In the article “Humans will be implanted with microchips”, the author quoted from a prominent academic as saying that all Australians could be implanted with microchips for tracking and identification in future. We know that microchips are commonly implanted into animals which can reveal their identification details such as their owner, age and any medical conditions. A US company VeriChip is already using such microchips on humans for medical purposes which focus on high-risk patients.
The article tells us that such microchips that are implanted in humans could allow that person to be located in an emergency or identification of corpses after a large scale disaster or terrorist attack where the corpse of the person might be unidentifiable. Microchip implants might also eliminate the need for passports and identification cards.
Some argue against the implantations of microchips as they feel it is equivalent to the loss of human rights as your personal privacy and data can be accessed easily.
In the second article “Microchip for people may cause cancer”, we see the manufacturer assuring FDA about the safety of their microchips and the benefits it would provide. However, we see that the manufacturer didn’t mention about the research findings that micro chipping in laboratory rats and mice causes malignant tumours in them.
To date, about 2000 RFID devices have been implanted in humans worldwide according to VeriChip Corp. and the company states that they were not aware of any studies that have resulted in malignant tumours in laboratory rats and mice. There was also no mention of the findings on animal tumours by the American Medical Association which only touted on the benefits of implantable RFID devices. There were studies in different countries which showed cancerous cells that developed as a result of implanting microchips in laboratory rats and mice such as France and Germany although it affected only a very small percentage of the rodents.
This percentage, even how insignificant is already a cause for alarm for most people and even cancer specialists are wary of implanting microchips in humans until such technology is proven to be very safe. Others are less concerned and felt rats and mice are different from humans and they were felt the experiments were not conducted in a large enough scale or didn’t comprise other animals. A veterinarian at Ohio State University, Dr. Cheryl London even noted that ten of thousands of dogs have been chipped and there haven’t been any reported outbreaks of such cancer or tumours in the place where the dogs have been chipped.
As the microchip is implanted in patients, hospital staffs are able to go to the internet and access a patient’s medical profile which is maintained in a database by VeriChip Corp. However, the risk patients must take includes microchips migrating around the body, difficulty of extraction, risk of interference with defibrillators and incompatibility with MRI scans.
From the above two articles, we see the several advantages microchips have and what are the disadvantages and cause of concern with implanting microchips in humans. Implanting such chips might really one day eliminate the hassle of carrying identification cards, passports and medical reports and the convenience and possibilities of such technology is encouraging as it also saves plenty of time. However, the ethical problems such as loss of human rights and privacy and most importantly the safety of such technology must first be overcome before such technology will be accepted by everyone.
References
McGrath. J, How Pet Microchipping Works. February 28, 2009, http://animals.howstuffworks.com/pets/pet-travel/pet-microchip.htm
MSNBC, The Associated Press, Microchips for people may cause cancer. February 28, 2009, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20643620/
Transponder - A radio or radar transmitter-receiver activated for transmission by reception of a predetermined signal.
Encapsulated - To encase in or as if in a capsule.
Literature - the writings dealing with a particular subject
Subcutaneous - situated or lying under the skin, as tissue.
Malignant - very dangerous or harmful in influence or effect.
After reading your article, I asked myself that "Are we ready for Microchips implantation?", I would properly say "No" to it. Although it has some good points, privacy comes first. If we accept the implantation, someday we might be controlled by our own government or some organizations. Indeed they will know every move we make.
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