"The Chipsons" Verichip Implant

[marby]

Meet The Chipsons - TIME MAGAZINE
Jeffrey, Leslie and their boy Derek will be America's first cyborg family. Are you ready to "Get Chipped"?
By LEV GROSSMAN

With his school uniform and his plump, pinchable cheeks, Derek Jacobs of Boca Raton, Fla., looks like an ordinary youngster. But looks can deceive. When he was 12, Microsoft certified Derek as a qualified systems engineer, one of the youngest ever. At 13 he was running his own computer-consulting company. Now he's 14, and what's Derek doing for an encore? He's becoming a cyborg--part man-child, part machine.

Derek, his mom Leslie and his dad Jeffrey are the first volunteer test subjects for a new, implantable computer device called VeriChip. Later this spring, pending Food and Drug Administration approval, doctors will load a wide-bore needle with a microchip containing a few kilobytes of silicon memory and a tiny radio transmitter and inject it under the skin of their left arms, where it will serve as a medical identification device. It sounds like science fiction. (Remember the Borg on Star Trek? Resistance is futile!) But VeriChip is quite real. The Jacobs family could be the first in a new generation of computer-enhanced human beings.

In some respects Derek is a regular eighth-grader. He's quiet and polite. He plays the drums. He used to be on the swim team before he quit to make time for his computer business. He remembers vividly when he first saw VeriChip on the Today show. "I thought it was great technology," he says. "I wanted to be a part of it." And when Derek sets his mind to a problem, he generally solves it. "Derek stood up and said to me, 'Mom, I want to be the first kid implanted with the chip,'" remembers Leslie Jacobs, an advertising executive at Florida Design magazine. "He kept bugging me to call the company until I finally broke down."

Leslie set up a lunch with Keith Bolton, vice president of Applied Digital Solutions, the company behind VeriChip. At first Bolton (who jokingly refers to the Jacobses as "the Chipsons") was skeptical. Since the first wave of VeriChip publicity, he has heard from roughly 2,500 would-be cyborgs. But the Jacobs family is particularly well suited to test VeriChip for use in medicine. If a patient with VeriChip were injured, the theory goes, a harried ER doc could quickly access the victim's medical background by scanning the chip with a device that looks like a Palm handheld computer.

In the case of the Jacobses, that could be a lifesaver. Derek has allergies to common antibiotics, and Jeffrey is weakened from years of treatment for Hodgkin's disease. A few years ago, he was in a serious car accident; and when he got to the hospital, he was in no shape to explain his condition to the staff. "The advantage of the chip is that the information is available at the time of need," Jeffrey explains. "It would speak for me, give me a voice when I don't have one."

The operation to insert the chip is simple. "It takes about seven seconds," says Dr. Richard Seelig, the company's medical-applications director, exaggerating only slightly. An antiseptic swab, a local anesthetic, an injection and a Band-Aid--that's all it takes. Once the skin heals, Seelig says, the chip is completely invisible, and the Jacobses will hardly know it's there. "The chip is fully biocompatible," Bolton says. "No body fluids can get in, and nothing can be loosened or come out."

Applied Digital Solutions--which is trademarking the phrase "Get Chipped!"--has big plans for its little device. In the next few years, it wants to add sensors that will read your vital signs--pulse, temperature, blood sugar and so on--and a satellite receiver that can track where you are. The company makes a pager-like gadget called Digital Angel that does both those things, and its engineers are doing their darnedest to cram Digital Angel's functions into a package small enough to implant. Once they do, VeriChip will be very powerful indeed. That's one of the reasons the Jacobses want to get involved. "There are endless possibilities," says Derek. "For me it's marvelous," says Leslie. "Every day I worry about my husband. We definitely feel it will make us all feel more secure."

Security is part of the VeriChip business plan. The company has already signed a deal with the California department of corrections to track the movements of parolees using Digital Angel. Seelig believes VeriChip could function as a theftproof, counterfeit-proof ID, like having a driver's license embedded under your skin. He suggests that airline crews could wear one to ensure that terrorists don't infiltrate the cockpit in disguise. "I travel quite a bit," he says, "and I want to make sure the pilots in that plane belong there."

Could the airlines or government really require pilots to get chipped? "I think we have a right to demand that," says Seelig. "Our lives are in their hands." It sounds extreme, but there are precedents. In the early '90s several states considered laws that would have required female child abusers and women on welfare to wear birth-control implants. The proposals were not very popular. "There's a feeling that technology has outpaced the policy process," says Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. "We aren't in a position to apply these new devices with the wisdom and prudence that is needed."

[Guest]

No Cyborg Nation Without FDA's OK

Wired News 8/10/2002

In May, three members of a Florida family were implanted with ID chips, sparking an international debate over the implications of the technology.

The manufacturer insisted that the VeriChip would revolutionize the fields of security and health care by providing a tamper-proof form of identification. Privacy pundits, meanwhile, fretted over forcible chipping and biblical literalists warned that a microchip could be interpreted as the "Mark of the Beast."

VeriChip maker Applied Digital Solutions (ADS) crowed about an anticipated demand that would create "millions" of cyborgs within the next few years. It even trademarked the terms "get chipped" and "The Chipsons" -- the nickname for the Florida family, whose real name is Jacobs.

But five months have passed, and the VeriChip still isn't available in the United States.

Why? Because the controversial microchip has become mired in bureaucratic limbo as the government decides whether the VeriChip should be a regulated device.

Central to the confusion is a March e-mail exchange between ADS and the Food and Drug Administration, in which the company sought guidance about whether the product needed the agency's approval.

"The chip has no medical purposes," ADS consultant Stephen B. Kaufman stated in an electronic missive to FDA officials on March 19. "It is for security or financial or other identification purposes only."

An FDA investigator responded that the rice-sized microchip did not appear to be a regulated device, but requested additional information so that the agency "could review the item carefully and make a determination."

Instead, ADS sent out a press release stating that the FDA didn't consider VeriChip to be a "regulated medical device" and started touting the product as a "life-saving" device on talk shows.

This dismayed the FDA investigators who exchanged e-mails with the company.

"We were like, 'Wait a second,' we told them to come in and tell us more," said Wally Pellerite, who works in the FDA's Office of Compliance. "The information they were releasing in press releases and on television shows contradicted the information they gave the FDA."

Things got more confusing when an FDA spokeswoman stated that "as long as the chip itself does not contain medical information, it is not regulated by the FDA."

Then, a week after the Jacobs family got chipped, Pellerite said that the FDA was investigating the company. As a result, Nasdaq temporarily halted trading of ADS shares and VeriChip's future in the United States was put on hold.

Part of the problem is the chip's novelty, Pellerite said in an interview. While microchips have been used to track pets and livestock for years, the idea of chipping humans is new.

"This is a technological advance that we haven't really looked at before, and it may have inherent risks," said Pellerite, who added that he was unaware of any implant that was not regulated by the FDA.

According to Section 201 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, implants and other devices "intended to affect the structure or any function of the body of man or other animals" require government approval.

Pellerite said the argument could be made that any foreign object designed to remain in the body indefinitely might affect the function of the body -- and therefore requires regulation. Cosmetic implants such as breast and penile enhancers, for example, come under the agency's jurisdiction, despite having no medical function.

If the FDA determines that the VeriChip should be regulated, ADS may have to conduct clinical trials to prove the product is safe. The agency should reach a conclusion before the end of the year, Pellerite said.

"We're eagerly awaiting the FDA's clarification and guidance about VeriChip," ADS spokesman Matthew Cossolotto said.

Leslie Jacobs, matron of the Jacobs family, is also anxious for a decision to be made.

"It's frustrating," said Jacobs. "It makes you impatient because the chips can help so many lives if it's able to go forward. It's very frustrating."

Meanwhile, ADS has forged ahead with VeriChip distribution agreements in Latin America and is developing a subdermal GPS chip.

The latest deal was announced earlier this month with a Mexican security firm called SPIMSA, which plans to market VeriChip as a permanent ID for executives and to control worker access to secure areas, such as airport terminals.

"People want to buy peace of mind, and if this product can offer that, they're going to buy it," SPIMSA spokesman Antonio Aceves said.

[swee]

LOL I was watching video footage of the Chipsons yesterday on www.prisonplanet.com or www.infowars.com - I forget which, they are both Alex Jones sites.

[Guest]

[swee]

[Guest]

Yes the media is terrible for dumbing down. I cant believe the amount of column inches dedicated to Lohan and Hilton. There are so much more important discoveries out there, but every piece of media is boring, bland, celebrity obssessed drivvel to deter people from the realities of the world

[Guest]

WTF is happening?

[mogadishu]

note the google ad at the top of this page is for implants. i never noticed google recorded the subjects printed here before.

[swee]

[Guest]

Can chips affect our frequencies? If there were intelliegence on another vibrational frequency to homo-sapiens. Could they in theory, use chipped individuals as containers or walk-ins?

[swee]

[Guest]

[Guest]

[Guest]

They sit passively waiting to be read.

When energized, the microchip capsule sends radio signals back to the scanner with the identification number. The scanner can then interpret the radio waves and display the identification number.

[Guest]

They don't use batteries though. They get all the energy they need through the signal being sent to them. The signal is so weak that no damage will happen to the surrounding tissue. According to documentaries I've seen and read about these chips, we're constantly bombarded by radio signals much stronger than those used to scan these chips. Animals have been chipped for many years with no effects to the animal.
Mobile phones emits very strong radio signals, especially when sending or receiving a phone call, yet most of us carry one around strapped to our body.