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Science/Tech See other Science/Tech Articles Title: French Bulldog at Heart of RFID Tumor Story French Bulldog at Heart of RFID Tumor Story By Kim Zetter EmailSeptember 10, 2007 | 5:31:55 PMCategories: RFID Leon A nine-year-old French bulldog named Leon was the catalyst for the enterprising Associated Press story published this weekend about the link between RFID chips and cancer -- which comes just a week after the California senate passed a bill prohibiting the forced implanation of chips in humans. Leon (pictured at right) was diagnosed in 2004 with a tumor and later died. His Canadian owner "Jeanne," believing the RFID chip embedded in Leon's neck for identification purposes was linked to her pet's death, decided to seek answers about why the tumor had attached itself to the glass-encapsulated RFID chip. The Italian researchers she found to examine tissue from her dog released a paper in 2006 that suggests a connection between the chip and Leon's tumor and revealed that other studies had been conducted previously that also showed tumors occurring in rats and cats that had been microchipped. The tumors formed between 1 month and 3 years after the chips were implanted and seemed to spring up around areas of inflammation created by the microchip. As the AP article shows, however, VeriChip, the company that pushed for FDA approval of the chips in 2005 for medical and identification purposes, failed to disclose the existence of such studies to the FDA. VeriChip told the Associated Press that it had not been aware of any previous studies linking RFID chips to cancer in animals, although Katherine Albrecht of http://Spychips.org had little trouble unearthing three such studies at the Harvard medical library. When the AP asked if the FDA had considered these or other studies before it approved the use of implanatable chips, the agency declined repeated requests to specify what studies it had reviewed for its decision. The AP also uncovered an important connection between VeriChip and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, whose agency oversaw the FDA while it was considering the VeriChip for approval. Two weeks after the device's approval took effect on Jan. 10, 2005, Thompson left his Cabinet post, and within five months was a board member of VeriChip Corp. and Applied Digital Solutions. He was compensated in cash and stock options. Thompson, until recently a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, says he had no personal relationship with the company as the VeriChip was being evaluated, nor did he play any role in FDA's approval process of the RFID tag. "I didn't even know VeriChip before I stepped down from the Department of Health and Human Services," he said in a telephone interview. But the AP uncovered evidence that seems to suggest otherwise. Thompson vigorously campaigned for electronic medical records and healthcare technology both as governor of Wisconsin and at HHS. While in President Bush's Cabinet, he formed a "medical innovation" task force that worked to partner FDA with companies developing medical information technologies. At a "Medical Innovation Summit" on Oct. 20, 2004, Lester Crawford, the FDA's acting commissioner, thanked the secretary for getting the agency "deeply involved in the use of new information technology to help prevent medication error." One notable example he cited: "the implantable chips and scanners of the VeriChip system our agency approved last week." After leaving the Cabinet and joining the company board, Thompson received options on 166,667 shares of VeriChip Corp. stock, and options on an additional 100,000 shares of stock from its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, according to SEC records. He also received $40,000 in cash in 2005 and again in 2006, the filings show. See Also:
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Let's be hip, let's get chipped.
"Satan / Cheney in "08"
French bulldogs are basically pugs with erect ears.
"He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative." - G.K. Chesterton
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