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The USFDA has cleared way for a Florida firm to market implantable chips that will provide easy access to individual medical records. The nod is expected to biting to attention a Simmering debate over a technology that has evoked Orwellian overtones for privacy advocates and fueled fears of widespread tracking of people with implanted radio frequency tags, even though that ability does not yet exist.
Its devices, which it calls VeriChips, can save lives and limit injuries from errors in medical treatment. And it expressed hope that such medical uses would accelerate the acceptance of under the-Skin ID chips as security and access-control devices.
FDA's nod should help firm over-come "creepy factor" of implanted tags and suspicion it has stirred
It is far from clear whether implanted identification can overcome opposition from those who fear new levels of personal surveillance and from some fundamentalist religious groups who contend that the tags may be the "mark of the beast" referred to in the Book of Revelation.
Patients implanted with the chips could receive more effective care because doctors, other emergency room personnel and ambulance crews equipped with Applied's handheld radio Scanners would be able to read a unique 16 digit number on the chip. The clip does not contain any records, but with the number, the care provider would be able to retrieve medical information about blood type, drug histories and other critical data stored in computers. Tiny radio frequency identification or RFID, tags Similar to VeriChip have been embedded in livestock and pets in the millions in recent years as it more secure form of identification than external tags. But no device marker has yet been able to create a market for human implantable tags like VeriChip, which are the size of a grain of rice and are inserted under the skin of the arm or hand with a syringe.
This summer, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, Mexico's attorney general, announced that he and scores of his subordinates had received implanted chips that control access to a secure room and documents considered vital in Mexico's struggle with drug cartels.
(Ref : Times of India October 16, 2004) |
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