His wife told News 12 Long Island in a recorded interview that she was undergoing an MRI on her knee when she asked the technician to get her husband to help her get off the table. She said she called out to him.

Whole thing is heart breaking all around. I feel for the technician who made an honest but very serious mistake. And I'm sure the wife will spend her days regretting asking for help. Just a fucking tragic situation. :/

all they needed was a magnet of equal or greater strength

MRI magnets are electromagnets that are supercooled with liquid helium and take hours to start or stop because of the electrical energy that has to be put in or taken out.

So just having a magnet of equal strengh for idiot defense would be a very significant waste of electricity and helium unfortunately

Maybe lockable doors

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.

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?

You could spend billions to implement crazy solutions for every possible scenario.

Or you could just tell the guy not to go in there.

Nah, let them stupids die. I don't want to risk non idiots lives for the chance of saving a moron.

this seems like the obvious solution to me and it's kinda wacky that it's not already standard, just have a loud as fuck alarm go off if metal goes through the first door leading to the general scanner area.

just gotta have enough distance between the detector and the scanner, so there's time for people to intervene.

Then the door will always be locked, unless the MRI is being serviced, as the magnet is always active. Kinda kills the point of the machine, no? That said they could put in more safeguards for sure. Though you would think all the signs on and near the door, and the extensive explanation you get, would be enough. But here we are.

Somewhere between 150 and 160, depending on the tennis balls. Hope this helps

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=9kg+%2F+mass+of+a+tennis+ball

Edit: Additionally, that's about 63½ European swallows, assuming an average weight of 5 ounces. Given that a European swallow must beat its wings 43 times per second to maintain airspeed velocity, it'd be a proper racket.

It's seventy-nine sticks of butter, plus a pat or two

The only units I understand are bananas or bald eagles. Please adjust accordingly

I used robots and the answer was 160 tennis balls, which is actually much less than I expected.