To all the friends and visitors of OSA, the Opponents of the VeriChip implant are launching a new offensive against the controversial human microchip this week, amid reports that VeriChip plans to put its chipping division on the auction block. A new report titled “Microchip Implants: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions” released today by CASPIAN Consumer Privacy reveals dirty laundry the company would probably rather keep hidden as it seeks a buyer for its beleaguered product.

photo credit: nr1

The 42-page report was authored by CASPIAN director Dr. Katherine Albrecht, a Harvard-educated privacy expert and long-time critic of the VeriChip. The highlight of the report is an eleven-page section titled “Cancer Cover-up” that describes a systematic pattern of lies and deception engaged by VeriChip executives in an effort to downplay the fact that implantable microchips cause cancer in laboratory animals.

The report reveals how news outlets like Time Magazine, Business Week, and the RFID Journal were used as unwitting pawns in a VeriChip scheme to spread misinformation about the cancer studies. Since research linking the product to cancer first surfaced last year, each of these publications has repeated misstatements from VeriChip company executives, in many cases printing the inaccurate statements verbatim and unchallenged.

photo credit: kkennedy

“These were not subjective issues, they were plainly verifiable issues of fact,” Albrecht said. “We were saddened to see the misstatements fall through the fact-checking cracks of these respected publications. Now that VeriChip is back in the headlines, we felt it was time to set the record straight.”

VeriChip’s media efforts have done little to salvage the company’s public image or its financial performance, both of which plummeted after research linking the implantable microchip to cancer was widely revealed by the Associated Press in September 2007. The same company that once predicted revenues in the “billions” earned just $3,000 from its microchip implant operations in the first quarter of 2008, as patients shun the device that many are now calling the “cancer chip.”

photo credit: Andrew Currie

Investors have also distanced themselves from the failing company, with VeriChip’s stock plummeting from a high of $10.62 last year to just over $2.00 today.

VeriChip’s VP of business development, Jay McKeage, acknowledged the implant division suffers from “a substantial cash burn” and is “not sustainable on its own.” As a result, he says, VeriChip plans to “shop

the VeriMed / Health Link [human implantable chip] business around widely” in hopes that another company will take the unpopular product off its hands.

However, with recent blog headlines like “VeriChip Death Watch” making the rounds, Albrecht has a hard time imagining who, if anyone, will want to buy the business.

“This is a company that has engaged in a consistent pattern of making false and misleading statements,” she said. “It has lied to the public, to the media, to its shareholders, and to regulatory agencies,” she said, citing additional evidence from the report indicating that VeriChip hid cancer evidence from the FDA when the agency reviewed the implant’s safety in 2004.

“We laid out all the evidence in our report,” she added. “We want to make sure no one else gets burned by VeriChip.”

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ABOUT THE REPORT

CASPIAN’s new report, “Microchip Implants: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” is a comprehensive reference guide to implantable microchips in animals and humans. It provides thoroughly-researched, footnoted answers to 85 of the most commonly asked questions about the implantable microchip, including religious, privacy, social, and health questions. The report concludes with a list of recommendations for patients, pet owners, and policy makers affected by the device.

The new report is available for free download on the group’s AntiChips.com website at:

http://www.antichips.com/faq/index.html

While on the website, readers are encouraged to download Dr. Albrecht’s comprehensive 52-page overview of the studies, “Microchip-Induced Tumors in Laboratory Rodents and Dogs: A Review of the Literature 1990-2006,” and to review scanned copies of the original documents.

=====================================================================

ABOUT CASPIAN

CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) is a grass-roots consumer group fighting retail surveillance schemes since 1999 and irresponsible RFID use since 2002. With thousands of members in all 50 U.S. states and over 30 countries worldwide, CASPIAN seeks to educate consumers about marketing strategies that invade their privacy and encourage privacy-conscious shopping habits across the retail spectrum.

http://www.spychips.com/

http://www.antichips.com/

http://www.nocards.org/

OSA Technorati Tags: Business Week, CASPIAN, RFID Journal, Time Magazine, VeriChip

I’ll be covering this issue on my radio broadcast all week on We The People Radio Network from 10:00 AM – Noon EST. ( http://www.wtprn.com/ ) This morning I’ll be interviewing Danielle Brian from The Project on Government Oversight to discuss Tommy Thompson’s role in this debacle. We’ll also be opening the phone lines for your comments. Join us!

- Katherine Albrecht

Chip Implants Linked to Animal Tumors
TODD LEWAN, Associated Press
http://www.bradenton.com/439/story/141238.html

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved implanting microchips in humans, the manufacturer said it would save lives, letting doctors scan the tiny transponders to access patients’ medical records almost instantly. The FDA found “reasonable assurance” the device was safe, and a sub-agency even called it one of 2005′s top “innovative
technologies.”

But neither the company nor the regulators publicly mentioned this: A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had “induced” malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.

“The transponders were the cause of the tumors,” said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining in a phone interview the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow Chemical Co. in Midland, Mich.

Leading cancer specialists reviewed the research for The Associated Press and, while cautioning that animal test results do not necessarily apply to humans, said the findings troubled them. Some said they would not allow family members to receive implants, and all urged further research before the glass-encased transponders are widely implanted in
people.

To date, about 2,000 of the so-called radio frequency identification, or RFID, devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp. The company, which sees a target market of 45 million Americans for its medical monitoring chips, insists the devices are safe, as does its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, of Delray Beach, Fla.

“We stand by our implantable products which have been approved by the FDA and/or other U.S. regulatory authorities,” Scott Silverman, VeriChip Corp. chairman and chief executive officer, said in a written response to AP questions.

The company was “not aware of any studies that have resulted in malignant tumors in laboratory rats, mice and certainly not dogs or cats,” but he added that millions of domestic pets have been implanted with microchips, without reports of significant problems.

“In fact, for more than 15 years we have used our encapsulated glass transponders with FDA approved anti-migration caps and received no complaints regarding malignant tumors caused by our product.” The FDA also stands by its approval of the technology.

Did the agency know of the tumor findings before approving the chip implants? The FDA declined repeated AP requests to specify what studies it reviewed.

The FDA is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, which, at the time of VeriChip’s approval, was headed by Tommy Thompson. Two weeks after the device’s approval took effect on Jan. 10, 2005, Thompson left his Cabinet post, and within five months was a board member of VeriChip Corp. and Applied Digital Solutions. He was compensated in cash and stock options.

Thompson, until recently a candidate for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, says he had no personal relationship with the company as the VeriChip was being evaluated, nor did he play any role in FDA’s approval process of the RFID tag.

“I didn’t even know VeriChip before I stepped down from the Department of Health and Human Services,” he said in a telephone interview. Also making no mention of the findings on animal tumors was a June report by the ethics committee of the American Medical Association, which touted the benefits of implantable RFID devices.

Had committee members reviewed the literature on cancer in chipped animals?

No, said Dr. Steven Stack, an AMA board member with knowledge of the committee’s review. Was the AMA aware of the studies? No, he said.
,,,

Published in veterinary and toxicology journals between 1996 and 2006, the studies found that lab mice and rats injected with microchips sometimes developed subcutaneous “sarcomas” , malignant tumors, most of them encasing the implants.

, A 1998 study in Ridgefield, Conn., of 177 mice reported cancer incidence to be slightly higher than 10 percent , a result the researchers described as “surprising.”

, A 2006 study in France detected tumors in 4.1 percent of 1,260 microchipped mice. This was one of six studies in which the scientists did not set out to find microchip-induced cancer but noticed the growths incidentally. They were testing compounds on behalf of chemical and pharmaceutical companies; but they ruled out the compounds as the tumors’ cause. Because researchers only noted the most obvious tumors,
the French study said, “These incidences may therefore slightly underestimate the true occurrence” of cancer.

, In 1997, a study in Germany found cancers in 1 percent of 4,279 chipped mice. The tumors “are clearly due to the implanted microchips,” the authors wrote.

Caveats accompanied the findings. “Blind leaps from the detection of tumors to the prediction of human health risk should be avoided,” one study cautioned. Also, because none of the studies had a control group of animals that did not get chips, the normal rate of tumors cannot be determined and compared to the rate with chips implanted.

Still, after reviewing the research, specialists at some pre-eminent cancer institutions said the findings raised red flags.

“There’s no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members,” said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Before microchips are implanted on a large scale in humans, he said, testing should be done on larger animals, such as dogs or monkeys. “I mean, these are bad diseases. They are life-threatening. And given the preliminary animal data, it looks to me that there’s definitely cause for concern.”

Dr. George Demetri, director of the Center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, agreed. Even though the tumor incidences were “reasonably small,” in his view, the research underscored “certainly real risks” in RFID implants.

In humans, sarcomas, which strike connective tissues, can range from the highly curable to “tumors that are incredibly aggressive and can kill people in three to six months,” he said.

At the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, a leader in mouse genetics research and the initiation of cancer, Dr. Oded Foreman, a forensic pathologist, also reviewed the studies at the AP’s request.

At first he was skeptical, suggesting that chemicals administered in some of the studies could have caused the cancers and skewed the results. But he took a different view after seeing that control mice, which received no chemicals, also developed the cancers. “That might be a little hint that something real is happening here,” he said. He, too,
recommended further study, using mice, dogs or non-human primates.

Dr. Cheryl London, a veterinarian oncologist at Ohio State University, noted: “It’s much easier to cause cancer in mice than it is in people. So it may be that what you’re seeing in mice represents an exaggerated phenomenon of what may occur in people.”

Tens of thousands of dogs have been chipped, she said, and veterinary pathologists haven’t reported outbreaks of related sarcomas in the area of the neck, where canine implants are often done. (Published reports detailing malignant tumors in two chipped dogs turned up in AP’s four-month examination of research on chips and health. In one dog, the researchers said cancer appeared linked to the presence of the embedded
chip; in the other, the cancer’s cause was uncertain.)

Nonetheless, London saw a need for a 20-year study of chipped canines “to see if you have a biological effect.” Dr. Chand Khanna, a veterinary oncologist at the National Cancer Institute, also backed such a study, saying current evidence “does suggest some reason to be concerned about tumor formations.”

Meanwhile, the animal study findings should be disclosed to anyone considering a chip implant, the cancer specialists agreed.

To date, however, that hasn’t happened.
,,,

The product that VeriChip Corp. won approval for use in humans is an electronic capsule the size of two grains of rice. Generally, it is implanted with a syringe into an anesthetized portion of the upper arm.

When prompted by an electromagnetic scanner, the chip transmits a unique code. With the code, hospital staff can go on the Internet and access a patient’s medical profile that is maintained in a database by VeriChip Corp. for an annual fee.

VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been marketing radio tags for animals for more than a decade, sees an initial market of diabetics and people with heart conditions or Alzheimer’s disease, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The company is spending millions to assemble a national network of hospitals equipped to scan chipped patients.

But in its SEC filings, product labels and press releases, VeriChip Corp. has not mentioned the existence of research linking embedded transponders to tumors in test animals.

When the FDA approved the device, it noted some Verichip risks: The capsules could migrate around the body, making them difficult to extract; they might interfere with defibrillators, or be incompatible with MRI scans, causing burns. While also warning that the chips could cause “adverse tissue reaction,” FDA made no reference to malignant
growths in animal studies.

Did the agency review literature on microchip implants and animal cancer?

Dr. Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate and RFID expert, asked shortly after VeriChip’s approval what evidence the agency had reviewed. When FDA declined to provide information, she filed a Freedom of Information Act request. More than a year later, she received a letter stating there were no documents matching her request.

“The public relies on the FDA to evaluate all the data and make sure the devices it approves are safe,” she says, “but if they’re not doing that, who’s covering our backs?”

Late last year, Albrecht unearthed at the Harvard medical library three studies noting cancerous tumors in some chipped mice and rats, plus a reference in another study to a chipped dog with a tumor. She forwarded them to the AP, which subsequently found three additional mice studies with similar findings, plus another report of a chipped dog with a tumor.

Asked if it had taken these studies into account, the FDA said VeriChip documents were being kept confidential to protect trade secrets. After AP filed a FOIA request, the FDA made available for a phone interview Anthony Watson, who was in charge of the VeriChip approval process.

“At the time we reviewed this, I don’t remember seeing anything like that,” he said of animal studies linking microchips to cancer. A literature search “didn’t turn up anything that would be of concern.”

In general, Watson said, companies are expected to provide safety-and-effectiveness data during the approval process, “even if it’s adverse information.”

Watson added: “The few articles from the literature that did discuss adverse tissue reactions similar to those in the articles you provided, describe the responses as foreign body reactions that are typical of other implantable devices. The balance of the data provided in the submission supported approval of the device.”

Another implantable device could be a pacemaker, and indeed, tumors have in some cases attached to foreign bodies inside humans. But Dr. Neil Lipman, director of the Research Animal Resource Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, said it’s not the same. The microchip isn’t like a pacemaker that’s vital to keeping someone alive, he added, “so at this stage, the payoff doesn’t justify the risks.”

Silverman, VeriChip Corp.’s chief executive, disagreed. “Each month pet microchips reunite over 8,000 dogs and cats with their owners,” he said. “We believe the VeriMed Patient Identification System will provide similar positive benefits for at-risk patients who are unable to communicate for themselves in an emergency.”
,,,

And what of former HHS secretary Thompson?

When asked what role, if any, he played in VeriChip’s approval, Thompson replied: “I had nothing to do with it. And if you look back at my record, you will find that there has never been any improprieties whatsoever.”

FDA’s Watson said: “I have no recollection of him being involved in it at all.” VeriChip Corp. declined comment.

Thompson vigorously campaigned for electronic medical records and healthcare technology both as governor of Wisconsin and at HHS. While in President Bush’s Cabinet, he formed a “medical innovation” task force that worked to partner FDA with companies developing medical information technologies.

At a “Medical Innovation Summit” on Oct. 20, 2004, Lester Crawford, the FDA’s acting commissioner, thanked the secretary for getting the agency “deeply involved in the use of new information technology to help prevent medication error.” One notable example he cited: “the implantable chips and scanners of the VeriChip system our agency
approved last week.”

After leaving the Cabinet and joining the company board, Thompson received options on 166,667 shares of VeriChip Corp. stock, and options on an additional 100,000 shares of stock from its parent company, Applied Digital Solutions, according to SEC records. He also received $40,000 in cash in 2005 and again in 2006, the filings show.

The Project on Government Oversight called Thompson’s actions “unacceptable” even though they did not violate what the independent watchdog group calls weak conflict-of-interest laws.

“A decade ago, people would be embarrassed to cash in on their government connections. But now it’s like the Wild West,” said the group’s executive director, Danielle Brian.

Thompson is a partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a Washington law firm that was paid $1.2 million for legal services it provided the chip maker in 2005 and 2006, according to SEC filings.

He stepped down as a VeriChip Corp. director in March to seek the GOP presidential nomination, and records show that the company gave his campaign $7,400 before he bowed out of the race in August.

In a TV interview while still on the board, Thompson was explaining the benefits , and the ease , of being chipped when an interviewer interrupted:

“I’m sorry, sir. Did you just say you would get one implanted in your arm?”

“Absolutely,” Thompson replied. “Without a doubt.”

“No concerns at all?”

“No.”

But to date, Thompson has yet to be chipped himself.
,,,

On the Web:

http://www.verichipcorp.com/

http://www.antichips.com/

http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/

Article’s URL:

http://www.bradenton.com/439/story/141238.html

For more great content, information and stories like this, please Join Us, Monday LIVE @ 11:00 MST for:

Your Online Security Authority  
Bill Wardell

CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little notice itself – until a year ago, when two of its employees had glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their forearms.

The “chipping” of two workers with RFIDs – radio frequency identification tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick – was merely a way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance codes, the company said.

“To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques,” Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. “There’s a reader outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it opens the door.”

Innocuous? Maybe.

But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability to erode privacy in the digital age.

To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention – a high-tech helper that could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help authorities identify wandering Alzheimer’s patients, allow consumers to buy their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.

To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone else.

Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer’s patients or Army Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees, then sex offenders, then illegal aliens – until one day, a majority of Americans, falling into one category or another, would find themselves electronically tagged. Chips: High tech aids or tracking tools?

OSA Editorial Comments:  RFID Updates!

Hello to OSA Network, CASPIAN members and friends:

The article is highlighted on the Drudge Report and is printed in over 200 newspapers and news outlets around the country, including USA Today, Business Week, Forbes, Fox News, and the Washington Post.Major papers in Houston, Seattle, Denver, San Jose, Charlotte, Chicago, Kansas City, Miami, and more have picked up the story. It has even reached the UK Guardian newspaper and outlets in Canada and Australia. For a partial list, see: Major papers!

The article features a full color photo of our anti-chipping protest in West Palm Beach, Florida and a link to our new http://www.antichips.com/ website. It also features quotes by me and my Spychips co-author Liz McIntyre, and mentions our book, “Spychips: How major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID.”

For more great content, information and stories like this, please Join Us, every Monday LIVE @ 11:00 MST for:

Your Online Security Authority  
Bill Wardell

Dear OSA friends and supporters:

Aaron Russo, the freedom-loving filmmaker responsible for “America: Freedom to Fascism,” passed away yesterday after a long and courageous battle with cancer. I loved Aaron Russo and feel like the ground has been kicked out from under me at the news of his passing. I pray that he finds rest and reward for his efforts.

Aaron’s family has asked that all cards and support via US Post be sent to:

All Your Freedoms, Inc.
P.O. Box #1213
264 South La Cienega Blvd.
Beverly Hills, California 90211

If you wish to send support to the family in the form of a financial gift please do so via this link (CLICK HERE) or by visiting http://www.russomedicalfund.com/.  All funds go to Aaron’s family.

If you wish to post a message online please visit, “Tributes to Aaron’s life and legacy” at this link: http://restoretherepublic.com/forum/index.php?topic=1518.0

If you have not yet seen “America: Freedom to Fascism,” it’s just under two hours and you can watch it on-line here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656880303867390173

(Yes, that is me you see near the end of the film discussing RFID. My interview was filmed in the Hollywood home of Aaron and his gracious wife Heidi.)Aaron Russo will be sorely missed. Please help us keep his memory alive by spreading the word about his important work.

In freedom,
Katherine Albrecht, Ed.D.

OSA Editorial Comments:

We join Katherine and offer our condolence to the Aaron Russo family, we will do our part in helping and keeping his message alive.

For more great content, information and stories like this, please Join Us, Monday LIVE @ 11:00 MST for:

Your Online Security Authority  
Bill Wardell

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OSA Technorati Tags: Aaron Russo, Aaron Russo Films Inc, America, America: Freedom to Fascism, Bill Wardell, Katherine Albrecht, Online Security Authority

Katherine Albrecht, Ed.D., is about to leave for Phoenix, where she and other advocates will be briefing the Arizona state legislature on privacy issues associated with new remotely-readable, spychipped “enhanced” driver’s licenses. If you are in the area, you are invited to join us on Thursday evening for a public town hall meeting on the topic sponsored by the Arizona ACLU tomorrow night.

As you may know, several states, including Arizona, Washington, Vermont, and New York have agreed to issue the RFID-tagged cards for border-crossing purposes. The idea is that state residents who voluntarily pay an extra $40 to receive the remotely-trackable cards will be allowed to cross more “efficiently” into Canada or Mexico, since border officials will see them coming before they reach the guard station.

photo credit: myuibe

To anyone who’s clued in about RFID, the spychipped driver’s licenses are a complete privacy nightmare, however. They can be silently read from 20-feet away, through a person’s wallet, pocket, backpack, or purse — even when the target is in a moving car. They are unencrypted and contain a unique ID number that can be used to identify and track people miles from the border — indeed, anywhere the government chooses to put a reader.

But it’s not just the government that could use the cards to track and surveil people. Anyone with a rudimentary RFID reader can remotely access the the unique ID number on the card. Retailers could use them to ID customers as they walk in the door. Marketers could use them to track people around the store. Stalkers could use them to track their victims. Terrorists could scan for them in crowds and pinpoint Americans traveling in other countries. Hackers could duplicate the signal emitted by chipped licenses to impersonate people. The list of potential abuses for the ill-conceived ID card are staggering.

If you are in Phoenix and would like to learn more, the ACLU is hosting a Town Hall Meeting tomorrow evening (Thursday, 3/13) at 7:00 PM at the University of Arizona. She will deliver a PowerPoint presentation on RFID-tagged ID cards and sign books after the event, so be sure to bring your copy of Spychips (or you can pick one up while you’re there).

The event is free and open to the public. Further details are available below my signature, or on-line here: Press Release

If you cannot attend in person, please send your prayers and well wishes with us to the state of Arizona, as we work to inform the public about the encroaching police state.

Your Online Security Authority,

Bill Wardell

Please support, Dr. Katherine Albrecht
Founder and Director, CASPIAN: Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering — Opposing supermarket loyalty cards and other retail surveillance schemes since 1999

http://www.spychips.com/
http://www.nocards.org/

Other Posts From Around The Web:

OSA Technorati Tags: ACLU, Katherine Albrecht, RFID-tagged cards