0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class,

0:03

a production of iHeartRadio.

0:11

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frye.

0:14

And I'm Tracy V.

0:15

Wilson, and this is a continuation

0:18

of our two part episode on the

0:20

invention of the MRI and the arguments

0:22

around who invented it gap And

0:25

when we left off on part one, doctor

0:28

Ray Damadian had filed for a patent

0:30

on his idea to create a machine

0:32

that used nuclear magnetic resonance to

0:34

capture diagnostic data by

0:37

scanning a human body, but he

0:39

had not yet built it. So

0:41

we're going to pick right up from that point today.

0:43

So I'm just going to tell you now, if you didn't listen to

0:45

part one, go back and get

0:47

all of the baseline groundwork that had to be done

0:49

in physics before we can get to this point.

0:52

I would say, we have two partters where you can

0:55

get the second part if the first part,

0:57

but I.

0:58

Would say not, this is not one.

1:00

This is one.

1:01

You need part one before part two.

1:03

Yeah, you do. And so then today's

1:05

episode is going to take us through the building

1:07

of the first MRI machine, how

1:10

changes were made to the methodology that that machine

1:13

used, and into the very recent past,

1:16

as people have continued to hash

1:18

out who exactly should get

1:20

credit for the invention of the MRI Raymond's

1:23

Madian was completely enthusiastic

1:25

about the possibilities of magnetic scanning

1:28

technology, and once he had filed for a

1:30

patent, he set out to build a working

1:32

body scanner. But this is

1:34

definitely not something that other people

1:37

believed in right away. To a

1:39

lot of people, it just seemed too far beyond

1:41

imagining to think there would ever be a way

1:43

to scan an entire living

1:46

person. Damadian later

1:48

recounted quote, going from the first

1:50

test of the experiment to construction

1:52

of Indomitable and the first human

1:55

scan, we had significant numbers

1:57

of people forecasting that it was beyond any

1:59

prospect of going from a tiny test

2:01

tube to a human body and overcoming

2:04

all the technological obstacles. Then,

2:07

to be clear, this was a huge

2:09

jump in how NMR could

2:12

be used. It is one thing to

2:14

analyze a very small sample that's

2:16

been collected and can be contained in a test

2:18

tube, very different

2:20

thing to analyze a living human

2:23

body. This like comes up all

2:25

the time in like medical

2:28

developments. Where something works in a Petri dish,

2:31

will it work in a full human being.

2:33

Yeah, And the first big obstacle

2:36

to building this machine, which

2:39

Domitian referenced in that quote by its

2:41

name Indomitable, was building

2:43

a magnet big enough that a person could

2:46

fit inside of it. He

2:48

and a small team eventually managed to

2:50

make one, using an estimated thirty

2:52

miles of neobium titanium wire

2:55

wrapped on a cylinder to create their superconductor.

2:59

The Indomitable also so had a helium cooling

3:01

system, but that was problematic.

3:03

It leaked. It started to become really

3:06

expensive to maintain. One

3:08

estimate said that it was racking up maintenance

3:10

expenses at roughly eight

3:12

thousand dollars a month, which is an awful

3:15

lot for one component of a

3:17

machine when you were trying to be a startup

3:19

and get this off the ground. This

3:22

homemade MRI would look both

3:24

familiar and a little bit alien to

3:26

anyone who has had an MRI recently.

3:30

The subject was moved into it on a

3:32

platform, just like the way you would be today,

3:34

but that platform was made of wood,

3:36

and the scanny also had to wear an antenna

3:39

coil that was built onto a cardboard

3:42

vest. It looks very kind

3:44

of nineteen fifty sci fi when you

3:46

see pictures of the first people doing this. The

3:49

information from that antenna then

3:51

traveled to an oscilloscope, which then parsed

3:53

and fed the information to a mini computer,

3:56

and that mini computer could take that information

3:59

and generate an INMA image.

4:01

Once this machine was built, Tomadian was

4:03

eager to be its first test subject.

4:06

That meant nobody needed to get permission

4:09

or approval from the school's administration.

4:11

Had they been looking for a volunteer from

4:14

outside the team, there would have been red tape

4:16

involved. But once Tomaidian

4:18

bravely entered the Indomitable on

4:20

May eleventh, nineteen seventy seven, nothing

4:24

happened. The team was

4:26

completely dejected. Damadian came

4:28

to the conclusion that he had too

4:30

much body fat insulating his tissues

4:33

and the coil they were using could not

4:35

get a signal through it. As

4:38

they worked on the machine. Over the next few weeks,

4:40

ray Tomadian's health was closely monitored,

4:42

but he never showed any kind of sign

4:45

of like side effects from this experiment.

4:48

Yeah, they came to the conclusion that their coil

4:51

and antenna were not strong enough, but they couldn't

4:53

really backtrack and rebuild that part, so

4:56

they were just trying to figure out how they could go forward,

4:59

and then once the team ready for another test,

5:01

it was Larry Minkoff, who was a graduate

5:03

student working Underdamadian, who volunteered.

5:06

He had been the one monitoring Damadian

5:08

for any possible problems after the first test,

5:11

and he was very confident it was safe. He

5:13

also was a very slender gentleman, so

5:15

they were not as worried about that issue of

5:18

body fat blocking the signal from coming

5:20

through. And so he

5:22

got into the MRI and it took five

5:25

hours, but it worked.

5:27

The resulting image was really rudimentary,

5:30

though. The team actually had to reconstruct

5:32

it by drawing it out with colored pencils

5:35

and then to get a quick image,

5:37

and then a computer generated version was

5:39

made using data points that were

5:41

collected during the scan. There were one hundred

5:43

and six data points that had to be used. But

5:46

again this is in the seventies, so when we

5:48

say computer generated, this is very

5:50

different than what you might think of today.

5:53

Damadian founded the Phone Arc

5:55

Corporation on the heels of that first

5:57

successful scan, with the intent to

5:59

start building scanners to market to

6:01

the medical community. He later

6:04

noted his excitement about this technology

6:06

in an interview stating quote, once we

6:08

had been able to see that scanning the human

6:11

body was real and could be accomplished,

6:14

you wanted to be part of that. You

6:16

didn't want to be just a shoreline observer.

6:18

As the ship sailed off into the

6:20

horizon, and Domadian

6:23

scans were pretty incredible.

6:25

This was a huge advance over anything

6:27

that had existed before. But

6:30

if you look at one of those early scans, even

6:32

after it had been rendered by a computer with

6:34

all of those data points, it still looks

6:37

very rudimentary compared to what you would see

6:40

an MRI do today. The

6:42

images are very blocky with very

6:44

little detail. It's kind

6:46

of like if you had an MRI done

6:49

by Minecraft. While

6:51

Domitian announced after this that they had

6:53

created a way to detect cancer anywhere

6:56

in the human body, detractors

6:58

noted that the generated image could easily

7:00

be misinterpreted because it was so crude,

7:03

and also that a bias from excitement over

7:05

this new tech could play a part in an incorrect

7:08

interpretation. But Domanian

7:10

had never really stated in his patent

7:13

or in his research notes that what he was after

7:15

was imagery. He was after

7:17

data, and then that data could be used

7:20

to create visual images. But

7:22

the biggest problem in all of it was that

7:24

there was this degree of guesswork

7:27

involved in the whole thing. Sometimes

7:30

it wasn't really clear where

7:32

precisely the information that they

7:34

were using was coming from in the

7:37

human body. So while it

7:39

was possible to see that there was, for example,

7:41

unhealthy tissue clearly

7:44

pinpointing that unhealthy tissue's location

7:47

was not exactly guaranteed. As

7:49

Domadian and his team were working on the

7:52

Indomitable, another scientist,

7:54

Paul Lauderber, was working out his

7:56

own way to make use of Domadian's

7:58

early ideas. Paul Lauderber

8:01

was born in Sydney, Ohio, on May

8:03

sixth, nineteen twenty nine. He

8:05

described his childhood home as full of animals

8:08

dogs and then quote birds, turtles,

8:11

fish, snakes, and other animals, and

8:13

surrounded by outdoor places where he played

8:16

and explored. His father

8:18

was an engineer who was part owner of

8:20

a company that built machinery for bakeries,

8:22

and his mother was a housewife. Paul

8:25

attended parochial school, which

8:27

he later said he didn't have much memory

8:29

of. He had an aunt on his father's

8:32

side named Anna Lauderber, who was a

8:34

teacher. She got him interested in natural

8:36

history, and he wrote later in his life

8:38

that she was his favorite aunt. Yeah,

8:41

he really makes it sound like she was one of those people

8:43

that really turned on his brain to the idea

8:46

of like exploring things you see

8:48

in the natural world and figuring out what they are

8:50

and how they work. After attending

8:52

public high school, Lauderber went on to

8:54

Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland,

8:57

Ohio, where he studied chemistry,

9:00

although his father had really hoped he would

9:02

major in engineering instead, but

9:04

after he got his Bachelor of Science, Lauderbird

9:07

described being quote tired of lectures

9:09

and professors and determined to go back

9:11

to lab work. He got a job

9:13

with Dow Corning, specifically at their

9:15

lab at the Melon Institute, which

9:17

came with the opportunity to take graduate

9:19

courses at the University of Pittsburgh for

9:22

free if you wanted. He did eventually

9:24

take some of those. He mentions in

9:26

some of his writing that he kind of got over his

9:30

chagrin over academia and was like, yeah,

9:32

sure, I'll take some more classes. But

9:34

it was while he was with Dow Corning that

9:36

he learned about nuclear magnetic resonance.

9:39

He later wrote of his early interest

9:41

in NMR, quote it seemed ideally

9:43

suited, even at that early date,

9:46

for investigating the structure and electron

9:48

distributions in molecules and

9:51

various physical properties of materials.

9:54

Therefore, as part of my graduate education

9:56

at the University of Pittsburgh, in addition

9:58

to a literature seminar on interstellar

10:01

molecules, I gave one on a

10:03

paper describing NMR properties

10:05

of rubber before I could

10:07

begin a planned collaboration on

10:09

the hydrogen NMR spectroscopy

10:12

of silicon compounds. However, my

10:15

deferments came to an end and I was drafted

10:17

into the Army. When

10:19

his time in the military ended, he returned

10:22

to the Mellon Institute, in part because they offered

10:24

to buy him an NMR machine

10:26

of his own to work with. He

10:29

immediately started research with it, starting

10:31

with a survey of carbon compounds.

10:34

He used that work to complete his PhD,

10:36

which opened up more professional opportunities,

10:39

and soon he was offered an associate

10:41

professor job at the State University

10:43

of New York at Stonybrook that

10:45

also let him set up an NMR lab.

10:48

Coming up, we'll talk about the chance

10:50

event that led Lauderbird to start thinking

10:52

about the use of NMR as a medical

10:54

diagnostic tool. But first we're going

10:56

to pause for a sponsor break.

11:07

During this period in Lauderber's life,

11:10

he observed a postdoc named Leon

11:12

Serian that was essentially recreating

11:15

and repeating Ray Damadian's rat

11:17

tissue experiments, comparing

11:19

the NMR relaxation times between

11:21

healthy tissues and tumorous tissues.

11:24

Laiber wrote of this experience quote, I

11:26

was there to observe the experiments and

11:29

noted that large and consistent differences

11:31

were observed for specimens from all parts

11:34

of the sacrificed animals, and that the

11:36

experiments seemed well done. Some

11:39

individuals were speculating that similar

11:41

measurements might supplement or replace

11:43

the observations of cell structure in tissues

11:45

by pathologists, but the invasive

11:48

nature of the animal procedure was distasteful

11:50

to me. The data too complex

11:52

and the sources of differences to obscure

11:55

to be relied upon for medical decisions.

11:58

As I pondered the problem that evening, I

12:00

realized that there might be a way to

12:02

locate the precise origins of NMR

12:05

signals in complex objects,

12:08

and hence to form an image of their distributions

12:10

in two or even three dimensions.

12:13

Building on that idea. In nineteen seventy

12:16

three, Paul Latiber coined the

12:18

term zoomatography. He created

12:20

a two dimensional image using gradients

12:23

in the magnetic field, and then he started

12:25

essentially stacking the two D images

12:27

that were produced to create three

12:29

D ones. He was solving a problem

12:32

that was inherent in Damadian's method

12:34

of capturing data, that problem

12:36

of uncertainty regarding location

12:39

of the source of an NMR signal.

12:41

Laiber wrote a paper on this method of using

12:44

NMR titled image

12:46

Formation by Induced Local Interactions

12:49

Examples employing Nuclear

12:51

magnetic resonance. His work

12:54

was much more focused on getting an image

12:56

than just collecting data, an important

12:58

departure from Domadian's word work. When

13:01

he submitted that paper to Nature, it was initially

13:03

rejected. Lauderber resubmitted

13:05

with an explanatory cover letter and

13:08

was asked to edit his paper to draw a

13:10

more direct line to the possible

13:12

applications of his method. That

13:15

year, there was also a development

13:18

going on across the Atlantic at the University

13:20

of Nottingham. Sir Peter Mansfield

13:23

realized that changing the magnetic field

13:25

would reveal a chemical's anatomic

13:27

structure. This was actually pretty similar

13:29

to the work that Lauderber was doing, but Mansfield

13:32

hadn't read or even known about Louderber's

13:34

paper. This is kind of a bit

13:36

of an echo of the way that Block

13:39

and Purcel, which we talked about in the first

13:41

part of this were both coming to similar

13:43

conclusions through slightly different routes.

13:45

Three decades earlier. Mansfield

13:48

had also been doing work that shortened the length

13:50

of time required for an MRI. That's

13:53

called the echo planar method today, which

13:56

captured all of the data from a two D plane

13:58

after just a single magnet pulse,

14:01

rather than just a section of a two D plane

14:03

at a time. So it wasn't like you had to do

14:06

any image in a segment of several

14:08

pieces. You could do it all in one go. Mansfield

14:12

is credited with tightening up the mathematics

14:14

needed to significantly improve the MRI

14:16

machin's data analysis in

14:19

nineteen eighty Demadian's phone Ar

14:21

Corporation introduced the first commercially

14:23

available MRI machine in

14:26

nineteen eighty five, just one year

14:28

after the Food and Drug Administration approved

14:30

the use of MRI, phone

14:32

R produced a mobile version of an MRI

14:35

machine. This variation enabled

14:37

MRIs to be performed on patients

14:39

when moving them was too risky.

14:42

They can be used in ambulances and emergency

14:45

scenarios outside of a hospital, like when

14:47

there's a disaster or another event. Almost

14:50

as soon as MRI machines started to be adopted

14:52

by the medical community, the term nuclear

14:54

magnetic resonance shifted and started

14:57

to be called magnetic resonance imaging.

15:00

This, according to a New York Times write up,

15:02

got away from the potentially problematic

15:05

nuclear association. This

15:08

is not what it meant, really, but it

15:10

could be associated with like nuclear

15:12

power and nuclear weapons,

15:16

all of this going on during the Cold War

15:18

right.

15:19

The use of imaging also meant

15:21

that this folded in nicely to the field

15:23

of radiology.

15:25

Also in nineteen eighty five, doctor Paul

15:28

C. Lauderber was one of the recipients of

15:30

the LASCAR Medical Research Award,

15:32

which since nineteen forty five has recognized

15:35

what are believed to be the greatest contributions

15:37

to medical science each year. The

15:39

LASCAR Awards are sometimes called the

15:41

American Nobels, and they are considered

15:44

to be to some degree a predictor

15:46

of Nobel candidates. When Lauderber

15:49

won his, he was recognized alongside

15:51

the three man team of doctor Caesar Milstein,

15:54

doctor George JF. Koehler, and

15:56

doctor Michael Potter for their work that they

15:58

had done in antibodies. And in addition

16:00

to those four men already mentioned, nineteen

16:03

eighty five is also the year the doctor Henry

16:05

J. Heimlich received a LASCAR Award

16:08

for his food ejection technique.

16:10

So it's kind of an interesting time when all

16:12

of these pieces of medical science

16:15

are being developed at the same moment.

16:16

Yeah, I've thought about doing a Heimlich episode,

16:19

but number one, that's like a bit more

16:21

recent nineteen eighty five than normal

16:23

than we typically cover. And then also I just

16:27

I didn't quite come together anyway. But

16:31

even in the New York Times write up about Latiber's

16:33

award, they mentioned doctor Domadian stating

16:35

quote, while many specialists give doctor

16:38

Latderber chief credit for introducing

16:40

NMR as a diagnostic tool, doctor

16:43

Raymond Damadian of the Downstate Medical

16:45

Center of the State University of New York has

16:47

developed an alternate approach called

16:50

field focused NMR or

16:52

phone R. Its imaging method

16:54

differs from that in the widely used

16:57

devices based.

16:58

On doctor Lauderber's work. This

17:00

reference to Domdian having done work in

17:02

the field that didn't receive the award

17:05

is a little bit of a harbinger of something that would

17:07

happen twenty years later, which we will

17:09

talk about in detail. In

17:11

nineteen eighty eight, both Domadian and

17:14

Lauderber were honored with the National Medal

17:16

of Technology for their work on MRI

17:18

tech. This entire

17:21

debate about all

17:23

of these issues and their two different

17:25

approaches is complicated

17:27

by the fact that Fonar actually adopted

17:30

Luderber's method of capturing images.

17:33

Domadian still claimed ownership of the

17:35

idea of the machine, but Louderber's

17:38

work had pretty clearly made the machine

17:40

more useful and marketable. Doctor

17:42

Raymond Domadian was also inducted into

17:44

the National Inventors Hall of Fame in nineteen

17:47

eighty nine.

17:49

Almost as soon as Foonar introduced

17:52

its machines, other companies started

17:54

working on their own, but Raymond

17:56

Damadian was very, very protective

17:59

of his patents and he went after anyone

18:01

he believed was infringing on them. Hitachi,

18:05

Johnson and Johnson, Siemens, Phillips

18:08

Electronics, and General Electric

18:10

were all companies that developed MRI

18:12

machines, and Fonar and Damadian

18:15

went after all of them. Many

18:17

of these cases dragged on for years. Eventually,

18:20

all of them but one came to out of

18:22

court settlements, with Domadian and his company

18:25

receiving some sort of payout, although

18:27

the details of those settlements remained private.

18:30

The one holdout was General Electric,

18:32

which claimed that it had been developing its

18:35

imaging concepts quote from the

18:37

beginning, whatever

18:40

that meant.

18:42

I read that statement and I was like, what's

18:45

the beginningning.

18:48

A major setback happened in nineteen

18:50

eighty six, though, when a judgment in

18:52

favor of Domadian in a dispute with

18:54

Johnson and Johnson was overturned

18:56

in federal court.

18:58

Then in nineteen ninety seven, when Foennar

19:00

and General Electric were still locked

19:02

in a legal battle about patent rights, and

19:05

it had gone to the US Court of Appeals for

19:07

the Federal Circuit. On June

19:09

thirtieth of that year, the appeal did not rule

19:11

in favor of General Electric, and ultimately

19:14

GE was found to be in violation of

19:16

Domadian's patent rights and was

19:18

ordered to pay one hundred and twenty eight million.

19:21

This was a huge deal, and it was huge news

19:23

at the time. This bolstered

19:25

Domadian's company in two ways.

19:28

For one, it meant they got a massive financial

19:30

bump when they really needed it. The

19:32

company had never really been profitable,

19:35

and the work that they were doing to develop

19:37

new versions of MRIs that they had on

19:39

the drawing board was very expensive,

19:42

so they really needed that financial backing.

19:44

But it also cemented Damadian's

19:46

status as the originator of the

19:49

idea, even if the methodology

19:51

of it had shifted in the wake of Lauderber's

19:53

work, and Lauderber hadn't

19:55

successfully patented any of

19:57

his developments. He had tried

20:00

and had some rejected, and he was working

20:02

from within an academic institution that

20:05

thought that pursuing those patents

20:07

would be.

20:07

More trouble than it was worth. He

20:09

told The New York Times in nineteen ninety seven,

20:12

quote, I was working on images,

20:14

so the question of the relationship between

20:16

relaxation times and cancer

20:19

was irrelevant. He also

20:21

told the press that he had tried to work things out

20:23

with Domadian, but that Ray had not wanted

20:26

to because he felt his claim was

20:28

clearly supported and there was nothing

20:30

to work out.

20:32

Yeah, there's definitely a weird

20:36

vibe that we could talk about in behind the scenes,

20:38

where Lauderber is trying to just be like I don't

20:40

know. I'm cool with it, Like Ray was really

20:42

focused on this thing and I wasn't, and

20:46

I to this moment

20:48

don't really know how I

20:50

feel about any of it, but

20:52

we'll talk about it. That nineteen ninety

20:54

seven ruling led also to a lot

20:56

of press for Domadian, and he talked

20:58

about how he was going to span the business

21:00

with that money, working on making MRIs

21:03

less expensive for both hospitals to

21:05

acquire and for patients to have done

21:08

their numbers in there. That we'll talk about

21:10

him behind the scenes because I kind of cracked up

21:13

again having had one of these recently.

21:15

Did not get cheaper than what he was talking about

21:18

then, for sure. He also

21:20

talked a lot about patent law, which

21:22

really became a passion for him. He

21:25

was adamant when it came to the importance

21:27

of defending patents. He even

21:29

went to Congress to convince members

21:32

of Congress not to weaken patent

21:34

laws. He told the New York Times

21:36

quote, with their marketing and financing

21:38

strength, big companies don't need to

21:40

risk doing things first. For

21:43

entrepreneurs to keep taking risks, they

21:45

need temporary exclusive rights

21:47

to their inventions. And in two

21:49

thousand and one, interview, Jamadian

21:51

noted, quote, curiosity is a major

21:53

driving force, and the same delight

21:56

that a child has at seeing something

21:58

new for the first time. He was always

22:00

there for someone in a scientific career.

22:03

When I got into the scientific arena

22:05

and saw the prospect of developing a

22:07

new kind of medical machine, I

22:09

enjoyed the process of waiting right

22:11

into it and getting directly involved

22:14

in building such a thing. At

22:16

that point, as company was working to innovate

22:18

the MRI even further by creating

22:21

a machine that allowed the patient to sit

22:23

upright. Everyone at

22:25

this point in the early two thousands seemed

22:27

to recognize that the MRI had changed

22:30

medical science really significantly,

22:33

but it had never been recognized with a Nobel

22:35

Prize. And we're going to pause here for

22:37

a sponsor break, and when we come back, we

22:39

will talk about some of the reasons that scientists

22:42

thought this was the case, and we'll also

22:44

talk about the fallout that happened after

22:46

a Nobel Prize was finally awarded

22:48

for MRI technology

23:00

in two thousand and two. An editorial

23:02

in The Wall Street Journal by Cameron Stracker

23:04

noted that it was odd that the MRI,

23:06

which everyone lauded as such a huge

23:09

step forward in medical imaging

23:11

that even men of science referred to it

23:13

as miraculous, had never

23:15

been the subject of a Nobel prize. Stracker's

23:18

write up quotes University of Oregon chemistry

23:21

professor Hayes Griffiths, who said,

23:23

quote, MRI is the perfect

23:25

candidate for the Nobel It's something

23:27

that has improved and advanced medicine

23:29

in a way no one can argue with. The

23:32

article then quotes nineteen eighty one Nobel

23:35

Laureate in physics Nicholas Blombergen

23:37

as saying, quote, what bothers me is

23:39

that the institute in Stockholm has not

23:41

yet awarded the prize for this great

23:44

discovery. I believe this

23:46

is partly due to controversy over

23:48

Damadian's role. The

23:50

National Academy of Sciences had the

23:52

same year Damadian gave his

23:55

quote about curiosity and not wanting

23:57

to be a mere observer. To this thrilling

23:59

News Science published a commission

24:02

paper that had largely written Damadian

24:04

out of the MRI story, that

24:07

claimed that his MRI methodology had

24:09

not been reliable enough before

24:11

Paul Lauderber got involved with the

24:13

technology. Finally,

24:16

the Nobel Committee recognized the importance

24:19

of the MRI, but it caused

24:21

a lot of strife in doing so. In

24:24

two thousand and three, Sir Peter Mansfield

24:26

and Paul C. Lauderber shared a Nobel

24:28

Prize for Contribution to Physiology

24:31

and Medicine, and this was

24:33

controversial. They had

24:36

built on work that Demadian had done

24:38

and he felt like he had been left out of

24:40

his rightful credit. In a statement

24:42

to the press, Demadian said of the Nobel prize,

24:45

quote, I believed that I deserved one.

24:47

I came up with the idea for the MRI. I

24:50

built the first machine, and if there was to be a

24:52

Nobel Prize for medicine for the

24:54

MRI, I thought it should go to

24:56

me.

24:57

On December ninth, two thousand and three, Raymond

24:59

did Cadian took out huge

25:01

ads in the New York Times and The Washington

25:04

Post. The copy read, in

25:06

part quote, the prize pretends to honor

25:09

discoveries concerning the development of magnetic

25:11

resonance imaging. Yet the Nobel

25:13

Committee for Physiology or Medicine decided

25:16

to exclude from recognition the foundational

25:18

scientific history of magnetic resonance

25:21

imaging, scientific history

25:23

that has been before the committee during the many

25:25

years doctor Raymond Damadian has been

25:27

nominated for the prize for the MRI

25:29

I. They have chosen instead

25:32

to award the prize to two men who contributed

25:34

nothing more than improved ways

25:36

to image the MR signals from cancer

25:39

tissue and healthy tissue that Raymond Damadian

25:41

discovered. He

25:43

reportedly spent more than two hundred

25:46

thousand dollars on his print campaign

25:48

in the hopes that the Nobel Committee would amend

25:50

their decision. There was even

25:52

a mail in coupon at the bottom

25:54

of the ad so that readers of the paper could

25:57

clip it out and mail their support of Domadian

25:59

too the Nobel Committee.

26:02

When it came apparent that the effort was

26:04

fruitless, his statement to the press became quote,

26:06

I've had time to reflect, and I must say

26:09

now that I have learnt how easily

26:12

the Nobel can be manipulated. I

26:14

have lost almost all respect for the prize.

26:16

I can even tell you that I am not sure

26:18

I want it anymore.

26:21

One of the rumors that popped up

26:23

as this controversy boiled over was

26:25

that it was Damadian's religious beliefs

26:27

that had held him back from receiving the award.

26:30

Damidian was a very devout Christian and

26:32

he was very vocal about being a

26:35

creation scientist who believed in the

26:37

biblical story of God creating

26:39

Adam and Eve. Another

26:41

rumor was that Lauderber had been the decider

26:44

and that he had made clear that he would

26:46

not share this honor with Damadian.

26:49

But in the end, though all of this remains

26:51

strictly rumor, neither of those stories

26:53

has ever been substantiated. The

26:55

Nobel Committee chairman at the time, doctor

26:57

Hans Ringerts, made a statement to the press

27:00

that there were no obstacles to Domadian

27:02

being nominated for the Nobel Prize in the

27:04

future.

27:05

In the midst of all the argument over

27:07

credit, another completely

27:10

unexpected person popped up to claim

27:12

that he too had the idea to use

27:14

magnetic imaging, and that he

27:16

had it before all the other contenders.

27:19

This claim was made public in the journal Nature

27:22

in November two thousand and three under the headline

27:24

Russian claims first in magnetic

27:27

imaging. The write up is by

27:29

Brian McWilliams, but the inventor

27:31

at the center of it is Vladislav

27:34

Ivanov. According to the rite up,

27:36

Ivanov was serving as a lieutenant in the Red

27:38

Army when he was giving the task of using NMR

27:41

for aircraft navigation. They

27:43

were using it to image water, and Ivanov

27:46

thought that it could be used to image the human body.

27:49

He's quoted in the article saying quote, I figured

27:51

that because a person is made up primarily

27:53

of water, the same method could be used

27:56

in research on living organisms. The

27:58

water inside a person could be used to give

28:00

a signal showing what exists or is located

28:03

inside and there is according

28:05

to the article, a document from nineteen

28:07

sixty that Ivanov filed with the USSR

28:10

State Committee for Inventions and Discovery

28:13

titled method of Examination

28:15

of the Internal Structure of Material Bodies

28:18

that laid out this whole idea. It's kind

28:20

of the same idea as like a patent application.

28:23

But Ivanov wasn't especially.

28:25

Worried about trying to legally challenge

28:27

anyone over any of this. His

28:29

idea had not been understood or

28:31

approved by the administration in Soviet

28:33

Russia, who thought that his filing

28:36

it was actually evidence that the lieutenant just

28:38

had too much free time. Ivanov

28:40

also seemed amused with Damadian

28:42

and thought it was difficult, too impossible

28:45

to contain things like MRI technology,

28:47

noting quote, Besides, there are always

28:50

mistakes when you have major advances

28:52

in science, you can't keep

28:54

an idea in one place. They

28:56

have their own momentum.

28:57

Doctor Damadian died just two years

29:00

ago at the age of eighty six, on August

29:02

third, twenty twenty two, in Woodbray,

29:04

New York, of cardiac arrest. His

29:07

New York Times obituary walked through all

29:09

of the many legal and professional battles

29:11

that were involved in his work in MRI technology.

29:15

His company, Foonar, is still in business,

29:17

though its focus has shifted more to managing

29:20

scanning centers and offering

29:22

service on existing tech. If

29:25

you visit the company website, it says the

29:27

landing page the inventor of MR

29:29

scanning.

29:31

Because Nobel documents used to determine

29:33

the awarding of prizes are kept confidential

29:36

for fifty years, we will have

29:38

to wait until twenty fifty three to

29:40

know why the committee chose to honor Lauderber

29:42

and Mansfield over Rayeymadian.

29:45

But perhaps the bigger question is not

29:48

who should get credit for this invention, but

29:50

how and why concepts of invention

29:53

and ownership are established and whether

29:55

they need to be re examined. As

29:57

a coda, here's a quote from a paper written

30:00

I meet presad titled the

30:02

Amorphous Anatomy of an Invention

30:05

the Case of Magnetic Resonance Imaging,

30:07

which was published in the Social Studies

30:09

of Science in two thousand and seven.

30:11

Quote.

30:12

In this paper, I analyze the priority

30:14

dispute between Damadian and Lauderber over

30:16

the invention of MRI. My attempt

30:18

to clarify the debate, however, does not intend

30:21

to assign priority to one

30:23

of the scientists. Instead,

30:25

through an analysis of this priority

30:27

dispute, I will problematize

30:29

notions of discovery and invention.

30:31

I will show how the process of laying claim

30:34

to an invention or discovery is negotiated,

30:37

even while the outcomes of the negotiations

30:39

remain open ended. In

30:41

particular, I will throw light on interplay

30:43

between the institution of authorship

30:46

and technoscientific practices in

30:48

the process of defining a particular

30:51

technoscientific event as

30:53

a discovery or an invention, and

30:55

particular scientists as discoverer

30:58

or inventor.

31:00

I really love that quote when I was looking at that paper,

31:02

because it really did open my mind to like,

31:04

oh, gosh, I hadn't you kind

31:06

of instinctively know yes, when someone

31:09

patents a thing, they don't really know

31:11

what it could become. But this

31:13

really did focus

31:15

that concept to me of like

31:18

people are arguing over their claims

31:20

to stuff when they didn't know what they were really

31:22

making a claim on. I understand

31:25

the financial

31:27

aspect and capitalism of all of

31:29

it, but it still made me go like, oh, science,

31:32

science has this one big problem where

31:34

we don't know what's going to happen. The

31:37

unpredictability of the future leads to

31:39

some big problems with this. So

31:42

that is I'm sure if you are

31:45

a person that works in MRI tech, you're

31:47

like, you left out a bunch of stuff. Even with two

31:49

episodes. Yeah, I know, there's

31:51

a lot to win on there, so

31:54

hopefully we hit the most important parts.

31:56

I just thought it was a really fascinating examination

31:58

of the way that these things can

32:01

explode and become important but also

32:03

be something that people grapple with for a long time.

32:06

I have a fun listener

32:08

email about another

32:11

person who is famous for his

32:14

I don't know that invention is quite the right way before

32:17

his product. This is from our listener

32:19

Ellen, who writes, Hi, Tracy and Holly. Sorry

32:22

no cute animals, but thank you for the popcorn

32:24

podcast. I met Orville

32:26

Reddenbacher in Valpraiso, Indiana.

32:29

I attended Valpraso University in the early

32:31

nineteen eighties and the town had a popcorn

32:34

festival in early September. His

32:36

factory was about five miles away, and on

32:38

days that the company tested the popcorn,

32:41

you could get a large garbage bag of popcorn

32:43

for five dollars. Unless it

32:45

was for a school, church, or youth group.

32:48

It was free for the groups. Groups

32:50

on campus would sell unpop popcorn to

32:52

raise money. I love this. I kind of

32:54

love that they just listen.

32:57

Orvil Reddenbaker is one of those dudes who always

32:59

seemed really cool and nice and

33:01

like a just a good kind person.

33:04

And I love that this kind of holds that up. Like his company

33:06

was like free popcorn for anyone without

33:08

wants, which, let me tell

33:10

you, I would be driving up with my car every day they

33:12

did a test. Same give them twenty bucks,

33:15

fill that car with popcorn, get

33:17

out of dodge and eat myself silly. Thank

33:19

you for telling us about that, because that's a really wonderful

33:21

story, and I'm a little jealous. You got to meet him.

33:24

If you would like to write to us, you can do so at

33:26

History podcast at iHeartRadio dot

33:28

com. You can also subscribe

33:30

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33:42

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