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Mris And The Perception Of Risk, Steven Goldberg

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The most important safety decision concerning MRIs was to change the name of the procedure. In the late 1970s, the procedure known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) became magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) because of the negative connotations the word “nuclear” invited. The change was understandable since MRIs do not expose patients to dangerous radiation: “nuclear” was in the original name because basic research on the atomic nucleus led to the development of MRIs. The main cost of the name change was to obscure the important link between basic research and useful medical technologies.

In recent years, however, MRIs, a generally …