By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
In teaching and doing research at a medical school, I learned about Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and how it works.
MRI is a noninvasive medical imaging technique that produces detailed pictures of most every internal human body structure, including organs, bones, muscles, and even blood vessels.
To achieve this, it uses strong magnetic fields and radio waves. Radio waves? Magnetic fields? Really? When looking for a dissertation topic for my second Ph.D., I liked the idea of doing it on MRI.
I lack a degree in medical imaging and had no interest in training as one. I wanted primarily to learn the development history of MRI and an understanding of how it is able to see inside the body’s organs.
I therefore first had to learn basic radiation physics to understand how the MIR achieved its magic. I understood how X-ray images of the body are done, but realized MRI is far more complex, and a very different system, than X-rays.
Its Importance
Over two billion MRI scans have now been completed since its invention. MRI is “one of the greatest medical breakthroughs of the 20th century” that has saved and enhanced “countless millions of lives.”
MRI scanning is now an over ten-billion-dollar-per-year industry, and is projected to grow to a 17-billion-dollar industry by 2030. Over 46,000 scanners are now in operation worldwide.
After looking for an introduction to MRI, I came across the book A Machine Called Indomitable by Sonny Kleinfield. It was not only an excellent introduction, but it also gave me the history of how the MRI technique was discovered by Damadian.
As I read, I soon learned that Damadian shared my worldview. He did not accept the Darwinian view that humans were created by the accumulation of mutations and natural selection. Rather, he believed that we were created as humans. I also learned this belief cost him dearly.
As I was writing my dissertation I had some difficulty understanding the nuances of MRI’s function. Taking a chance, I wrote to him. A few weeks later, I received a long letter correcting my mistakes.
I also received a pile of scientific papers. I was elated! The inventor of MRI was helping me complete my 480-page Ph.D. dissertation titled A History and Evaluation of Noninvasive Medical Diagnostic Treatment (1992, UMI, Ann Arbor, Michigan). We corresponded until he died unexpectedly on August 3, 2022, at age 86.
What Kind of Man Was Damadian
While studying violin at the world-famous Juilliard School of Music at age 15, Damadian competed with nearly 100,000 applicants to win a Ford Foundation Scholarship.
This scholarship enabled him to complete a mathematics degree at the University of Wisconsin. He then earned his medical degree at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and later did graduate work in biophysics at Harvard.
Damadian then became a professor at the State University of New York where he worked until he founded a company to manufacture MRI scanners named FONAR.
Damadian got the idea for MRI while using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to scan salt-loving bacteria called halophiles that contain twenty times greater sodium and potassium levels than most bacteria. The results were so promising that he realized NMR could also be used to diagnose cancer and other diseases.
From that time forward, he spent most of his career developing the MRI body scanner to achieve this goal. His interest in the early diagnosis of cancer stems from the fact that, when he was ten, his grandmother died of breast cancer. He was very close to his grandmother and her great pain made a lasting impression on young Raymond.
In 1970, he documented a major difference existed in MR signals between cancer and normal tissue, as well as major differences among normal tissue types—it was this critical discovery that made MRI scans possible.
In 1971, he published a paper in the leading science magazine, appropriately named Science, which formally established his priority as the inventor of MRI. His patent for his MR scanner was filed in 1972.
Damadian soon built the first full-body MRI machine and from it produced the first full magnetic resonance imaging scan of the human body.
Soon several other companies copied his design and began building MRI scanners, forcing Damadian to appeal to the courts to protect his patents. In spite of his uncontested patents, Damadian faced a long struggle to vindicate his claims.
Damadian spent 2.2 million dollars in legal fees to support his claim. A 1982 jury trial found Damadian’s MRI patent valid and infringed upon by his competitors. Ironically, six weeks after the trial, the judge voided the jury’s verdict and substituted his own!
Back in court again, Damadian eventually prevailed in October 1997 when the U.S. Supreme Court enforced his 1972 patent, affirming his priority. He was now legally the father of MRI.
The 1997 damage award from General Electric alone was 128.7 million dollars. Siemens, Hitachi, Philips, Shimadzu, and Toshiba all settled out of court for many millions.
Damadian told me fighting for the rights to his invention was more taxing, and was a greater struggle, than inventing MRI in the first place.
Then, the 2003 Nobel Prize in Medicine, the most important of all honors, was given to Paul C. Lauterbur and Sir Peter Mansfield, for magnetic resonance imaging, both of whom only improved on Dr. Damadian’s original invention!
When I was working at The University of Michigan, I asked one of the MRI professors why Damadian did not get it. He responded it was because Damadian once walked out of a professional conference.
I responded “maybe he had to use the bathroom or was not feeling well.” It soon became clear from my inquiries that Damadian was not liked due to his unorthodox conclusions about mankind’s origin.
Nor did the world’s leading scientists want to give any credibility to the creation worldview. Dr. Damadian is one of the rare scientists who realized that science does not lead to Darwinism; rather, science leads us to the Grand Designer. An internet search correctly attributes the invention of MRI to Damadian.
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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,800 publications in 12 languages and 60 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,500 college libraries in 27 countries. All 60 of Bergman’s books are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other bookstores.
