The chip will also know if your
child has fallen and needs immediate help. Once paramedics arrive, the chip
will also be able to tell the rescue workers which drugs little Johnny or Janie
is allergic to. At the hospital, the chip will tell doctors his or her complete
medical history.
And of course, when you arrive to
pick up your child, settling the hospital bill with your health insurance
policy will be a simple matter of waving your own chip — the one embedded in
your hand.
To some, this may sound far-fetched.
But the technology for such chips is no longer the stuff of science fiction.
And it may soon offer many other benefits besides locating lost children or
elderly Alzheimer patients.
"Down the line, it could be
used [as] credit cards and such," says Chris Hables Gray, a professor of
cultural studies of science and technology at the University of Great Falls in
Montana. "A lot of people won't have to carry wallets anymore," he
says. "What the implications are [for this technology], in the long run,
is profound."
Indeed, some are already wondering
what this sort of technology may do to the sense of personal privacy and
liberty.
"Any technology of this kind is
easily abusive of personal privacy," says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney
for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "If a kid is track-able, do you
want other people to be able to track your kid? It's a double-edged
sword."
Tiny Chips That Know Your Name
The research — and controversy — of
embedding microchips isn't entirely new. Back in 1998, Kevin Warwick, a
professor of cybernetics at Reading University outside of London, implanted a
chip into his arm as an experiment to see if Warwick's computer could
wirelessly track his whereabouts with the university's building.
But Applied Digital Solutions, Inc.
in Palm Beach, Fla., is one of the latest to try and push the experiments
beyond the realm of academic research and into the hands — and bodies — of
ordinary humans.
The company says it has recently
applied to the Food and Drug Administration for permission to begin testing its
VeriChip device in humans. About the size of a grain of rice, the microchip can
be encoded with bits of information and implanted in humans under a layer of
skin. When scanned by a nearby handheld reader, the embedded chip yields the
data — say an ID number that links to a computer database file containing more
detailed information.
Building a Built-in Digital Guardian
Keith Bolton, chief technology
officer for ADS, says that VeriChip is only the beginning.
According to Bolton, the company has
already started experimenting with combining the Verichip with another ADS
product called Digital Angel. That pager-sized device allows caregivers and
parents to monitor the health and whereabouts of seniors and children through
the use of space-based Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites.
"In the migration path, those
two products that can be bundled together," says Bolton. The resulting
product would be about the size of an American quarter coin and offer an
improved way of monitoring patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease, for
example.
See How an Embedded Locator Chip
Would Work Safety Against Terrorists? And the interest in testing embedded chips has
been steadily increasing — especially since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Source:http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98077
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