Chuck Taggart at Looka! pointed to this unspeakably tragic instance of medical carelessness. A 6 year-old boy was killed at Westchester Medical Center while undergoing an MRI scan to assess his progress in recovering from a brain tumor, because someone left a metal oxygen tank in the room during the scan! Recall that an MRI scanner is based around a 10-ton electromagnet, and imagine the rest. For God’s sake, the referral form I have to fill out when I refer a patient for an MRI scan goes to prodigious lengths to rule out the presence of even the smallest fragment of metal in the body of the scan subject because of the dangers of such a powerful magnetic field! Nice to know the entire medical center is grieving, and that the state health department wonders “if there were any violations”. I can’t imagine the responsible party having to live with the knowledge that s/he had committed such an outrageous mistake any more than the family can metabolize the senselessness of their little boy’s loss. My heart goes out to all of them. This is not the first instance of gross malfeasance at Westchester Medical Center either. Time for the head honchos to step down, if not be prosecuted for criminally negligent homicide along with the directly guilty party? There are some societies where the head of the institution might offer to take his own life over this… Nando Times