Sunday, July 24, 2005 12:42 a.m. EDT
Tommy Thompson Gets Chip Implant

Implanted microchips are getting a plug from a heavy hitter - former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson.

Thompson plans to promote a product made by his new company - a medical info chip - by having one implanted in his arm.

"It doesn´t cause any pain," Thompson told Paul Bedard, who writes the Washington Whispers column in U.S. News & World Report.

The chip is made by Florida-based VeriChip, which recently added Thompson to its board of directors.

The rice-size chip contains a 16-digit identification code that can be scanned at hospitals and then linked to a database containing the chip wearer´s medical data.

So far about 2,000 medical chips have been implanted worldwide, and two hospitals in the U.S. are already equipped to scan them. "People are dying all the time," Thompson told Washington Whispers, "because they can´t access their medical information overseas."

The chip was approved by the FDA last year. By that time more than 1,000 chips had been implanted in patients in Mexico. And nearly 200 people working in Mexico´s attorney general´s office were implanted with I.D. chips to access secure areas containing sensitive documents.

Others have put implanted chips to a more frivolous use: Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain, has offered to inject chips made by VeriChip in the arms of big spenders and celebrities for quick admission to its snooty VIP lounge.

The chips are "implanted with a syringe by a club staffer who is a nurse licensed to give injections," Fortune magazine reported.

Some have suggested using an implanted chip to assist the military in locating a downed pilot, or to help find a lost or kidnapped child.

But not everyone is thrilled with the notion of an implanted chip that could contain a wide array of information about an individual.

Scott McDonald of the Web site Scan This News warned: "All movement, transactions, and interactions can be recorded and monitored once everyone has their own unique identifier. Every detail of a person´s life will be finally accessible to authorities through the widespread use of implanted chips."

And writing for NewsMax, Geoff Metcalf said that with widespread use of an implanted chip, "privacy - the very concept of privacy - becomes an anachronism."
[link to www.newsmax.com]
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