{"id":1274,"date":"2007-09-17T21:50:54","date_gmt":"2007-09-17T21:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/surveillance-big-brother\/microchipping-of-alzheimers-patients-begins-in-florida\/1274\/"},"modified":"2007-09-17T21:50:54","modified_gmt":"2007-09-17T21:50:54","slug":"microchipping-of-alzheimers-patients-begins-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/surveillance-big-brother\/microchipping-of-alzheimers-patients-begins-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Microchipping of Alzheimer’s patients begins in Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Gutierrez<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

The Delray Beach, Fla.-based company VeriChip Corp. has announced plans to implant 200 Alzheimer’s patients in Palm Beach County with radio-frequency identification chips as part of a pilot study to test the new technology.<\/p>\n

The VeriMed microchip is approximately the size of a grain of rice and contains a 16-digit patient identification number, which is available to anyone who scans the device with the right technology. This number can then be entered into a database to retrieve a patient’s medical information. The FDA has approved the chip for human implantation.<\/p>\n

According to VeriChip’s CEO Scott Silverman, the VeriMed chip will eventually provide peace of mind to the families of Alzheimer’s<\/a> patients by providing a safety net in case a patient should get lost.<\/p>\n

“When an Alzheimer’s patient gets lost, once their arm is scanned, it would identify who they are and that they are an Alzheimer’s patient,” Silverman said.<\/p>\n

The chip is not a GPS device, Silverman emphasized, and cannot be used to track people in whom it is implanted. All the participants in the two-year study are volunteers, and Silverman expressed pleasure with the study’s reception so far.<\/p>\n

“We had an excellent turn-out at the educational seminars and virtually 100% enrollment,” he said. “This overwhelming acceptance underscores the value of the VeriMed system not only for Alzheimer’s patients, but their caregivers as well.”<\/p>\n

But privacy and patients’ rights advocates have criticized the project, charging that it strips Alzheimer’s patients of their dignity.<\/p>\n

The organization Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), owner of the web sites spychips.com and antichips.com, has accused VeriChip of testing a potentially unsafe technology on the “most vulnerable” segment of the population, questioning whether Alzheimer’s patients are truly capable of giving their consent to be involved in such a study. CASPIAN has warned that the chips may cause adverse tissue reactions, problems with medical devices, electrical hazards and may place patients at risk of having their private information stolen.<\/p>\n

Consumer health advocate Mike Adams added, “These Alzheimer’s patients are being used as guinea pigs as part of a campaign that intends to eventually microchip the entire population. Today, it’s senior citizens, pets and children… in the near future, it will be everyone.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Gutierrez The Delray Beach, Fla.-based company VeriChip Corp. has announced plans to implant 200 Alzheimer’s patients in Palm Beach County with radio-frequency identification chips as part of a pilot study to test the new technology. The VeriMed microchip is approximately the size of a grain of rice and contains a 16-digit patient identification […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1614],"tags":[75],"class_list":{"0":"post-1274","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-surveillance-big-brother","7":"tag-rfid"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}