FDA approves computer chip for humans

[Lord Nepenthean]

This is one of the most frightening things ever.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6237364/

FDA approves computer chip for humans
Devices could help doctors with stored medical information
The VeriChip, the size of a grain of rice, is inserted under the skin with a needle in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes to complete.
The Associated Press
Updated: 6:38 p.m. ET Oct. 13, 2004

WASHINGTON - Medical milestone or privacy invasion? A tiny computer chip approved Wednesday for implantation in a patient's arm can speed vital information about a patient's medical history to doctors and hospitals. But critics warn that it could open new ways to imperil the confidentiality of medical records.


The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical purposes.

With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and leaves no stitches. Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.

Think UPC code. The identifier, emblazoned on a food item, brings up its name and price on the cashier's screen.

Chip's dual uses raise alarm
The VeriChip itself contains no medical records, just codes that can be scanned, and revealed, in a doctor's office or hospital. With that code, the health providers can unlock that portion of a secure database that holds that person's medical information, including allergies and prior treatment. The electronic database, not the chip, would be updated with each medical visit.

........................

“It's part of the future of medicine to have these kinds of technologies that make life simpler for the patient,” Ellis said. Pushing for the strongest encryption algorithms to ensure hackers can't nab medical data as information transfers from chip to reader to secure database, will help address privacy concerns, he said.

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To kickstart the chip's use among humans, Applied Digital will provide $650 scanners for free at 200 of the nation's trauma centers.

Implantation costs $150 to $200
In pets, installing the chip runs about $50. For humans, the chip implantation cost would be $150 to $200, said Angela Fulcher, an Applied Digital spokeswoman.

Fulcher could not say whether the cost of data storage and encrypted transmission of medical information would be passed to providers.

Because the VeriChip is invisible, it's also unclear how health care workers would know which unconscious patients to scan. Company officials say if the chip use becomes routine, scanning triceps for hidden chips would become second nature at hospitals.

Ultimately, the company hopes patients who suffer from such ailments as diabetes and Alzheimer's or who undergo complex treatments, like chemotherapy, would have chips implanted. If the procedure proves as popular for use in humans as in pets, that could mean up to 1 million chips implanted in people. So far, just 1,000 people across the globe have had the devices implanted, very few of them in the United States.

The company's chief executive officer, Scott R. Silverman, is one of a half dozen executives who had chips implanted. Silverman said chips implanted for medical uses could also be used for security purposes, like tracking employee movement through nuclear power plants.

Such security uses are rare in the United States.

Meanwhile, the chip has been used for pure whimsy: Club hoppers in Barcelona, Spain, now use the microchip to enter a VIP area and, through links to a different database, speed payment much like a smartcard.

Edited to shorten the quote.  Click the link for the full article.

[Izret101]

I read it about a week ago on MSN. Yes it is quite freaky. Just like the things parents are doing with youg children.
Picture, finger prints and all kinds of other information put into packets incase there kid is ever stolen or lost.

This is just one step closer to people being turned into robots

[danvx6]

The company's chief executive officer, Scott R. Silverman, is one of a half dozen executives who had chips implanted. Silverman said chips implanted for medical uses could also be used for security purposes, like tracking employee movement through nuclear power plants.

just one step closer to the government being able to track anyone that they feel nessecary, these things can be good, but any good uses for things like this will eventually be not worth it due to its bad uses
i dont think that a device this small could be used to track very far, but technology is advancing fast, and there is always the possibility that the government employs new technology far earlier than consumers can obtain it

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

I say we raise an army, storm the medical research headquarters and blow them up. That way the terminators won't take over in twenty years.

I don't think it'll catch on in the U.S. unless people are assured that it isn't a tracking device.
The gov's been trying to get the entire public fingerprinted for years, it would be good for cops but it hasn't caught on because people aren't commies who want the goverment to be all powerful.

[danvx6]

i can see em now, with a map of the globe, tracking as many people as the search of  their massive database returned

they could keep criminal records on there, a credit card system, or pretty much anything

[sinning.dragon]

Seriously, it's like the FDA or the government or whoever is purposefully trying to freak out the extreme religious right. I'm willing to bet that the second I tell my dad about this he's going to go on and on about everyone being nothing but a number and then the world ending and blah blah blah. He hates social security numbers just because he thinks that's the first step towards us all dying. ><

[Izret101]

^ This is were we are all headed. Only the rich will survive and keep their humanity.
:punked::crazy:

[danvx6]

eventually well get computers integrated with our brains like in so many sci fi movies, then what happenes when you get a computer virus? you die.

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

I plan to be rich, but I don't think humanity's that great anyway. And I'll never let anyone attach a comp to my brain. I could get hacked into by someone like me and that would plain suck.

[Izret101]

I could get hacked into by someone like me and that would plain suck.

You don't really strike me as a hacker.

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

I'm not a hacker, stuffs to old.
But if someone of my persona had the equipment and could hack into humans...I think you'd see a lot more senoirs doing backflips

[Hydrobond]

Are these figurative or literal backflips?

[The Metamorphosing Leon]

literal. of course.