Injectable Chip Opens Door To 'Human Bar Code'

INJECTABLE CHIP OPENS DOOR TO 'HUMAN BAR CODE'
By Charles J. Murray
January 4, 2002

http://eetimes.com/story/OEG20020104S0044

Radio-frequency identification chips, which have found
a home in applications ranging from toll road passes to
smart retail shelves, may be close to taking up
residence in the human body.

A Florida-based company has introduced a passive RFID
chip that is compatible with human tissue, and the
developer is proposing the chip for use on implantable
pacemakers, defibrillators and artificial joints. The
company, Applied Digital Solutions (Palm Beach, Fla.),
also said that the chip could be injected through a
syringe and used as a sort of "human bar code" in
security applications.

Called the VeriChip, the device could open up a broad
new segment for the $900 million-a-year RFID business,
especially if society embraces the idea of using
microchips for human identification. Applied Digital
---------------
executives ultimately believe that the worldwide market
-------------------------------------------------------
for such implantable chips could reach $70 billion per
------------------------------------------------------
year.
----

[FRIENDS! Please, do the math!! $70 BILLION PER YEAR!
What does this imply about the number of people who
will be 'customers' and whether or not it will be
voluntary! Do not forget that it only costs a few
dollars to make each chip so, how many do their
business plans say they plan to sell? And why is it
that they are lobbying politicians worldwide?]

"The human market for this technology could be huge,"
said Keith Bolton, senior vice president of technology
development at the company.

Futurists agree that the idea of using microchips
inside the body could ultimately represent a large
market opportunity, but they doubt whether this initial
effort will have a significant effect on the RFID
market.

"Are we going to see chips embedded in the human body?
You bet we are," said Paul Saffo, a director of The
Institute for the Future (Menlo Park, Calif.). "But it
isn't going to happen overnight."

Pacemaker helper

Still, Applied Digital Solutions' executives are
preparing to sell between $2.5 million and $5 million
worth of VeriChips in 2002. The company initially plans
to sell the chips in South America and Europe for use
with pacemakers and defibrillators. In that
application, it could be attached to the outside of the
heart device or implanted nearby in the body.

Doing so would enable medical personnel to identify and
monitor a patient's implanted devices merely by running
a handheld scanner over the patient's chest.

"If you're a pacemaker user and you're in an accident
and in shock, an ambulance attendant could scan the
body and retrieve information about the device," Bolton
said. "The chip could provide information about the
[pacemaker's] settings, who its manufacturer is and
whether you have any medical allergies."

The company said it is working with makers of
implantable pacemakers and defibrillators to
incorporate the chip during the equipment-manufacturing
process.

Applied Digital Solutions is awaiting approval from the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration and does not expect
to sell the chips in the United States until that
approval is granted. The company's engineers said they
expect approval later this year.

The announcement of the chip's availability created a
media stir, however ‹ not because of its potential use
with pacemakers but because of its science-fiction-like
potential application in human identification systems.
Because the microchip and its antenna measure just 11.1
x 2.1 mm, Applied Digital Solutions said the assembly
can be injected through a syringe and implanted in
various locations within the body.

The tube-shaped VeriChip includes a memory that holds
128 characters of information, an electromagnetic coil
for transmitting data and a tuning capacitor, all
encapsulated within a silicone-and-glass enclosure. The
passive RF unit, which operates at 125 kHz, is
activated by moving a company-designed scanner within
about a foot of the chip. Doing so excites the coil and
"wakes up" the chip, enabling it to transmit data.

The chips are said to be similar to those that are
already implanted in about a million dogs and cats
nationwide to enable pet owners to identify and reclaim
animals that have been temporarily lost. Applied
Digital Solutions, which has made the pet-tracking
chips for several years, says that the human chips
differ mainly in the biocompatible coating that's used
to keep the body from rejecting the implanted chip. The
VeriChip is believed to be the first such chip designed
for human identification.

Inspired by Sept. 11

In September, Applied Digital Solutions implanted its
first human chip when a New Jersey surgeon, Richard
Seelig, injected two of the chips into himself. He
placed one chip in his left forearm and the other near
the artificial hip in his right leg.

"He was motivated after he saw firefighters at the
World Trade Center in September writing their Social
Security numbers on their forearms with Magic Markers,"
Bolton said. "He thought that there had to be a more
sophisticated way of doing an identification."

Applied Digital said Seelig, who serves as a medical
consultant to the company, has now had the chips
implanted in him for three months with no signs of
rejection or infection.

Ordinarily, the company said, the chips would be
implanted in a doctor's office under local anesthesia.

Applied Digital's executives said the ability to inject
the chips opens up a variety of RFID applications in
high-security situations, as well other types of human
identification systems. The chips, they said, could be
implanted in young children or in adults with
Alzheimer's disease, to help officials identify people
who can't identify themselves.

[FRIENDS -- these small applications WILL NOT
generate $70 BILLION per year. No damn way!
Do the math to find their REAL plans!!]

But the company is backing away from involuntary
identification applications, such the tracking of
prisoners or parolees. "We are advocating that this
technology be totally voluntary," Bolton said.

[Do the math to find if Bolton is a liar!
Do not be fooled by this denzien of hell!]

Whether the technology will boost the market for RFID
chips remains uncertain. Industry analysts had assumed
that by now RFID would constitute a far larger market
than its current, $900 million annual tally.

[Assumed based on what assumptions??]

A consortium of major manufacturers has sought to push
the technology as a replacement for bar codes in
everyday products ranging from cereal boxes to shaving
cream cans, but the cost hasn't dropped low enough to
make that feasible. More recently, a group led by the
European Central Bank began work on embedding RFID
chips in the euro bank note, but the chip category has
yet to find its killer app.

[Be assured the killer app is coming and the people
killed will be those who refuse to go along with the
new system of things!]

Applied Digital nonetheless has high hopes for its RFID
technology. The publicly held company's stock did not
fare well last year, plummeting from a high of $3 a
share on Feb. 7 to 11 cents per share on Sept. 17. But
its per-share stock price jumped to 50 cents from 38
cents after the company announced the VeriChip.

Eventual adoption

Analysts expressed confidence that the concept would
eventually be adopted but were skeptical about its
immediate future. "For this to work, you are going to
need a standard that everyone agrees to," said Saffo of
The Institute for the Future. "Then you have to
convince people to buy reading devices that may be
fairly costly."

Applied Digital's engineers would not say how much the
chips or handheld readers might cost. The company's
reader is a proprietary unit that is required for use
with the VeriChip.

Some further suggested that the chip might be too large
for easy adoption. Veterinarians who have implanted the
chips in dogs and cats say that the techniques used in
animals are unlikely to be embraced by humans. "The
needle is huge," said Dean Christopoulos, a
veterinarian in Des Plaines, Ill. "It's almost as thick
as your pinky."

Some engineers suggested the technology might
ultimately be scaled down, making the chip's acceptance
more likely. At Alien Technology Corp. (Morgan Hill,
Calif.), engineers have already discussed using that
company's ultrasmall RFID chips in human applications.
Alien, which uses a process known as fluidic
self-assembly to create chips measuring 350 x 350
microns, has demonstrated its 900-MHz technology on
everyday products such as soap and shampoo bottles. The
coded information can be detected and read across
distances measuring almost 3 feet.

[Alien Technologies?? Implants? What the?!]

"There are companies making RFID tags that are much
smaller than a couple of millimeters," said Andy
Holman, director of business development for Alien
Technology.

Analysts also suggested that human identification
technology would be more likely to be popularized when
engineers are able to integrate more memory and other
features, such as global-positioning satellite units
and induction-based power-recharging techniques. GPS
might help find lost children and adults, they said,
while larger memories would enable doctors to store
vital patient information.

The concept "goes all the way back to the 1960s," said
Jerry Krasner, vice president of market intelligence
for American Technology International Inc.'s Embedded
Forecasters Group. "What's new is the ability to store
a lot of data.

[It goes back a lot farther than that!]

"As soon as you can do that, you'll see more
applications for this type of technology," he said.

> From: X. J. Scott <xjscott@...>
> To: metatuning <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2002 7:42 PM
> Subject: [metatuning] Injectable Chip Opens Door To 'Human Bar Code'
>
> Because the microchip and its antenna measure just
> 11.1 x 2.1 mm, Applied Digital Solutions said the assembly
> can be injected through a syringe and implanted in
> various locations within the body.

For us English-system users, that's about 7/16 x 1/12 inch.

> From: Neil Haverstick <STICK@...>
> To: <metatuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 10:02 AM
> Subject: [metatuning] Microchips, and a different viewpoint
>
>
> The recent posts about the coming microchip phenomenon
> are most disturbing to me, but not a surprise at all...
> the dehumanizing of that which is human is a monstrous
> development, and one in which I plan to not participate.
> Here's a quote ... <nice quote snipped>
>
> That, to me, is profoundly beautiful, and an antidote to
> the coming insanity brought by those who are going to try
> to impose their vision of a non human way of life on this
> Earth..Hstick

Oh, I don't know, Neil ... I suppose the future is only
as bleak as one's perspective. I was just writing about
this topic to someone recently, and I wish I could find it
now and post a copy here.

From the perspective of any individual human life, sure,
the coming big developments in our future -- cloning,
subcutaneous identification chips, etc. -- seem "monstrous".

But viewed another way, it can be seen as simply part
of the next evolutionary step in our development.

Millions of years ago there were tiny one-celled organisms
floating around trying to survive, and gradually over an
incredibly long (by our standards) period of time, a few
of those organisms became involved in symbiotic relationships
upon which they eventually became mutually totally dependent,
and upon which the majority of today's life-forms is based.

As Carl Sagan [1980, _Cosmos_, p. 281-283] put it so eloquently
in his scientific retelling of the "Genesis" story:

>> ... Gradually, imperceptibly, life had begun. Single-celled
>> plants evolved, and life began to generate its own food.
>> Photosynthesis transformed the atmosphere. Sex was invented.
>> Once free-living forms banded together to make a complex cell
>> with specialized functions. Chemical receptors evolved,
>> and the Cosmos could taste and smell. One-celled organisms
>> evolved into multicellular colonies, elaborating their various
>> parts into specialized organ systems. Eyes and ears evolved,
>> and now the Cosmos could see and hear. ...

So, spurred on by the workings of the big-business/big-government
marriage -- the new big organism evolving out of our collective
human existence -- one could view the day-to-day workings of
our individual lives as "specialized functions", whose objective
is to feed and keep alive the business/government entity.

Think about how specialized all of our lives have become in
today's world, in the context of what I wrote here, and I
think you'll agree that I'm on the mark about this.

So each of us is indeed becoming a "cog in the wheel", and
it's a process that is not likely to stop now, so it's probably
best to just accept that it is going to happen. One approach
is to embrace it and become a "good little organism", another
is to defy it and be a renegade. Orwell already covered it
all in _1984_.

Of course, there's no telling how long it will take for the
process to complete itself ... probably more than a few
generations, but who knows? Today's computer technology
is way beyond what anyone 30 years ago thought it would be.

And one may also wonder why something like this is happening,
and why it's happening now. I suggest that the primary
reason for its occurrence is the size of the human population,
and the continued fast rate of growth. There are now far
more humans on earth than there have ever been of any one
single species in history ... so to me this banding together
to create a larger entity is a natural outcome of reproduction
gone berserk.

-monz

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