The MRI community has never been a stranger to controversy. It has served as a whipping boy for opponents of rising healthcare costs, and a poster child for the dangers of self-referred entrepreneurial medicine. But this month's events may take the cake, with two major MRI imbroglios breaking out just weeks apart.
The first dust-up concerns the award of the Nobel Prize in medicine to Paul Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield, two men who conducted important early work that led to the development of MRI as a viable clinical tool. The MRI community’s jubilation over the award soon turned to angst, however, as an even earlier researcher, Dr. Raymond Damadian, launched a high-profile campaign to protest his exclusion as a Nobel laureate.
The second controversy erupted when MRI screening pioneer Dr. Craig Bittner was sued in a San Francisco court for claims made by his company, AmeriScan, regarding the efficacy of its MRI breast-screening service. San Francisco officials and the state of California’s medical board charged that AmeriScan’s claims constituted false advertising because they were not supported by the scientific literature.
While these events may seem unrelated, there is a common thread between them. Both exemplify MRI’s status as medical imaging’s premier cutting-edge modality, a technology that has the power to capture the imagination and spur it on to new heights.
Unlike almost any other imaging technology, MRI has been a magnet for visionaries, pioneers, and entrepreneurs. This uncanny attraction has become a source of both controversy and triumph as MRI's proponents push the boundaries of the possible, in both the clinical and business worlds.
These forces ensure that MRI will continue to grab headlines in the years to come. Sometimes this will occur to the chagrin of MRI practitioners, but more often than not it will serve to highlight the modality’s increasingly vital role in both healthcare and research.
To view our stories about this month’s events, as well as other important recent headlines in MRI, just log on to our MRI Digital Community, at http://mri.auntminnie.com.
