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Title: Too Many Tumors for VeriChip's Chips
Source: Motley Fool
URL Source: http://www.fool.com/investing/value ... umors-for-verichips-chips.aspx
Published: Sep 11, 2007
Author: Jack Uldrich
Post Date: 2007-09-22 11:03:11 by Mister Clean
Keywords: RFID, implantable microchips, conspiracy
Views: 257
Comments: 18

Too Many Tumors for VeriChip's Chips

http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2007/09/11/too-many-tumors-for-verichips-chips.aspx

Jack Uldrich September 11, 2007

Over the weekend, the AP published a damaging article linking VeriChip's (Nasdaq: CHIP) implantable chip technology in animals to cancerous tumors. According to the story, three separate studies between 1996 and 2006 found malignant tumors developing near implanted radio frequency identification (RFID) chips. In one German study, the authors even wrote that the tumors were "clearly due to the implanted microchips."

Innocent until proven guilty ... mostly It's important to note that the findings are preliminary. They don't definitively prove that RFID chips cause of cancer in animals. Even if they do, there's no evidence that the same chips would cause cancer in people. (Mice are apparently more susceptible to cancer than humans.)

This is an important distinction. As fellow fool Tim Beyers noted, VeriChip enjoyed considerable publicity last year after it received FDA approval for the chips to be used in people, and then successfully implanted RFID chips in two security guards in Cincinnati. Since that time, the company has implanted its chips in more than 2,000 other individuals.

Three concerns Nevertheless, there are several reasons why this development could prove very troubling, both to VeriChip and to parent company and majority shareholder Applied Digital Solutions (Nasdaq: ADSX).

First, this issue will stain the company's image until it's resolved. At a minimum, it is hard to see how the company -- which is hoping to use the chips for patient identification and infant protection in hospitals, and for "wander protection" in elderly patients -- will be able to make good on its long-term goal to have the devices implanted in millions of people any time soon.

Second, the issue is already a public relations fiasco for the company. Fairly or not, some consumers now link RFID chips and cancer. If future studies bear out this relationship, it could be a death knell for a significant portion of VeriChip's business. If not, the company will still have to wage a costly advertising campaign to undo the story's negative effects.

Click for Full Text!

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#1. To: All (#0)

First, this issue will stain the company's image until it's resolved. At a minimum, it is hard to see how the company -- which is hoping to use the chips for patient identification and infant protection in hospitals, and for "wander protection" in elderly patients -- will be able to make good on its long-term goal to have the devices implanted in millions of people any time soon.

Second, the issue is already a public relations fiasco for the company. Fairly or not, some consumers now link RFID chips and cancer. If future studies bear out this relationship, it could be a death knell for a significant portion of VeriChip's business. If not, the company will still have to wage a costly advertising campaign to undo the story's negative effects.

Well, so much for the fears and paranoid conspiracy theories of forced microchip implantation.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   11:04:45 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Does anyone know whether or not our troops were tested with RFID chips?

VeriChip wants to chip every US soldier - Engadget
http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/24/verichip-wants-to-chip-every-us-soldier/

US thinks of sticking RFID chips inside troops
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33858

Implanted Chips in Our Troops? http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/8/21/232558.shtml?s=ic

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440963/

Or maybe just on supplies? (another bad idea)

Get this RFID tag off my fatigues
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/28/get_this_rfid_tag_off/

Pentagon Looks for Better Way to Supply Troops
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/59390.html

And maybe just not our troops
Fear Over Forced RFID Tagging
in 2004 the Food and Drug Administration approved the VeriChip RFID tag, which could be used for human implantation so that clinicians could obtain an individual's medical history if that person is unconscious. Mexico's attorney general and 18 staff members have the implanted chips, and a total of about 2,000 individuals have, presumably, agreed to be implanted, according to the article. The military is considering using the chip, and the military is known for insisting on certain requirements that infringe on the privacy of troops.

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robin  posted on  2007-09-22   11:15:29 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Fear Over Forced RFID Tagging

Is stupid.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   11:36:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

robin: Fear Over Forced RFID Tagging

Mister Clean: Is stupid.

Hey, don't let us hold you back from volunteering to be implanted. Indeed, VeriChip is forced to go back to the drawing board with its design and will likely be needing new chumps/chimps as the case maybe for re-testing its revamped technology. Run along now and get yourself that harmless little RFID put in your ass or your brain, whichever represents a bigger target rich zone.

scrapper2  posted on  2007-09-22   11:43:57 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Our own FDA declared RFIDs safe in '04 when they were not.

The company that makes RFIDs has been lobbying to get them in our troops and citizens "for health info".

If it were not for these recent studies revealing serious health problems, despite our FDA's approval in '04, then our troops may well have had them implanted. I suspect they were test on some troops, they tend to be guinea pigs.

It may not be such a brilliant idea to use them on military supplies either, although it seems we have been for some time.

Get this RFID tag off my fatigues
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/28/get_this_rfid_tag_off/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Get this RFID tag off my fatigues
Surplus tracking

By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Tuesday 28th October 2003 15:20 GMT

Letters re: Defense Department wants RFID tags on everything but sand

The notion of RFID-enabled troops has triggered considerable concern among Reg readers. Many of you out there suspect that the DoD's plan to slap every piece of military equipment with an RFID tag might not be the best idea for performing cloak and dagger type operations.

Has it occurred to anyone that a US military force's field positions might be covertly mapped by an opposing force with the foresight to invest in a pie-tin and an RFID reader?," asks James Hannon. "To hell with privacy; isn't 'secrecy' an issue?"

Hannon was by no means alone in his feelings.

That's really useful. Now, when US forces engage the bad guys, the bad guys can just scan their armoured vehicles to find out how much ammunition they've got, what types of missiles, what armour and communications systems are installed, how many people are inside etc. Unfortunately, the enemy won't be able to determine if the US forces are packing gravel.

Still, US technology has provided such a significant battlefield advantage that it's really heartwarming to see the DoD "play fair" by deploying systems to boost the intelligence gathering capabilities of the enemy.

Regards Adam Oellermann

But the most insightful letter has come from a former Army employee who worked on an RFID project in Germany.

He writes:

First off, the Army has been using RFID since the IFOR deployment to Bosnia. Initially, of course, it was done in a very limited manner. It was done on a container level, using programmable tags. A soldier would be handed a bill of lading for a single container, and would program the contents of the container onto the tag. The tags themselves could be read in one of two ways -- either a hand-held tag reader or a fixed reader.

The hand-held readers were used to locate items in container yards on bases (for example, in Tuzla). A soldier could enter the code for the type of item they wanted, and it would cause the tag on the container to beep and a light on the tag to flash, if the tag had the item they were looking for entered into it's memory.

The fixed readers were set up at gates on various bases and were used to confirm delivery of items to bases. The information from fixed readers is correlated on a central server so that the logistics people could determine where supplies were when someone put in a request for them -- so that they could use the nearest supplies, rather (in the case of the troops in Bosnia) than shipping the equipment from Germany.

The problem that we found with the system was that people would remove items from the containers and not update the inventory on the tags on the containers, so you as a logistics officer could (potentially) be delivering an empty container somewhere, thinking it was still full. I believe that the RFID tagging of supplies from the manufacturer is being done so that the programmable tags on containers can be automatically updated when items are placed in or removed from the containers.

The reason for the introduction of RFID into the Army comes from the first Gulf War. During the war, there was no real system for tracking what supplies were where. They were spray-painting the contents of the various containers onto the sides of the containers in the harbors. When, as in the first Gulf War, you had some 3-5,000 containers to keep track of, it was not an easy task. You also didn't know how much of whatever it was was left in the container without actually taking the container out of the stack and opening it, which further complicated matters.

Another reason was that because there was no real en route tracking of material being sent from 'headquarters' (or wherever) to the troops on the front lines, items would be ordered three and four times (and more, in some cases), which meant that far more supplies got shipped to the forward bases (Diego Garcia and Saudi Arabia) that was actually required.

Another problem was that the first order would go in at a 'normal' priority, and succeeding orders would go in at higher and higher priorities, which also caused problems. For example, once you get beyond a certain priority level (particularly in areas where there's shooting going on) things are shipped by air, which costs a lot more than shipping by sea, which was the normal case. I've heard stories about the amount of wood and barbed wire that were left behind after the first Gulf War because of situations like that (I've also heard stories - I don't really know if they were true or not - about a 747 that carried a full load of barbed wire over from the US (at considerable cost), only to arrive and have none of it used, since they had already received enough and just hadn't known that it was on the way already....)

While I agree that RFID has very privacy issues when used on normal consumer goods -- I'd never knowingly purchase anything that had a tag on it -- I think that for the military it makes sense. Particularly since they have a habit of losing track of things....

(Name supplied)

--------------------------------------------------------------

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robin  posted on  2007-09-22   11:49:20 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Hey, don't let us hold you back from volunteering to be implanted.

This should be wonderful news to the RFID fearmongers. This should assuage their fears of forced implantation.

Oh wait, I forgot... doom & gloomer conspiracy theorists always look on the dark side of things.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   11:49:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

If it were not for these recent studies revealing serious health problems, despite our FDA's approval in '04, then our troops may well have had them implanted. I suspect they were test on some troops, they tend to be guinea pigs.

Well, that's the price one pays for giving control of their life over to the government.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   11:50:32 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Well, that's the price one pays for giving control of their life over to the government.

Our troops were not the only ones about to be forced to have RFID chips. And as the article I posted above says, they are using RFID chips to tag military supplies. And as was pointed out, this is a really good way to give your enemy good info.

Fear Over Forced RFID Tagging
By Allan Holmes | Wednesday, September 05, 2007 | 02:53 PM

At first blush, a law the California Senate passed seems a bit paranoid. Last week the California Senate passed by a 28-9 vote a bill to ban the implantation of a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag in anyone who objects to the practice, according to an article posted by InformationWeek. The bill's sponsor, Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, calls the forced implantation of RFID tags into humans as "the ultimate invasion of privacy." Wisconsin and, oddly, North Dakota (which isn't known for leading the nation in technology-related legislation) also have passed similar laws.

It's difficult to imagine any individual, company or government agency forcing someone to be tagged. But then again, in 2004 the Food and Drug Administration approved the VeriChip RFID tag, which could be used for human implantation so that clinicians could obtain an individual's medical history if that person is unconscious. Mexico's attorney general and 18 staff members have the implanted chips, and a total of about 2,000 individuals have, presumably, agreed to be implanted, according to the article. The military is considering using the chip, and the military is known for insisting on certain requirements that infringe on the privacy of troops.

But forcing employees to have the chip implanted? That seems unlikely, until you consider http://CityWatcher.com, a Cincinnati video surveillance company. (Note: I could not access any Web site with that address.) However, the company is cited in several articles (http://vnunet.com, http://dailytech.com, WorldNetDaily, and the Associated Press) as having injected RFID chips into two employees who work in the company's secure data center. (WorldNetDaily also reported in 2005 that Tommy Thompson, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pledged to have a subcutaneous RFID chip injected into his arm to prove it was safe. Thompson served on the board of directors of Applied Digital Solutions, maker of the VeriChip.)

Even though the Citywatcher employees agreed to the implantation (and Thompson did end up having a chip implanted), it seems less far fetched that workers could be coerced into having a chip implanted as a requirement for employment.

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robin  posted on  2007-09-22   11:56:10 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

And as the article I posted above says, they are using RFID chips to tag military supplies. And as was pointed out, this is a really good way to give your enemy good info.

Oh well.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   11:57:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

This should be wonderful news to the RFID fearmongers. This should assuage their fears of forced implantation.

Oh wait, I forgot... doom & gloomer conspiracy theorists always look on the dark side of things

For a good long time, humans have roamed the earth without the need to be RFID'd "for their own good" by government agencies. Why the sudden interest to have people forcibly chipped? Are we now reduced to the level of cattle property, owned lock stock and barrel by the fedgov?

Please explain to me a good reason( apart from Verichip CEO Scott Silverman being able to fill his pockets with $ from gov't contracts) for having people chipped in your own inimitable Pollyanna, up with people way.

scrapper2  posted on  2007-09-22   12:01:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

For a good long time, humans have roamed the earth without the need to be RFID'd "for their own good" by government agencies. Why the sudden interest to have people forcibly chipped?

There is no interest in having people forcibly chipped. None.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   12:02:22 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

There is no interest in having people forcibly chipped. None.

Oh really?

Perhaps you need to do a bit more reading outside the monthly Disney fan club newsletter you get in the mail.

http://www.l ivescience.com/technology/060531_rfid_chips.html

"Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants" 05/31/06

Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company's RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television on May 16.

Silverman was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends." Responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here," he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it...."

http://www.spychips.com/press-releases/verichip- immigration.html

"VERICHIP INJECTS ITSELF INTO IMMIGRATION DEBATE: Company Pushes RFID Implants for Immigrants, Guest Workers"

...Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has alarmed civil libertarians by promoting the company's subcutaneous human tracking device as a way to identify immigrants and guest workers. He appeared on the Fox News Channel earlier this week, the morning after President Bush called for high-tech measures to clamp down on Mexican immigrants...

...The numbering and chipping of people seems like a plot from a dystopian novel, but the company has gotten the buy-in from highly placed current and former government officials, including Columbian President Alvaro Uribe. He reportedly told Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) that he would consider having microchips implanted into Colombian workers before they are permitted to enter the United States to work on a seasonal basis...

"The mantra 'chip the foreigners' has little appeal once people realize the company wants to stamp its 'electronic tattoo' into every one of us," cautions McIntyre. "Electronically branding and tracking visitors like cattle is VeriChip's excuse to get the government on board. But if that happens, we'll all be in their sights."...

Tommy Thompson, former Secretary of Health and Human Services joined the board of VeriChip Corporation after leaving his Bush administration cabinet post. Shortly thereafter, he went on national television recommending that all Americans get chipped as a way to link to their medical records. He also suggested the VeriChip could replace military dog tags, and a spokesman boasted that the company had been in talks with the Pentagon.

scrapper2  posted on  2007-09-22   12:14:07 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

There is no interest in having people forcibly chipped. None.

Oh really?

Perhaps you need to do a bit more reading outside the monthly Disney fan club newsletter you get in the mail.

Neither of the articles you linked to talk about FORCIBLY chipping anyone.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   12:17:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

There's too much $$ invested in RFID for this cancer study to deter them. Watch them come out with a "new" RFID that has a "protective" coating that claims to be safe. Besides, the FDA declared RFID implants safe back in '04.

However, even these unsafe ones are being used now on military supplies, which is not a good idea, unless you want the enemy to be able to track all your ammo.

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robin  posted on  2007-09-22   12:19:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Neither of the articles you linked to talk about FORCIBLY chipping anyone.

Not forcibly at this time but both articles reveal government officials stated interest in using RFID's for immigrants and for Americans at large as well as the military.

You are so thick and in self denial you talk like the Ukrainians in 1931 who were blind to the machinations of Stalin and the NKVD - oh the very nice Comrades Molotov and Kaganovitch are only talking about putting us on a diet to help us lose weight said the Ukies to themselves and then the tanks rolled in with other plans...

scrapper2  posted on  2007-09-22   12:36:30 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Not forcibly at this time...

Like I said, there is no interest in forcibly implanting anyone with microchips.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   12:40:10 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Watch them come out with a "new" RFID

Absolutely - there will be a new and much safer VeriChip developed post haste. And that's why I have suggested that Mister Clean get in at the bottom floor of this very safe harmless new chip design by volunteering to get one for himself - heck maybe a couple 'cause one can't be too thin or too rich or too RFID'd as the saying goes - before there's widespread clamoring by the masses at the VeriChip gates to get themselves chipped.

scrapper2  posted on  2007-09-22   12:40:54 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

before there's widespread clamoring by the masses at the VeriChip gates to get themselves chipped.

That is hilarious.

Mister Clean  posted on  2007-09-22   12:41:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

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