Controversy, as they interfere with peaceful deaths:
When Carol Lewis’s father-in-law died, family members circled his hospital bed to pray, expecting to offer their final goodbyes peacefully. Then his body suddenly started to lurch.
“He jumped,” said Lewis, a nurse from Hadley, Mass. “Then he jumped again, and again. It kept happening.”
Finally, two hospital staffers rushed in and placed a large magnet on the 86-year-old’s chest, deactivating a device that doctors had implanted years earlier to zap his ailing heart if it faltered.