelings of guilt for having called him in. Such a tragic story.
Uh she was in the room likely still on the bed laying down considering the story given. So like she'll have some rowdy memories of dude getting mushed into a machine a speed then slowly suffocate if they weren't lucky enough to hit their head really really fucking hard.
She's not going to have one whit of self awareness. I may be going out on a limb here, but it doesn't sound like he was exactly the sharpest bulb in the ocean, and her reported cry to "turn off" the MRI (despite the repeated screenings you get prior to an MRI, warnimg patients about metal) indicate she isn't either. She's 100% gonna blame the provider and sue, adding to the rising cost of healthcare.
This is a really unempathetic response. I know shit’s tough right now and there are a lot of fools out there, but I beg you to at least try to give the benefit of the doubt and try to think through why people might do the things they do, especially when it’s someone enduring a personal tragedy that’s being publicly scrutinized. Think about the poor old woman who had hot coffee spilled on her crotch at a drive through and endured agonizing disfiguring burns - McDonald’s ran a campaign to paint her as a scammer and opportunist when she had done nothing wrong at all.
Most people don’t intentionally endanger themselves or their loved ones and they are usually very deferential to authority, especially in medical settings. There’s nothing to indicate this was any more than a miscommunication involving a heavily blinged-out guy who did nothing wrong. The MRI folks didn’t think to brief him because he wasn’t in the danger zone. His wife called for help. Maybe a very observant doctor could have noticed the guy’s jewelry and gave him a warning. Maybe the wife could have recalled that her husband was wearing metal before calling for him. Maybe the doctors could have better screening procedures for people in the waiting area, or better procedures to control access to the MRI room. I can’t say based on the available information that anyone lacks self awareness or did anything obviously wrong here. Sometimes a lot of coincidences line up to make something terrible happen.
Aren't you just a shining beacon of logical, data-driven level-headedness. The fuck is she supposed to do, mentally recite each sign she saw on her way in as her spouse is being crushed before to determine if her request is feasible? Crawl out of the MRI, past her dying partner, and go read the manual to see if the MRI has an emergency stop capability before asking the technicians to intervene?
I wish you the best in your future human interactions. I hope very few of them are life-threatening because clearly, you'll be of no help if you deem the situation avoidable or deem help unlikely to be successful.
Metal detector on the door to the room.
Don’t forget to pay the repairing fee for the machine