Implanted RFID Chips Linked To Cancer

An anonymous reader writes "The Associated Press is reporting that microchip implants have induced cancer in laboratory animals and dogs. A series of research articles spanning more than a decade found that mice and rats injected with glass-encapsulated RFID transponders developed malignant, fast-growing, lethal cancers in up to 1% to 10% of cases. The tumors originated in the tissue surrounding the microchips and often grew to completely surround the devices. To date, about 2,000 RFID devices have been implanted in humans worldwide, according to VeriChip Corp." We recently discussed the California ban on companies requiring such implants.

Comments

Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Limburgher]

Didn't she get one implanted in one episode?
Makes me think twice about wanting one for my dog. . .

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

Kari.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that your name sounds like "harry vagina" when spoken by somebody with a head cold?

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

You are snarky and sarcastic and MEAN!

*moans softly, fingers rabbit-clit*

Chaw, chee-chaw, chee-chaw, chee-chaw!

And yes, I do realize that I am in dire need of psychiatric help. I am just too afraid to seek it. Help me.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Limburgher]

Hey now, that's really crude. Here I am expressing a legitimate concern for the health of another human being where it may very well be warranted, and all you can do is make 5th-grade level jokes.

Her health ought to be first priority. Her dreamaliciousness must come second. Er, . . .

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Colin Smith]

You forgot to add "dude".

Christ, the standard is really slipping.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[MillionthMonkey]

I, for one, would like to implant my penis into her vagina.

Aren't you nervous that the "myths" surrounding your penis might get "busted"?

Besides, the implantation might trigger the explosive growth of a colony of cells.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[antdude]

More like it is busted that Larry Bagina can get laid with Kari. :P

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking if mythbusters, they looked like idiots for pronouncing the name as 'ar-fids' instead of spelling it out, despite hearing the correct pronunciation from someone they interviewed.

That jet car was kind of lame too.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[iminplaya]

Besides, the implantation might trigger the explosive growth of a colony of cells.

And there's a chance that it could be malignant

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there something shocking about a foreign body transmitting radio waves inside of a living organism causing cancer, I figured that was kinda a "duhhh" kinda subject.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, would like to implant my penis into her vagina.

If your penis is truly comparable to an RFID tag, it's probably too small for her to notice. For your own pleasure, you're probably better off making it with an empty mechanical pencil.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Gordonjcp]

Is there something shocking about a foreign body transmitting radio waves inside of a living organism causing cancer

It's nothing to do with radio waves at all, more to do with being a foreign body implanted into fast-growing tissue. You get exactly the same thing around bits of glass left in wounds after accidents.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, not really. Glass is one of the most biocompatbile substances available: it's stable, non-porous, and extremely resistant to chemical interaction with blood or tissue. Its primary issue when in tissue is that it's often embedded as sharp little pieces, and after an accident those pieces are often dirty. But in and of itself, it's safer than steel, and easier to clean.

About the only thing more bioicompatible is Teflon.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[dabraun]

About the only thing more bioicompatible is Teflon.

Actually, teflon is considered a 'likely carcinogen'.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=teflon+carcin ogen

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Reaperducer]

If Carrie is what geeks consider attractive these days, the quality of internet porn has really declined a lot in the last few years.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure both MythBusters are males.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Gary W. Longsine]

Nah, all the cool kids say "ar-fids".

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[ScrewMaster]

I thought titanium metal was commonly used for such implantable items as pacemakers, because the immune system tends to just leave it alone.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

All the geeks I know call them 'ar-fids.' The only people who spell it out are non-geeks. It is kind of like RAID. You say it you don't spell it.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[bteeter]

Could it be that its the glass encapsulation that's causing this, rather than the chip itself? I'm sure having the radio transmitter there isn't good but maybe its the glass thats more toxic.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[jimmydevice]

Dude, This is slashdot, Not even the 5th-grade.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Antique Geekmeister]

That's interesting. Unfortunately, you seem to have done the classic Slashdot error of not actually reading the article you cite. The carcinogen mostly referred to is not Teflon itself: it's PFDA, which is used to *make* Teflon and of which no significant amount remains in the Teflon itself.

There are any number of people with plenty of Teflon embedded in them: it's a common component in medical implants, and one of the safer ones to use. The stuff is amazingly non-reactive and non-irritating.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Forrest Kyle]

I think it would be really funny if this was modded +5 Informative.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Anonymous Coward]

Kari...

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[that IT girl]

Kari is attractive because she's not only cute, but smart. Major points for the slashdotter guys. I'm not a guy, but I recognize that appeal.
I saw her at Dragon-Con a couple of weeks ago :D w00t.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Arcady13]

Dragon*Con was last week...

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[dabraun]

Apparently the final product is not as clean as one might hope:

http://www.care2.com/news/member/504097294/405059

http://teflonrecall.com/

It's a confusing topic - teflon is still being used in cookware and gore-tex (and similar products, effectively perforated teflon layered with vinyl or nylon), yet there have been recalls of teflon based products like scotchgard. It's hard to make out whether it's just a manufacturing byproduct issue or if the actual products themselves are dangerous. It's also unclear whether this is dangerous internally, gastrointestinally, or only when inhaled (like asbestos).

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[digitalFlack]

Tell her what?

Some AP reporter who had to write a science article scared the beejeezuz out of you statistically challenged hypocondriacs?

RTFA, even it says that in surveying all the medical literature available, only two incidental reports of dogs with cancer associated with implants are found. There are a few million implanted dogs in this country! (It's been common practice at the vast majority of shelters to spay and implant for many years.) I asked my vet last year how many he has taken out - one was rejected out of hundreds he has done. He didn't mention cancer....

What about the mice? Mice seem to have a 10%, 4% or 1% cancer rate on chip implants (according to the article, which wasn't submitted to any scrutiny by anybody with a Phd, Masters or even a BS in biology from what I can tell.) Many simple causes haven't been investigated or at even discussed. (e.g. the chip may occupy 2-3% of the mouse' body mass, the same chip 0.1% of a dogs and 0.03% of a human (Carrie is petite after all.) Maybe there is a threshold where the immune system is overwhelmed. Get a grad student on it!

The article is poor science. Scare the old ladies with chipped dogs on Sunday morning (9/9) and get they're blood warming so they can do some more fear mongering on Tuesday.

Flack

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[Antique Geekmeister]

You do realize that most of the "Teflon" references at teflonrecal.com are references to politicions being like Teflon because nothing stucks to them, right?

The first one is an interesting read. It does seem to be mix the risks of PFOA (a component used to manufacture Teflon, which is dangerous by itself), with those of Teflon itself in various ways. But just because you can burn Teflon cookware and cause it to release toxic fumes at 500 degrees Fahrenheit seems fairly irrelevant to its use in medical implants which would never reach such a temperature.

Re:Someone better tell Carrie from MythBusters

[that IT girl]

Whenever. Technically it was more than a week at the time, since I went Friday and Saturday. :D

Big Tag has known about this for years

[Anonymous Coward]

But they continue to claim the implants are actually healthful.

And when the word gets out about second-hand tag being harmful, there will be hell to pay.

No talk about RFI

[www.sorehands.com]

There was no talk whether it was the container or the RFI emission. I would have liked to see the results of 'dead' chips versus 'live' chips.

This may answer the issue of cell phone cancer.

Of course, the cell phone company will claim that it only happens if you have the phone (headset) to your ear for 6 hours a day. And of course, the manual says that they only recommend no more than 4 hours of use a month.

Re:No talk about RFI

[evilviper]

There was no talk whether it was the container or the RFI emission.

That's because they assume their readers aren't idiots...

RFID chips don't emit electromagnetic radiation, they only (really) reflect it. What's more, the energy levels are far lower than any number of other day-to-day activities, in the same frequency ranges as other signals all around us, and RFID chips are only scanned for a couple seconds at a time, and only on occasion.

If the small and occasional radiation from RFID chips could cause cancer, we'd all be lucky to survive for a few months after birth before dying of cancer.

Re:No talk about RFI

[Original Replica]

I immediately thought of the RFI emissions as the culprit. Wouldn't having the precisely the same RF transmissions going through precisely the same tissue over and over again cause much greater damage over time then a varied transmission or transmitting from a varied location? I'm thinking of the damage kinda like harmonics: if you tap the same place on structure at the right frequency you get resonance, if you tap at the same frequency but randomize the location and direction of each tap you get no resonance, if you randomize the tap so there is no set frequency you get no resonance. Whatever little DNA bit that happens to be effected by the RFI emission is going to get the exact same assault over and over until it is eventually destroyed.

Re:No talk about RFI

[weg]

There was no talk whether it was the container or the RFI emission. I would have liked to see the results of 'dead' chips versus 'live' chips.

I wouldn't doubt this study. The fact that they've determined that "about 1% to 10%" of the sample suffer from cancer indicates that it's extremely accurate!

Re:No talk about RFI

[Cadallin]

I'd be willing to bet it is the container. Shockingly there do seem to be people sensitive to Silicon and Silicon based compounds (see the controversy over Silicone breast implants.)

I say: 1. No more implants in people. 2. More Study.

What exactly is your proposed mechanism for RF signals causing cancer? I remain convinced that the "Cellphones Cause Cancer" people are a mixture of Schizophrenics and Hypochondriacs (both natural, and amphetamine induced.)

Re:No talk about RFI

[Bender0x7D1]

I would have liked to see the results of 'dead' chips versus 'live' chips.

All RFID chips are "dead" except when being read. So, unless the pet lived at a vet's office and curled up under the RFID reader everyday, it wouldn't get and radio frequency radiation from the chip. Which is probably the kind of situation they put the lab animals through.

Re:No talk about RFI

[raduf]

The received power decreases with the cube of the distance. So a phone at 1-2 cm away (plastic and skin) may have less effect then a n embedded RFID. Not that it means radio waves do cause cancer.

Re:No talk about RFI

[Anonymous Coward]

In the veterinary industry we've been implanting pets with RFID transponders for years. I'm not aware of any noticeable increase in implantation site neoplasms.

That said, animals do not necessarily have the same physiology as humans. For instance, it's well known that vaccinations can cause local injection site sarcomas in cats. However studies have shown that injections of inert saline have the same incidence of sarcomas, meaning that it's probable that the cat's innate immune response to the injection in some instances leads to cancer. That may be what's going on with these RFID chips in rats, and that doesn't imply that the same situation would occur with humans.

Re:No talk about RFI

[Anonymous Coward]

> This may answer the issue of cell phone cancer.

Studies of tens of thousands of cell phone users haven't turned up any evidence, so the "issue" is only one to people who believe lack of evidence is evidence in favor of their foregone conclusions.

And as for RFID implants, here's a newsflash: implanted foreign bodies can cause reactions, including malignancies. The occurrence is ridiculously low, millions of pets have these implants, and veterinarians are not reporting anything out of the ordinary. Must be a mass veterinary conspiracy, including at nonprofits and the SPCA, eh?

  The study can't even determine accuracy to the number of digits in the percentage of the population affected. It's quite clear that the editorship of slashdot doesn't represent nerds in any fashion, since nerds are reputed to actualy READ and apply CRITICAL THINKING.

Re:No talk about RFI

[www.sorehands.com]

Reflect it??? No, they emit it. Just because they are powered by RFI means that they do not emit RFI. Reflect means to bounce back w/o change.

Re:No talk about RFI

[LinuxGeek]

RFID packages don't reflect EMR, the process is a bit more involved.

1. Tuned coil builds energy from transmitted RF.
   
2. Energy is used to power chip, calculate response and transmit the answer (more RF, local this time).
   
3. When the reader RF ceases, the stored energy in the coil will collapse which will generate a fairly strong local magnetic pulse and possibly a narrow-band high frequency EMR pulse of its own.

These things would happen very frequently if worn out in the real world and that would concern me greatly. I won't be wearing one.

Re:No talk about RFI

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass == Silicon != Silicone

Re:No talk about RFI

[gweihir]

I wouldn't doubt this study. The fact that they've determined that "about 1% to 10%" of the sample suffer from cancer indicates that it's extremely accurate!

You have no clue how medical statistics works, do you?

Re:No talk about RFI

[maxume]

Except that essentially nothing that is known about interactions at the molecular/atomic level has anything to do with what you are spraying out onto the internets. Molecular bonds don't get stronger or weaker over time(as far as we know anyway). They either reach the point where they break, or they don't, at any given point in time, with no real notion of cumulative effects.

Re:No talk about RFI

[NeverVotedBush]

Wow - people with glass eyes are really in trouble, huh?

Re:No talk about RFI

[ILuvRamen]

You know signal or radiation or whatever in wireless is measured in dB which means it gets exponentially stronger when you get closer. So yeah you could have the RFID chip an inch form your skin for a century and not get cancer but when it's literally touching your living cells, that's an extremely high dose of radiation over a very small area of a couple of cells.

Re:No talk about RFI

[kaizokuace]

well maybe if they didnt use whatever glass capsule for their container it might be better. titanium and plastics dont seem to be a problem and those are implanted in people all the time. It makes me wonder if there is just something in these labs that just causes cancer in rodents.

Re:No talk about RFI

[GanjaManja]

I thought that they used the received RF power to power the logic (which would check for the appropriate activation signal) which in turn then powers the broadcast antenna.

Thus, they only respond to some particular frequency but will in fact re-broadcast from teh RFID chip itself. Of course, it can only broadcast at less power than was recieved. This still means that the cells immediately around the RFID chip are exposed to (somewhere around) twice as much of the signal than the on-RFID cells, which only experience the originating signal once.

Perhaps the difference is that the cells around the RFID chip experience the initial and re-transmitted (not exactly reflected, if I understand correctly) signals in rapid succession repeatedly, so the combination of interfering signals and beat frequencies and all serve to increase the probability that a carcinogenic mutation could occur.

just my guesses. I'm an EE, but still who knows.

I must say I Hate it when an article says "A 1997 study in Germany says...blah" with no obvious mention of who, what group or how I would find this study... idiots.

Re:No talk about RFI

[GanjaManja]

Glass == Silica (SiO2) != Silicon (Si) != Silicone (boobs)

Re:No talk about RFI

[GanjaManja]

when you say "The Study" you make it sound like there was a study actually looking for the carcinogenic effects of the RFID tags.
The article mentions that these tumors were accidentally found while routinely using the RFID chips in lab animals, there has yet to be a study JUST looking for the reason/occurence of cancer due to the RFID tags.

IF someone does that sort of targeted study, maybe they'll find that it's the container, or the RF, or the external "electromagnetic" transmitter/detector, or the RFID's reaction to sunlight... etc. etc.

Re:No talk about RFI

[evilviper]

So a phone at 1-2 cm away (plastic and skin) may have less effect then a n embedded RFID.

You are talking in circles... We're a long way from the sun, so the inverse square law says we don't get too much power from it. A mirror in your hands, reflecting the sun, isn't going to be as powerful as the Sun, and can't emit any more power than it received. No matter how close you are to it, the energy level hasn't changed.

The inverse square law tells you how much power the RFID chip is going to receive in the first place, and it can't output any more power than it gets. In other words, you'll have just as much power going through you from the RFID scanner, whether you have a RFID chip, or not.

Re:No talk about RFI

[evilviper]

Reflect means to bounce back w/o change.

Really? What does a fun-house mirror do then, if it doesn't "reflect" light. Or a regular mirror for that matter, since they're never perfect?

My dictionary must be broken... Under "reflect" it doesn't say anything about "w/o change"

Re:No talk about RFI

[edittard]

You know signal or radiation or whatever in wireless is measured in dB which means it gets exponentially stronger when you get closer.

The measuring system has nothing to do with how it falls off with distance. And it's inverse-square, not exponential (that word doesn't mean "a lot", despite how some people use it).

Re:No talk about RFI

[rtb61]

What is amusing of course is how the corporate marketeers try and drive the idea of safety, how can a small rfid tag create cancer in something as large as a human being. How many human cells are required for a lethal cancer to develop, one, just one, snuggled up tight against those rfid tag, getting hit maybe 10 to 100 times a day, especially when the detectors are built in door frames.

Little tricky bits also happen inside the human body, what happens when a cell is near the end if it's life and more susceptible to DNA damage. When senior executives, the board of directors and the major share holders, get tagged, then and only then will I consider, laughing at them, because there is now way in hell, I am going to be tagged like some dumb animal who can't protest.

Re:No talk about RFI

[Cadallin]

Shockingly, if you look carefully, you'll notice I said, "Silicon and Silicon based compounds." Both Silica, and Silicone are definitely "Silicon based compounds".

Re:No talk about RFI

[fractoid]

Silicone != boobs.

Boobs = boobs. Silicone = !boobs, although can feel booblike.

Mmmmmmm booobs.

Dalkon Shield

[goombah99]

Anyone here old enough to remember the Dalkon Shield implants? Sold by the millions, recommend by doctors as ideal and healthful. A.H Robbins is no more.

Re:Dalkon Shield

[Secrity]

A. H. Robins filed for Chapter 11 in 1985. (debt reorganization, not liquidation.) This effectively fucked the womens' ability to sue AHR. In 1987 AHR's stock price skyrocketed -- while they were in chapter 11. AHR was purchased by American Home Products in 1989 and AHR's stock quadrupled in value. The affected women received token payments.

Nothing fishy here

[mh1997]

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.

Yet another amazing coincidence. If I could just pay a dollar in taxes every time this happens, somebody sure could get rich.

Re:Nothing fishy here

[Scrameustache]

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.

Yet another amazing coincidence. If I could just pay a dollar in taxes every time this happens, somebody sure could get rich. Looky, it's the aspartame approval process all over again!

August 8, 1983-- Consumer Attorney, Jim Turner of the Community Nutrition Institute and Dr. Woodrow Monte, Arizona State University's Director of Food Science and Nutritional Laboratories, file suit with the FDA objecting to aspartame approval based on unresolved safety issues.

September, 1983-- FDA Commissioner Hayes resigns under a cloud of controversy about his taking unauthorized rides aboard a General Foods jet. (General foods is a major customer of NutraSweet) Burson-Marsteller, Searle's public relation firm (which also represented several of NutraSweet's major users), immediately hires Hayes as senior scientific consultant.

Fall 1983-- The first carbonated beverages containing aspartame are sold for public consumption.

What about pets?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Hasn't it been common practice to inject pets with RFIDs for many years now?
Have these implants been causing cancer too?

Re:What about pets?

[Chmcginn]

Hasn't it been common practice to inject pets with RFIDs for many years now?

Yes.

Have these implants been causing cancer too?

Don't know. If the increase is small enough, and takes upwards of a decade to take affect, it would be difficult to notice outside of trials.

Re:What about pets?

[Mycroft_514]

I had 2 pets injected in 1992. Both died in 2004, niether from cancer. The new dog got injected in 2004. He is fine as of this writing.

Re:What about pets?

[ceoyoyo]

They claim a 1 to 10% increase in cancer, right at the site of the implant. Methinks vets would have noticed that if it was happening in pets.

Re:What about pets?

[BillyBlaze]

Everyone please post whether your pets are okay too. With enough anecdotes, we'll have hard data!

Re:What about pets?

[GPL Apostate]

Of the 11 cats we own, only one is 'chipped.'

And he is deaf!!!

(he was born deaf, though. It's a fairly common condition for genetically all-white cats)

Re:What about pets?

[dmpyron]

Since they're seeing this in rats and mice, which have a life expectancy of only a few years, then I would imagine we'd be seeing in a dog like, say, our Toby, who is 9 1/2 and was chipped when he was 12 weeks old. There are approximately 1500 members on Corgi-L, representing about 6000 dogs. It's been around since 1995. In that time, I know of about 100 cases of skin cancer. Some of those were secondary (metastatic). Now this is only anecdotal.

Most lab rats are bred to easily contract just about anything. Without knowing the exact line they come from, we don't know their initial susceptibility.

They've been chipping cattle since the late 80s or early 90s.

Re:What about pets?

[ceoyoyo]

Cattle are probably not a good representative population since the majority of them die long before their natural lifespan would be up. But pets are well cared for and usually live well past their natural lifespans.

In 6000 chipped dogs the article would be predicting between 60 and 600 would develop "fast growing, lethal" cancers, at the site of the chip.

That would compete pretty well with the natural rate of cancer... surely vets would notice if every other case of canine or feline cancer they saw was a tumor in the same location.

You might be on to something -- a LOT of those rats they studied were probably bred to be susceptible to cancers. Perhaps a nice foreign body increases the chances that the cancer will develop in that location, like a hailstone forming around a dust particle.

Re:What about pets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is that up until recently it was also common practice to vaccinate pets in the neck, so if a cancer arose, was it the chip or the vaccine? Now that most vets are vaccinating in a leg or tail (easier to amputate if vaccine related cancer arises), there won't be that confusion if a neck cancer arises. So time will tell.

Re:What about pets?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cattle get chipped with ear tags most of the time. There are also large tubes that hang around in a stomach. I don't know of cattle getting the underskin type of chips that cats and dogs get.

Competely ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

More junk science.

News flash #1: RFID chips do not emit any RF except when they're being read.

News flash #2: Glass is inert.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

That glass is inert may be the problem. The immune system recognizes the object as "not self" for its lack of specific cell surface molecules. That triggers attack mechanisms that should work to absorb the object (but being inert, the attack doesn't stop). Granulation, scaring, and calluses would form... Such an unhealthy state of tissue could very well cause increased DNA damage that leads to cancer.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[MillionthMonkey]

More junk science.

News flash #1: RFID chips do not emit any RF except when they're being read.

News flash #2: Glass is inert.

So is chrysotile asbestos.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not work in any bio* fields, but
1) Presumably, when implanted in humans, they are being used for work...to authenticate and gain access or something similar where they would be read occassionally. The human skin protects the cells inside a human body from lots of things including, but not limited to, low radioactive isotopes and background radiation. What effect would RF, even if only occasionally read, have from inside the human body? Not saying that it would have any effect, but it should be a question that's answered before wide use.
2) As far as I know, even if an object is inert, when injected inside of the human body, the human body works to reject foreign objects. At the very least, the human body has a tendency to form scar tissue around foreign bodies. Maybe in a small number of cases either the scar tissue, or human body's natural tendency to reject an object (with antibodies etc) or a combination of both results in cancer?
So, 1 and 2 and possibly other unforseen effects could actually cause cancer in a small percentage of cases. Even if it's a small percentage/remote possibility, I think it's worth finding out if there's any merit at all to the claims rather than attributing it to "junk science" before rfid implants go in to wide use in humans.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Man On Pink Corner]

What effect would RF, even if only occasionally read, have from inside the human body?

None. You can either trust me on this, or go after the Nobel Prize that's waiting for anyone who can prove otherwise.

2) As far as I know, even if an object is inert, when injected inside of the human body, the human body works to reject foreign objects. At the very least, the human body has a tendency to form scar tissue around foreign bodies. Maybe in a small number of cases either the scar tissue, or human body's natural tendency to reject an object (with antibodies etc) or a combination of both results in cancer?

Why don't earrings cause cancer, then?

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't earrings cause cancer, then?

As mentioned above, earrings aren't implanted. The initial piercing is allowed to heal over and develop new skin before the ring in put in - that means the earring itself is only in contact with an epidermal surface, fundamentally no different from jewelry worn outside the body. Of course, epidermal contact can still trigger an allergic reaction, but that is just as much a problem for clothing, jewelry, or anything else that you come into external contact with.

Implanted objects, conversely, are placed beneath the skin, and are in direct contact with living tissue. There is no protective layer of dead epidermal tissue between the implanted object and the body.

Earrings are a bad comparison for RFID tags; try comparing them to other subdermal implants instead (such as beads used in body modding). It would not surprise me in the slightest if those other implants carried some increased risk as well, despite being similarly inert.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[MillionthMonkey]

So are clit rings. Do you have a point, or were you just going to equate asbestos particles with glass beads, and leave it at that?

Yes, my point was that you are an idiot and I think I made that point rather well by providing a counterexample to your humorously faulty logic. Although I am glad to hear that your clit ring did not give you cancer. Maybe you can hang an RFID on it!

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Climate Shill]

News flash #2: Glass is inert. So is chrysotile asbestos.

One suspected mechanism for asbestos-induced cancers is that the immune system repeatedly attacks the asbestos fibres (old ones tend to be completely covered in dead immune cells). The same may well be true of the implants, in which case the GP's claim that they're "inert" would be pretty stupid.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[DavidTC]

More to the point, why don't pacemakers and breast implants cause cancer?

Inert things inside the human body that are significantly larger than cells do not cause cancer. They might cause immune responses if the 'inert' material is poorly chosen, but they do not cause cancer, and there's another Nobel price waiting for anyone to demonstrate different.

Of course, particulates like asbestos and soot can cause cancer if they are in the body, like if they end up getting pulled into lung tissue. They interfere at the cellular level. And even larger things moving around in the body are dangerous and can cause aneurysm and whatnot, just ask people with air bubbles in their blood.

But anything big enough to see in the human body made of glass or certain plastics, anything that will not flake off, is not dangerous in and of itself, and so we must conclude that, in some way, either RFID manufacturers are idiots and used the wrong materials or it's the radio aspect that's causing cancer.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[MillionthMonkey]

One suspected mechanism for asbestos-induced cancers is that the immune system repeatedly attacks the asbestos fibres

Another one is chromosomal damage during mitosis when DNA is getting dragged across the mitotic spindle and gets snagged on an asbestos needle. The chromosome arm never makes it into one of the daughter cells, possibly triggering cancer if the chromosome had tumor suppressor genes on it etc. The asbestos doesn't need to chemically react with anything- it just needs to hold its needle shape and stay in one piece.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[semiotec]

The argument is that chemical inertness does not mean a substance is not capable of causing cancer. And asbestos is one of the prime example of this. It is highly chemically resistant, it can be used in a variety of applications and was thought to be some miracle substance, with the added bonus that it causes cancer.

So the inertness of glass does not rule it out from causing cancer.

[PURE SPECULATION]
It is possible that the reason cancer happens in a certain fraction of the test subjects is due to the fact that there is a foreign and non-reactive material inside their body, and the system simply doesn't know what to do with it, and sends some wrong signals which started producing these cancer cells.

In fact, you can say that cancer cells are "biologically inert", i.e. they don't do anything except multiply and don't die out after a number division cycles like normal cells. So it seems like your brain may possibly be inert.
[/END SPECULATION]

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

News flash #1: RFID chips do not emit any RF except when they're being read. Bullshit. They "emit" (reflect) RF energy. All sorts of RF energy. As you probably know we are surrounded by RF energy of some sort all the time so these thing are probably emitting some RF all the time.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[tftp]

1. RFID chips do not emit any RF, however the site of implantation will be exposed to external RF from the reader, and the energy of the field will be converted into heat right inside the implant. So you get two effects: higher RF levels and internal heating where there is no skin to protect the living cells.
2. Glass is not inert; hardly anything is. Glass readily reacts with fluorides, and that is commonly used in labs and glass factories to etch markings onto the glass. Google lists a number of chemical interactions of glass; most admittedly minute, but to a molecular biologist that could be plenty to wreck a cell.
3. Aside from chemical effects, there are physical effects. Cells adjacent to the tag may be periodically damaged (their membranes broken) because the tag is a hard alien object in the mass of soft, flexible cells. The repair of such a damage could become uncontrollable, thus becoming a tumor.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Antique Geekmeister]

Excuse me, but 'chrosomomal damage whem DNA is dragged across the mitotic spindle and gets dragged on an asbestos needle" certainly sounds like a chemical interaction, if not a reaction, to me. One might call it a catalytic one, where the catalyst remains unchanged but significantly alters the outcome of a reaction.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Sparky McGruff]

If you have continual tissue damage (e.g. the foreign body keeps cutting and killing cells, perhaps when muscle or skin cells keep rubbing against it) you'll have continual scarring. That means lots of cells dividing, lots of proliferative factors released, etc. Every time a cell divides, there's a chance that it may get f'd up and lose control.

Re:Competely ridiculous

[NoMaster]

Glass is inert.

"Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that glass is only MOSTLY inert. There's a big difference between mostly inert and all inert. Mostly inert is slightly active."

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

The glass makes it go down easier, but you have to wait 15 minutes for full EM potency.

Captcha: Delivers. How quaint! Anonymous Delivers!

Re:Competely ridiculous

[catprog]

Grab a sheet of paper and drag it across a needle or other sharp point.

You get a tear in the paper.

Would you call that a chemical interaction?

Re:Competely ridiculous

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's an interesting point, but not as obvious as one might think by applying metaphors. Paper is not a molecule. It's made up of molecules: one needn't change a single molecule of the papre to cut it.

And you can't assume that because you did not apply chemicals you did not get a chemical interaction. I see your point, but don't think I agree with it.

Standard Practise

[Boa Constrictor]

It's not surprising that interfering with a living thing in a very clumsy manner causes problems. It is -- and always has been -- about what is a tolerable level of damage to do. I don't know, but I can't think cattle branding is very healthy.

We make compromises on health all the time for convenience and aesthetics -- while most cosmetics are not technically harmful, spraying aluminium on your underarms* or using make-up is not going to give you health benefits. It's easier to take the car to work not cycle or walk (unless you walk down the same road).

*No, it's washing which is the healthy part to not smelling.

The only reason this is even news is that the big C is involved. We "civilised" people make hundreds of choices at the expense of our long term physical or mental health and this is not a novel situation. It will go ahead anyway if the benefits are great and people aren't instantly terrified of the c-word, else it will die out.

I still don't get it

[Lisandro]

What's the point of RFID implants? RFIDs are simple devices which can be fairly easily falsified and/or duplicated. Never mind that the implant itself can be removed and swapped. It's an intrusive security layer which offers no security whatsoever. And on top of that, it introduces privacy concerns... we have ubiquitous cameras all over major cities, why not RFID scanners?

BTW, here's an interesting Wired article on the subject.

Re:I still don't get it

[Bender0x7D1]

Most pets don't have the skill to remove or swap-out their own RFID implants.

Re:I still don't get it

[Lisandro]

Most pets don't have the skill to remove or swap-out their own RFID implants.

Neither they have the skill to remove or swap their nametags.

Re:I still don't get it

[DavidTC]

Really? Pets don't have the skill to remove their nametags? That's certainly an interesting claim.

Re:I still don't get it

[Lisandro]

Oh for gods sake. Yeah, most pets don't have the skill to remove their nametags, atleast when properly placed. Anyway, i was discussing about RFID implants in human beings in the first place.

Re:I still don't get it

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Have you really had a pet? My parents had dogs that manage to squeeze out of their collars on occasion.

Re:I still don't get it

[TibbonZero]

My cat removes any collar or harness I put on her so far. The only thing she kept on for more than a day or two was a necklace that I gave her, which she liked. Seriously.
I got her chipped because I knew that if she were to get outside that she would likely be without tag

Re:I still don't get it

[Gnavpot]

My cat removes [...]
I got her chipped

How fast does she go now? Have the chipping increased her emissions?

Re:I still don't get it

[philo_enyce]

what's not to get? rfid implants won't fall off a collar. of course they can be falsified/duplicated, but that's not the point, the point is that it can help people identify a lost pet. you might as well say, why should you have a drivers license, they can easily be falsified and/or duplicated. if you or a loved one were in an accident, would you prefer to have identification that would let people know who you were or should you not bother to carry any since on average they're not reliable? you may be against any kind of mandatory implantation of rfid into people, but open your mind to the possibility that there are plenty of valid and useful applications for the technology.

philo

Re:I still don't get it

[Lisandro]

you might as well say, why should you have a drivers license, they can easily be falsified and/or duplicated.

With the little detail that your driver license is not lodged into yourself, nor carved with laser in your arm. There are very valid (and useful) applications for RFID, but human tagging is not one of them, IMHO. There's already a shitload of id that one carries with himself all the time - passports, driver licenses... retinas, thumbprints and even their teeth.

Re:I still don't get it

[philo_enyce]

you're not getting my point. there are numerous applications for rfid that are not inclusive of human implantation, a point which you agree with. at no point was i advocating that human implantation, i was simply responding to your all inclusive knee-jerk reaction to rfid with a sample non-human use for the technology that is useful. the drivers license analogy was to counter your argument that rfid isn't useful as a source of identification, and i maintain that it's just as useful/valid as a drivers license. you should be against the abuse of technology, but not the technology itself...

philo

Re:I still don't get it

[Jay L]

Trouble is you have to press all four paws at once to get her into valet mode.

Re:I still don't get it

[GPL Apostate]

We can't collar the only cat we have that goes outside, because she's a tree climber. We can't afford the risk of her getting hung up in a tree, even with one of the 'break away' safety collars. She's not 'chipped' but we have been considering it. This news will cause us to consider more carefully.

Re:I still don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

what's not to get? rfid implants won't fall off a collar. of course they can be falsified/duplicated, but that's not the point, the point is that it can help people identify a lost pet.

I'm aware that the article is about the pros (identification if lost) and cons (cancer?) of a technology for pets.

However, your reply is on-topic but dull, while the GP post is off-topic but interesting (to conspiracy buffs, libertarians, technophobes, etc.)

Therefore, on SlashDot, you're wrong, at least according to the moderators.

HTH

Re:I still don't get it

[RubberDogBone]

This is one of the reasons tagging illegal aliens won't work.

1) They'll know they've been tagged and do n+1 things to get the tags out.

2) Back-alley "doctors" will happily set up shop and do removals or even cross-plants, for a price. A whole new illegal industry will be born.

If the point of doing implants is to track people, but you can't trust the tracking, then the whole idea falls apart and it's no better than doing nothing.

Re:I still don't get it

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of the reasons tagging illegal aliens won't work.

Has anybody ever claimed that it would work? If you can get close enough to tag them then you can get close enough to deport them. This simply makes no sense.

Big ol Thanx

[synonymous]

Just wanted to drop a quick line to those testing these devices themselves.. A big heartfelt thank you for risking your life testing these awkward little gizmos. Guess I won't be rushing on out to the local Radio Shack to inflict myself, or pressuring my buddies into the latest fad of RFID chip. Sorry to hear about the health problems. Best wishes.

More junk science for your junk science

[unity100]

ANY physical contact that somehow disturbs a tissue causes cancer in the long run. Thats why many inert particles cause cancer when continuously taken in for over long periods of time.

Try - just take a small needle and continue to keep poking it in the same spot in your hand continuously for a year.

Am I the only one who is relieved by this....

[dashslotter]

...maybe I'll never have to get one now. Then again, they'll come up with something more invasive that doesn't cause cancer soon enough.

Well so now we know

[future assassin]

that the human races downfall will be technology. Whether it'll be some mass industrial accident releasing newly formed life forms that were support to create oil but they seem to all of a sudden prefer human flesh to us being a bunch of walking cancers as we radiate our bodies in the name of communication.

one thing remains clear...

[pjr.cc]

We wont know if its real or not until someone with an RFID ends up with cancer and wins millions (billions?) of dollars from verichip.

Only a judge can decide on such important scientific matters (can you taste the sarcasm?)

Normal activity for the body

[transporter_ii]

I have studied cancer for quite some time and I do know that *sometimes* a tumor is the body trying to put a barrier around something it doesn't know what to do with. In fact, tumors, unless they are doing damage to an important organ, or grow very large, usually won't kill you. It is only when they start to metastasize that you run into trouble pretty quick.

In fact, I have talked to several people that knew people that had tumors for many, many years and never had any trouble, but after their doctors talked them into removing the tumors and doing radiation/chemo treatment, they were dead within a year. Things that make you go hmmmmm.

So a tumor around a foreign body like that doesn't shock me too much.

Re:Normal activity for the body

[DrEldarion]

How dare you try to bring reason to our alarmist discussion?!

Re:Normal activity for the body

[GrievousMistake]

Yes, benevolent tumors exist. The summary specifies 'malignant, fast-growing, lethal cancers', though, which sounds pretty bad.
I can't find that exact quote in the article itself, nor anything specifically mentioning fast-growing and lethal, but they're pretty clear on the tumors in question being cancerous and malignant.

Re:Normal activity for the body

[MillionthMonkey]

Well this guy has a good point. Companies should prepackage the RFID devices inside tumors at the factory so we don't have to grow our own. At the very least they should try to staple them into existing tumors.

Why can't these stupid scientists just come up with a protein that emits or absorbs specific RF frequencies based on regions of amino acids generated from a nonconserved segment of coding DNA which acts as a barcode? That would be so much easier.

Re:Normal activity for the body

[morgan_greywolf]

Left untreated, most forms of cancer will eventually metastasize, though. My maternal grandfather died of cancer that he never had treated. Officially, the cause of death was 'brain cancer', but they don't know where it started since it had metastasized and gone to the lymph nodes. They're guessing that he had cancer for many, many years before it metastacized, though.

Re:Normal activity for the body

[Pigeon451]

Good point. But the study mentions the tumours are fast growing, malignant and lethal. Perhaps in this study, the animals already had cancer and it chose to metastasize around the implant. Hmmmm, that really has lots of potential applications (early detection, removal, etc), unfortunately, I doubt that's the case!

Re:Normal activity for the body

[HugeFatty]

Dude, go easy on him. We can still have alarmist discussion. I mean, look at what he said

...but after their doctors talked them into removing the tumors and doing radiation/chemo treatment, they were dead within a year.

See? The doctors are in on it! Doctors give you cancer!

Re:Normal activity for the body

[messner_007]

"I have studied cancer for quite some time " Have you studied medicine ?

Re:Normal activity for the body

[4D6963]

In fact, I have talked to several people that knew people that had tumors for many, many years and never had any trouble, but after their doctors talked them into removing the tumors and doing radiation/chemo treatment, they were dead within a year.

You forgot your lessons.

Rule #1 : Correlation does not imply causation
Rule #2 : The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'

Re:So what's the cause?

[NeverVotedBush]

RFID does not emit radio signals. It absorbs them selectively and the RFID scnner/transmitter senses the change to the emitted field to know what the RFID is saying. But the RFID tag (passive tags) just basically sit there and alternately go high impedance or short out their antennas to convey information. They get their power from the RF signal itself.

I guess it Just goes to show you

[bl8n8r]

When all your friends jump off a cliff, and you follow, you are just as phucked as they are.

Re:I guess it Just goes to show you

[dzCepheus]

Unless you're really popular - then there'll be enough bodies to cushion the fall.

I find it interesting though

[TheLink]

In which case why aren't people with earrings getting lots of cancers from them? How about those people who "mod" themselves (studs etc) but not with glass RFIDs?

If it somehow increases the risk of cancer (even minus the RF stuff) more than the usual studs etc then I find that very interesting. Maybe it's the shape or surface of the glass? Could be something useful to learn about cancer from this.

Re:I find it interesting though

[unity100]

In which case why aren't people with earrings getting lots of cancers from them? How about those people who "mod" themselves (studs etc) but not with glass RFIDs?

because earrings are outside the skin, the initial wound is allowed to be healed, and the earring touches with the exterior of the skin without inducing any wound.

everything needs to be neutral. if any material within it has surfaces that disturbs the tissue where its implanted (and it is a high possibility) or, any material within it has properties that induces any kind of other continuous effects on the nearby tissue it may be a cause. granted, there is going to be a noticeable higher concentration of emissions around it - if passive, it will reflect a certain wavelength, if its active, itll emit a certain wavelength. therefore the vicinity will get affected.

Re:I find it interesting though

[Clueless Moron]

What about surgical steel implants? There are probably millions of people on Earth walking around with those.

Re:I find it interesting though

[unity100]

apparently they are designed not to disturb their immediate area / also they are not reflective to any electromagnetism or emitting any electromagnetism.

Re:I find it interesting though

[Anonymous Coward]

What about bullets or broken knife tips?

Re:I find it interesting though

[Antique Geekmeister]

Of course they reflect EM! Go take a look at X-rays of such implants. The implants are steel, platinum, and other alloying materials: you can't magically make them not interact with EM by waving a wand and "designing" them not to do so. You can avoid making them para-magnetic like a lot of iron materials. You can even avoid them causing big problems in MRI chambers by not having loops in them that would couple to the MRI and carry current in those loops, causing fascinating and dangerous magnetic interactions.

Please actually look these sorts of things up, or become familiar somewhat with them, before inventing conclusions like "they are not reflective to EMI" because you haven't noticed any reports of such damage.

Re:I find it interesting though

[unity100]

we all know that metals are responsive/interactive to electromagnetism, therefore background radiation, any type of radiowaves and so on.

however, a rfid chip is supposed to behave in a very particular way - it needs to transmit a prefedined small set of info (number, name, anything you coded into it) precisely to a distant receptive device.

therefore, the reflection - i use reflection, because i do not think that noone would be able to implant a device that actually emits radio waves to someone - this device needs to do is in a narrow, predefined spectrum and very precise. therefore it will reflect whatever radiowave/em radiation it receives in that band in the same way. a random metal implant may break, absorb, reflect at the same time according to its structure and positioning. this device aint so.

therefore the response to whatever effect its put in is always the same way - that will increase exposure in the immediate surroundings of it in boty. ill make a blunt, uninformed (of the workings of this device) guess here ; if we say that the incoming wave's and outgoing wave's signals overlap, you have increased magnitude for waves in the immediate vicinity of the rfid chip. that means more power for the wave in that area.

Re:I find it interesting though

[bogd]

Of course they reflect EM! Go take a look at X-rays of such implants.

Actually, the effect on the X-ray image is due to the implant absorbing the photons, not reflecting them.

Re:I find it interesting though

[Antique Geekmeister]

That is actually a good point. Thank you for the corerction.

Re:I find it interesting though

[orclevegam]

however, a rfid chip is supposed to behave in a very particular way - it needs to transmit a prefedined small set of info (number, name, anything you coded into it) precisely to a distant receptive device.

You're post is mostly correct, although there are a couple points that several people have already made in other posts here that relate to your statements. First, you state a "distant receptive device". Most RFID tags are designed to function over relatively limited ranges. Yes, using special antennas and filtering software to try and clean up background noise it's possible to read RFID in some cases from as far as a few meters, practically speaking in day to day operation most of these devices are designed to be read from at most a few inches. Secondly, it doesn't strictly speaking reflect the RF radiation. It absorbs the RF to power the chip, and then changes it's resistance to communicate information. The resistance change is picked up by the transmitter and converted back into information. This is similar to the way that metal detectors work, only in a more selective fashion. In short, these are only reflect RF about as much as any piece of metal or circuitry would. You'd experience just as much radiation from having one of these as you would a pacemaker, with the understanding that you would be more inclined to expose yourself due to the need to scan the RFID chip at a reader periodically. Do I think embedded RFID is a good idea? No, not really, but I don't think it posses a greater risk of cancer either. A proper study needs to be done in order to draw any more conclusions, as it is these papers are an interesting anecdote, but care no particular significance from a scientific standpoint.

Hmmm...

[Anonymous Coward]

If an RFID chip is implanted, and never read, does it still cause cancer? :P

The pleasures of early adoption

[gweihir]

Now one cancer free with every 10th RFID implant!

Seriously, early adopters often get screwed, but it is their own fault. Remember all that X-Ray mania and how careful you have to be with X-Rays now?

Well, sorry Charlie...

[dontspitconfetti]

but, we implanted one of these RFID chips while you were passed out last night. Tough luck, dude! But, seriously, couldn't there be a percentage of people that don't remember or don't even know they have these chips? That would be a scary thought...

Re:So what's the cause?

[cpghost]

RFID chips do emit radio signals when sending data back to the transmitter. A receive-only RFID is kinda pointless...

On the bright side...

[ushering05401]

Researchers now have a new lead in the fight against cancer. If the stats prove consistent then we may be able to find a link between certain types of foreign molecules in the body and cancer risk.

Your comment kinda reminds me of the asbestos revelations... there was a time when asbestos was put into cigarette filters as an advertised health feature.

Regards.

No control group? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA: "none of the studies had a control group of animals that did not get chips"

I kid you not. No control group? How the hell did that kind of shoddy study even get funding? Did these people skip the day in second grade where they covered the Scientific Method? You're not even doing a study if you have no control group, you're just poking animals and writing about it.

Re:No control group? WTF?

[ZombieWomble]

Checking over the descriptions of the papers, it looks like they were trialling chips in large numbers of mice for other reasons, and apparently decided to knock out an extra paper with the "omg cancer!" angle to get some extra citations and some more funding in the future. Given the vast variation in results and lack of controls, these studies seem fairly unremarkable. There may be something there, but these studies really don't show anything meaningful.

Re:No control group? WTF?

[VTMarik]

Don't forget that a strong correlation has been shown between any lab test and mice/rats developing cancer.

Also no talk about...

[The Monster]

So "up to 1% to 10% of cases" (whatever the hell that means) got cancer. Did they mention what percentage of mice that weren't implanted with RFID tags got cancer? It really matters what the baseline is, you know.

Re:Also no talk about...

[ZombieWomble]

There is no talk about it, because it seems none of the studies cited in the article actually set out to determine the increase in cancer due to RFID devices, but rather tagged it on, perhaps to grab a few extra citations. Since they were designed as trials of other factors, there was no attempt to introduce a no-RFID control group. From TFA:

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.

Re:Also no talk about...

[owlstead]

Does it matter that there was no control group? It seems that the cancer was *local* to the RFID chip. The chance of a cancer developing in the same spot under the skin seems astronomically low. Not a common place for a cancer to develop, I suppose.

Re:Also no talk about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it matters. Without a properly designed experiment you are basically falling back on superstition and supposition. You are right that the location of the cancers is extremely odd but we simply don't know the mechanism and this experiment doesn't tell us. It's silly to speculate until somebody does a properly designed study and shows that not only are these cancers oddly localized but they are also correlated with the presence of the chip.

Re:Also no talk about...

[fractoid]

More importantly, did they mention what percentage of mice that weren't implanted with RFID tags but were still scanned with an RFID scanner as frequently got cancer? And anyway, research causes cancer in mice.

Re:Also no talk about...

[fractoid]

Oh ye gods... so basically this whole thing is !science. Why did they even bother? Oh, I know, because it's easier to make sensationalist statements when you deliberately avoid disproving them.

Serious question

[Scrameustache]

RFID chips don't emit electromagnetic radiation, they only (really) reflect it. What's more, the energy levels are far lower than any number of other day-to-day activities, in the same frequency ranges as other signals all around us, and RFID chips are only scanned for a couple seconds at a time, and only on occasion. If they reflect radiation in the same frequency ranges as other signals all around us, don't they reflect that energy all the time, not just on occasions when they are purposefully scanned?

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure but here's my guess..

Energy around is spread across wide areas of spectrum, not enough at the specific frequency to "power" the rfid. You can make white light with three peaks in the red/green/blue wavelengths... or you can make white light by spreading the power over the whole visible spectrum.

Re:Serious question

[poopdeville]

From a physical point of view, it doesn't matter. The average energy flux through a given point is going to be the same whether the implant is there or not. (First order approximation, depends on the convexity of the reflector, and that energy comes from random (if limited) directions).

Re:Serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the RFID implementation, but...with passive RFID, the electromagnetic radiation actually *powers* the tag, with just enough juice to send a signal back to the scanner. So, basically, without being scanned... it has no way to be transmit anything.

My bet is they did something dumb like use a formaldehyde container or something.

Re:Serious question

[Auntie Virus]

You can make white light with three peaks in the red/green/blue wavelengths... or you can make white light by spreading the power over the whole visible spectrum
You mean, Spock need not be blind?

Re:Serious question

[RepCentral]

OK, here's how it works. (Worked with all types of passive RFID in the past)

First, the tags in question are passive. No battery, so they require the reader to
supply the tag with the energy.

The implantable chips work in or near the LF (low frequency) 125-134KHz band.
Due to this frequency, the tags work strictly on near field magnetic waves.
The tags contain a IC chip with 40 to 50 feet of hair-thin copper strand wound around
a core. This inductive coil converts oscillating magnetic fields into a voltage for the
chip. So the chip gets its energy and commands from the reader as one transmission.

A command, such as "tag id request", has a response section at the end of the command where the
reader just emits a simple energy-transferring carrier wave while listening to its drive
circuits. The chip communicates by switching a resistive load on and off.
These load changes are felt as current or voltage changes in the reader's driving circuits.
Changes in the reader's driver circuit are decoded by another circuit into tag response data.
The reader and tag therefore form a single transformer circuit similar to AC power transformers.

13.56Mhz HF RFID uses the same principle as LF RFID but UHF RFID (800MHz and higher) does not.
Neither HF or UHF RFID technologies have been demonstrated to be suitable for implantation
applications.

Re:Serious question

[NeverVotedBush]

I tried in another post to convey the same thing. Passive RFID tags do not really emit anything. All they do is modulate their impedance to the RF signal which the scanning circuit sees as changes in impedance to its own antenna.

It's not unlike the drag on a generator/alternator when you connect or disconnect a load across it.

The transmitter scanning circuit supplies the power the RFID tag needs to operate in the RF field emitted by the scanner. While the RFID tag is powered up by the RF field, the transmitter encodes whatever commands it needs to send and the RFID tag "listens".

Once the command is received, the RFID tag, still being powered by the scanner's RF field, modulates the field by shorting or not shorting out its antenna.

Circuitry in the transmitter converts these impedance changes into logic ones and zeros which are then interpreted/decoded to read out whatever was encoded by the RFID tag.

The (passive) RFID tag really doesn't emit anything. Any power absorbed is simply converted to heat. The only RF that tissues are exposed to is that of the scanning transmitter. There may be some really minor RF re-emitted by the RFID circuitry but that is no different than what your computer might emit - just high frequency noise that is going to be far weaker than the RF imposed by the RFID tag scanner.

So, once again - passive RFID tags do not transmit.

Re:Serious question

[X0563511]

No, it only appears to us as white light, as we detect those specific wavelengths as components of white. An animal with four cones in their retina would see the difference.

Re:Serious question

[The -e**(i*pi)]

So if it only emits heat, will the government make us want RFID tags that happen to respond to certain frequencies so they can immobilize us with radio waves heating up the tags (in some sensitive part of our bodies) as a sort of riot control, and DCMA the frequency so anyone that figures out the frequency or tries to remove the chips (implanted copyrighted chips with a proprietary anti-removal protection) gets sent to jail anyways, but it wil be copyrighted by a private company (the one making the chips for whatever normal use) so the public domain-ness of the governments information doesn't apply?

Re:Serious question

[NeverVotedBush]

If you want to see what RFID tags can do when hit with enough RF energy...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/180304_RFID_article.ht ml

Re:Serious question

[pilgrim23]

In the same way a string tuned to a harmonic of one string on a musical instrement will vibrate when another strng a octave away is plucked the RFID would "vibrate" when its "harmonic is induced, that is when any source of a frequency that is a harmonic of it is generated. This hapens on purpose when the RFID is scanned and can occur other times when that frequency is generated by a radio, cell phone, micorwave, cosmic rays, or a host of other sources. We know what happens when certain frequencies are induced (in sound, scrape a broken chalk on a chalk board to experience one such), In radio we know that a a intermediate frequency can be made to vibrate from a weak source then be amplified (induced information on the IF on a super hetrodyne circuit for example) and we also know that radio frequencies can be generated used, impressed with information, and used in other ways (microwave oven for example induction near powerlines for another). Now, given this, and given what we KNOW can be a problem and also what we know WE DO NOT KNOW, why on EARTH would anyone want one of these awful things inside their bodies?

Re:Serious question

[dabraun]

So, once again - passive RFID tags do not transmit.

Every electomagnetic reciever is also inherently a transmitter. This is the reason (excuse) why you can't use a radio on an airplane.

Re:Serious question

[Scrameustache]

why on EARTH would anyone want one of these awful things inside their bodies? So they can go on TV and pretend to be a cyborg... and manage to get people to actually believe they're the FIRST cyborg. As if there hadn't been people walking around with pacemakers, cochlear implants or wires sticking out of the vision/motor control region of their brains for decades! ...I hope he gets cancer ;(

Re:Serious question

[The -e**(i*pi)]

I just have to try that!!! hey, can I borrow $20.00

Re:Serious question

[evilviper]

If they reflect radiation in the same frequency ranges as other signals all around us, don't they reflect that energy all the time, not just on occasions when they are purposefully scanned?

RFID chips will have at least some effect on the ambient electro-magnetic fields in the frequencies it responds to, yes. Though, the same could be said about a drop of water/sweat on your skin, the watch on your wrist, etc. etc. Everything responds to some frequency.

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at with your question, but in any case, because of distance, the power level is such that nobody is going to have a chance to read your RFID tag without being on top of you (supplying a ridiculously strong field, and being reasonably close, might work). And the fact that the RFID chip is there is really only going to have minimal effect on any electromagnetic radiation that is already going through your body.

Re:Serious question

[KDR_11k]

They already have heat rays that work without chips and attack a much larger surface than a heated implant would.

Besides, we're talking about microelectronics here, if you put enough power through them to heat your body to a painful degree the chip itself would most likely burn out.

Re:Serious question

[dnoyeb]

Wow that is a really dumb story. Money already contains trackable serial numbers. If the government wasted money buying super small RFID tags, and also upgrading its printing technology just to put tags in money that is already individually marked, it would be a huge scandal. Not a privacy one since money is already completely trackable. But because of the huge waste of money.

Re:Serious question

[Katchu]

yes. they reflect all rf energy all the time; how would it know to do otherwise?

Where's the 'haha' tag?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, anyone who participates in this deserves what they get.

Lack of Science.

[edibobb]

"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." The AP (and the Slashdot post) report this as if it were a fact that RFID emissions cause cancer. You cannot intelligently draw that conclusion from these studies, since there was no control group with inert RFIDs implanted. This is yet another inaccurate portrayal of an inconclusive, pseudo-scientific paper as fact. When I am emporer, I will require all journalists to take a remedial science course. "studies have shown..." == "here comes a crock..."

Re:Lack of Science.

[JoelKatz]

It's not unusual to perform a study with no control group when you are looking for something rare and don't expect to find it. It's a lot cheaper and easier, and nine times out of ten provides equally good results. However, this is that one time in ten when it doesn't.

This will have to be followed up with larger studies with control groups and double-blind protocols. The reaction to this study should be to demand more and better studies.

Re:Lack of Science.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that but they need have a group that gets the same glass bubbles but without the RFID stuff inside of it.

As mentioned in another thread, asbestos is "inert" like glass also but look at the problems it causes when "implanted" in the body (lungs).

Re:Lack of Science.

[Bluskale]

This doesn't make the lack of a control group any better. How are you supposed to determine if your results are "good results" if you can't even distinguish between the effects of your treatment and the effects of uncontrolled experimental conditions. Say you're testing to see if substance X causes cancer in mice. Maybe all the mice you used just happened to be significantly more or less susceptible to cancer, for instance, due to a faulty batch of feed used during the experiment. If you just compare your results to the expected baseline, rather than an actual control, you have no way of knowing if the results you recieved were due to the feed or due to the substance X. No controls and the experiment is basically junk~

Re:Lack of Science.

[JoelKatz]

"Say you're testing to see if substance X causes cancer in mice. Maybe all the mice you used just happened to be significantly more or less susceptible to cancer, for instance, due to a faulty batch of feed used during the experiment. If you just compare your results to the expected baseline, rather than an actual control, you have no way of knowing if the results you recieved were due to the feed or due to the substance X."

Right, but this is much cheaper, simpler, and just as good the 98% of the time when you don't find any more cancers than expected. This allows you to rule out 10 times as many possible causes of cancer than using a control group each time.

Seems like a planted story to me..

[Jerry]

In the early 1980s RG Serle was in trouble. Their animal studies showed that Aspartame caused brain cancer. A Researcher for the company blew the whistle and Congress was investigating. RG Serle brought in a problem solver who began by throwing having the rats with brain cancers removed from the studies. The whistle blower, for some reason, reversed his statements. The acting head of the FDA approved Aspartame for human consumption, then resigned. A few weeks later he was announced as the head of the legal department of the new Nutrasweet corporation. His two assistants were the lawyers Congress assigned to investigate the RG Serle problem.

Shortly after that stories linking Saccharine with cancer flooded the media while the Nutrasweet corp flooded the media with stories about Nutrasweet and its safety. Within months the use of Saccharine plummeted to single digit figures and Nutrasweet took over the artificial sweetener market.

For his leadership RG Serle gave Donald Rumsfeldt a $6M retiring bonus.

I am waiting to hear of a competitive RFID chip entering the market. One that is "cancer free". Then I'll know who planted this story.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[PMBjornerud]

Aspartame is on my do-not-ingest list. Along with the other artificial sweeteners.

Call me crazy, but when I don't want sugar... I drink and eat things that aren't sweet. Mindboggling, I know...

I'll pass on the RFID for a while, too. I like my stuff "Tested on Humans" (TM), and there seem to be plenty of other people out there happily being my my guinea pigs.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Antique Geekmeister]

You've been reading Betty Martini, haven't you? Reading Betty's work is like reading Noam Chomsky's politics: the level of delusion is so consistent that people take it seriously, and start citing other people as cites when you can trace the cite back to the same deluded source.

For evidence of the delusional nature of Betty's claims, check out http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp .

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[davinc]

The Betty claim you posted is wrong because it claims there is PROOF. That does not mean inclusively the opposite is true either, and that sweeteners are safe. There is a lot of politicing involved in getting unnatural foods to market and I wouldn't be so quick to call them safe when the stakes are so high. I have several friends who stopped eating aspertame because they swore they felt reactions to it. There is a lot of money in defending sweeteners legal status, and very little in contesting them.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Jerry]

IF by "you" you are refering to me, then the answer is no. I've never heard of her.

My knowledge is personal. I am one of at least 10% of the population with a sensitivity to Aspartame.

Within 30 minutes after drinking a can of soda sweetened with Nutrasweet I get a severe headache, the skin on my face and upper body turns beet red and gets oily because of excessive sebaceous gland activity. Several people have tested this response (some deliberately, some by accident) by giving me candy sweetened with Nutrasweet.

I discovered the link between these symptoms and Aspartame by accident. I had my own computer consulting business between 1980 and 1997. In 1987 I was asked by an old college acquaintances who had been hired as academic dean at a small private college in the central part of this state to come and teach science and math. I agreed as long as I could continue with my consulting business on the side. Later in that year the college pres heard about my consulting after I consulted with the city that the college was in and asked me to computerize the college. I agreed but the load rose to about 70-80 hours per week. In addition commuted 55 miles a day from my home. To avoid getting sleepy during classes and programming sessions I began drinking Dr Pepper. To avoid gaining weight due to the sugar content in a can of Dr. Pepper I decided to drink diet Dr. Pepper. Even though I hold a Master's Degree in Biochemistry, with major hours in Chemistry, Physics, Math and Biology (I was a "professional student" :-), I never gave artificial sweeteners a second thought. As I continued teaching and writing registration, recruiting, accounting, grading and payroll packages for the college, and installing and setting up hardware, networking, etc., In 1989 I was voted runner up Teacher of the Year by the student body. I gradually increased the quantity of diet Dr. Pepper I was drinking in order to combat the fatigue and sleepiness. Within three years I was consuming about 6-8 liters per day. I don't remember exactly when the headaches began but by 1990 they were constant, as was the red and oily skin. I never related it to the diet soda. I also noticed other problems, which I associated with the work load and pressure - lose of memory and depression. By 1992 I finished the computer work, was an emotional wreak, and totally exhausted. I had trouble remembering elements in the Periodic Table, the names of students in my classes, and even the names of my two children! One other problem gradually appeared. Even though I was drinking diet soda to avoid putting on sugar weight, I began experiencing a craze for popcorn and other carbohydrates. By 1992 my weight had ballooned from 215 lbs to 265 lbs.

I resigned from the college and decided to take six months off. I also started drinking tea instead of diet sodas. Within a few weeks the headaches vanished, the red and oily skin disappeared and my mood improved considerable. My memory, however, never came back to its former level, which was semi-photographic. One day about three months later my wife came home from shopping with a carton of diet Dr Pepper because she thought I'd like a can once in a while. I drank a can and within 30 minutes the symptoms I had been having for several years reappeared. Within 24 hours they were gone. A few days later I tried another can and the symptoms appeared again. I set up double blind tests with regular and diet sodas and established to my satisfaction that it was indeed the diet sodas causing the problems. Since then I have avoided anything with Aspartame in it and the symptoms have never reappeared.

In 1992, IIRC, I was on Compuserve and began searching the web to find out Aspartame. The articles and research I found then settled the issue in my mind. I met on line a lady by the name of Mary Stoddard, IIRC, who had experienced problems similar to mine was was running a website on Compuserve where she posted lots of stories like mine of people who had problems with

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Raenex]

Within three years I was consuming about 6-8 liters per day. Umm. Ok. Err, right. So. Ok ok ok. All right, I appreciate that in huge quantities that Aspartame may cause problems, but in huge quantities nearly anything may cause problems. I'd have to say you brought this on yourself, and most people shouldn't be concerned about moderate consumption.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[kamapuaa]

A noble sentiment, I guess, but artificial sweeteners are better for your health than sugar. Sugar makes you a fat fuck, rots your teeth, and fucks up your metabolism. These ill effects are widely known, but somehow glossed over. Meanwhile, saccharine has been extensively tested, but never associated to any ill effect.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Antique Geekmeister]

Well, in logical terms, you have a point. But I've got friends who diet, and whom I've cooked for occasionally, and have friends who get caught up in these "it's evil, don't use it!" fads. The result is that I've done some looking, and a huge amount of the Aspartame conspiracy claims can be traced directly and indirectly back to Betty, who flat out lies.

There is big money in sweeteners, and having specific ones banned: the result is very good for the manufacturers of the *other* sweeteners. Ban cyclamates, and saccharin comes into more use, or aspartame becomes popular. Ban aspartame, and sucralose will take up a lot of the same market. And there's real money in diet foods.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Antique Geekmeister]

Considering that the Rumsfeld claims seem to trace straight back to Betty, I suspect you've been reading her material and not even been aware of it.

But 8 liters of diet Dr. Pepper a day? You are aware that Dr. Pepper has one of the highest concentrations of caffeine of any soda, right? What did you *think* you were doing to your physiology with that much caffeine? The aspartame is probably the least of your worries from that time of your life!

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[messner_007]

"but artificial sweeteners are better for your health than sugar" ... This is only partially true. Sugar makes you sick if you are a fat and lasy chick/nerd ... If you run every day, get laid regulary, and have something nice to do in your life, then you can eat sugar and all other natural things (not in big exces) and you won't get sick.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[messner_007]

Your life story is very interesting. Can you please give me some information about you. Did you live with your father and can you breafly explain your relation with him? Do you have any brothers and sisters ?

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[PMBjornerud]

As I said, there seem to be plenty of other people out there happily being my my guinea pigs. :) Thanks! You enjoy that saccharine, I'll stick to sugar.

In the worst case, I'll start to put on weight in the future. So I'll drink more mineral water and less sugar. Big deal. What are the worst case scenarios for artificial sweeteners if that "extensive testing" missed something? If it turns out to be cancer, good luck reversing that by switching to mineral water.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mineral Water" won't take away the fucking calories. That shit is like .05% minerals. TWhat are you even talking about? Why are you so suspicious of science and so into meaningless buzz-words? The way to not become a fat fuck is to consume less calories than you expend, and sugar is a major source of calories for many fat fucks.

- kamapuaa

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Anonymous Coward]

I can buy into a lot of what this guy is saying... I have also researched aspartame over the years. I've seen plenty of first-hand evidence that, in a small percentage of the population, it can have really bad effects!

Which is why I always avoided anything with aspartame in it. (Well, that and it tastes like shit.) (Don't ask how I know what shit tastes like...)

But some years back, I had the exact same neurological symptoms. Literally, I couldn't add 2 + 2 together. I couldn't follow a plotline on TV. American TV. Total neurological meltdown.

Long story short: It was the caffeine. I was drinking 3 liters of sugar-loaded coke/pepsi a day. That's a lot of caffeine. And I reached the point where I could no longer function without a continuous caffeine IV.

Now this guy was drinking what? 6-8 liters a day? The caffeine alone could clearly cause neurological issues...

Normal people will drink 2-4 liters a day, with 2-3 being typical. 6-8 is enough that, if he was just drinking water, we'd be concerned about water poisoning (aka hyperhydration).

I can't imagine what that much Dr. Pepper must have been doing to his electrolyte balances... (The osmotic pressures, as fluids move from low concentrations to high. It's what causes hyperhydration fatalities.)

Plus the way caffeine tends to act as a mild diuretic isn't going to help his hydration level. (Dehydration alone can cause neurological issues in and of itself.)

Not to mention the hell this must have been wrecking on his gastrointestinal flora ecosystem. (We are outnumbered about 10-1 by other organisms living in, on, or about us. Such creatures are usually from a much earlier evolutionary branch, and are much much smaller than our own cells. But they do outnumber us about 10-1.)

If you don't take care of your colony, it won't be there to take care of you. Mucking up nutrient absorption causes all sorts of interesting problems, some of which are neurological.

There's a reason eating well and exercising -- even just a half mile walk a day to and from the bus stop -- are so very important!

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Faux_Pseudo]

There's a reason eating well and exercising -- even just a half mile
walk a day to and from the bus stop -- are so very important!

I can testify to that. I stoped my half mile walk to bus each day and
gained 5 pounds in 2 months. So I cut back 150-200 calories a day and
started doing pushups. Acciendly ended up under goal weight again and
am having a pain of a time trying to get back up to goal. We can't
win them all.

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[PMBjornerud]

"Mineral Water" won't take away the fucking calories. That shit is like .05% minerals Which is excellent, 100% Magnesium would have been worse on the teeth than pure sugar! ;)

Substitute for tap water if you don't like "buzzwords" and got a nice watersource locally. Even a bad tap water might be better than pumping your body with artificial sweeteners. Why should I drink fake sweet things when I can drink water?

I'll rather drink unsweet water, thank you, now go along and continue the guinea-pigging.

And why do you keep going on about "fat fucks"? You sound like you got some issues...

Re:Seems like a planted story to me..

[Jerry]

Long story short: It was the caffeine. I was drinking 3 liters of sugar-loaded coke/pepsi a day. That's a lot of caffeine. And I reached the point where I could no longer function without a continuous caffeine IV.

I could appreciate that conclusion except it flies in the face of the facts.

After I resigned and took time off I switched to Tea as the source of my caffeine, and drank an average of about 3-4 cups per day. I was drinking Tea as the symptoms as the systems subsided and went away.

I drank only ONE can of diet Dr. Pepper and it brought the symptoms back within 30 minutes. I can and have repeated that "test" to see if the sensitivity remains. After 15 years it sill does.

Currently I drink about 4-5 cups of Green Tea each day and never experience the symptoms.

Concerning the claim that Rumsfeld was never at R.G.Serle I offer these URLs, which says otherwise:
http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript. aspx?transcriptid=3427
and this one which states he was the HEAD of the company... ...
He even took out a few years from 1977 to 1985 to make a living, and a very good living I might add, as the very successful head of G.D. Serle & Company
http://www.cfr.org/publication/6001/meeting_with_s ecretary_of_defense_donald_h_rumsfeld.html
and the 1985 Congressional Record: https://web.lexis-nexis.com/congcomp

Searle was being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice for attempting to defraud the FDA into approving artificial aspartame as a safe artificial sweetener when lab tests proved it was a neurotoxic, carcinogenic drug. He was able to pull political strings to get Searle out of legal trouble and influenced President Reagan's appointment of Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner to politically approve the sale of aspartame in 1981--over the objections of FDA scientists, independent researchers and consumer safety advocates. Monsanto bought Searle for $2.7 billion in 1985, and the Searle family walked away with about $1 billion. Rumsfeld's take was about $12 million.

OR
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0612/15/sit room.01.html
When he was CEO of a company, he took a company over, G.D. Serle, a pharmaceutical company, that was -- it was dying. And he fired people, he reorganized it, he turned it around, he brought synergies in ...

Now we know what the "synergies" were... his own people planted at the FDA to push approval of Aspartame through.

Several soft drink companies and Nutrasweet were taken to court in April of 2004 but I haven't heard how the case is going.

Then, there is this little bit of info about bird flu and Rumsfeld
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0312-06.ht m

Malignant vs non-malignant (benign)

[aepervius]

Firstly there are all sort of tumor, but as far as this only means "abnormal tissue growth". The one which metastases and invade all tissue are malignant and left untreated as far as I can tell, always kill you, either by destroying utterly the organ they originate from or by metastasis. What you are thinking of is some sort of benign tumor which surround a foreign body. I dunno how often it happens, but usually what surround a foreign body is scar tissue, or even necrotic tissue, not tumoral tissue (biologist correct me). Tumoral tissue in that specific would happens only when the signal triggering the scar growth run awry or the stop signal is not detected sufficiently.

Now about tumor which removed, and suddenly become mortal (your second part). I call bullshit on that one. Some benign tumor might turn malignant with timem on their own, but not due to medicinal intervention as you seem to pretend. I can't also imagine a tumor left for many years and suddenly the doctor says "oh we need to take that out now, radio therapy and chemio !". I would say it is rather that the doctor detected that the tumor did go from benign to malignant and my guess is that since they knew he/she had a tumor for years most probably it is a skin tumor easy to detect and can be deadly if change are not detected quick enough (it happens. I had a naevus (big sort of mole 4 cm wide) which changed of texture when I was 13. Out of concern the oncologue ordered immediate chirurgy and a biopsy. From what I gathered it can happens that such a big mole with time turn malignant. Turn out that had to take a LOT of my left muscle out over 13 cm and more than 2 cm deep, but biopsy was negative. Relief ensured).

Bottom line : you are mixing up cause and effect. It was not the therapy which was caused your friend tumor to grow malignant, it was the tumor growing malignant which caused your friend go get a therapy which failed and he died.

PS: I say friend above, but it seems after rereading your post it was only an acquaintance , and thus the quality of the info your present is even doubly doubtful.

Radio shack isn't that bad

[symbolset]

Guess I won't be rushing on out to the local Radio Shack to inflict myself,

Name address and phone number is all they ask from me when I buy stuff there, and they don't insist if I'm paying cash. They haven't demanded I let them implant a RFID chip yet.

Re:Radio shack isn't that bad

[GPL Apostate]

All the hassles that I experience at the Radio Shack are before I make the purchase. Today I walked in to buy one specific electronic part and the salesperson chased after me to kinda make sure I had NO DIFFICULTY finding whatever it was I needed. It's a very annoying thing.

It's been quite awhile since I got hassled for name/address at a RatShack.

sorry for the godwin

[Scrameustache]

What's the point of RFID implants? The point is to be able to give people a number without the mediapathic effect of a visible mark.

Re:sorry for the godwin

[Antique Geekmeister]

It's also safe for the humans, fast, cheap, and easy to scan in a busy loading dock or port without the cooperation of the animal. This is especially handy if the animal is ill, or the animal is from another country where rabies, antrax, or bird flu are active health risks.

Negative Reinforcement

[DumbSwede]

Because of the Orwellian overtones of implanted RFID chips I'd say people are more likely to give these kind of research results more credence than they deserve. Even if, as seems most likely, this research is proved to be very flawed, RFID-chips-cause-cancer (RC^3) will be a meme that lives on and will resurface many times regardless of any validity.

Humans often believe things because the want to, not because they are true.

Hey Gates -- your next argument for immigration!

[Baldrson]

Immigrants not only do jobs Americans won't do, they can be implanted with chips Americans won't take prior to embarking for the US.

Carrie?

[antdude]

Who is Carrie? You mean, Kari!

Re:Someone better tell Kari from MythBusters

[maniac/dev/null]

I'd like to see Kari bust the myth that basic cable is not governed by the FCC and can show full frontal nudity.

So the X-Files had it backwards

[bikerider7]

Scully got cancer because her implant was removed.

A Setback for Bioactive Glass...?

[Telephone Sanitizer]

Bioactive glass is a group of ceramic materials that are currently the subject of various studies related to bone-replacement and reconstructive surgery for (among others) persons who have had bone removed due to cancer.

New developments in making the materials with porous structures to stimulate bone growth have brought a spurt in the use of it as graft material and encouraged investigations into other medical uses, but I wonder now whether it and other silicates as a class pose a significant cancer risk, themselves.

That's just silly.

[Poromenos1]

Pointless? On the contrary, it would be very useful, like write-only memory!

Misleading summary

[ShatteredArm]

The Associated Press is reporting that microchip implants have induced cancer in laboratory animals and dogs.

TFA only mentions dogs in a few paragraphs, and only two cases of cancer near the chip have been reported in over 10,000 chipped dogs (only one of which is said to be linked in some way to the chip). It even says that the link between chips and cancer is not established in dogs, and that it is only something that should be studied more. So, yeah, the AP is not reporting that implants have induced cancer in dogs at all.

Re:Misleading summary

[chuck97224]

Good catch. You would think that before someone posts an summary, they would actually verify it.

Re:Misleading summary

[ShatteredArm]

Yeah, the dog thing is what actually got me to read the article. I have a chipped dog, so naturally I was interested in any potential cancer in chipped dogs. But, as it turns out, it's just alarmism, and the article really has nothing to do with dogs...

I've seen modblog

[Dixie_Flatline]

http://modblog.bmezine.com/

Quite a few people there have implants (horns, weird shapes in the forearm, etc.) and there hasn't been any warning there of increased cancer risk. The body-mod crowd is generally about doing crazy and interesting stuff that's ultimately safe.

Of course, these things are inert in EM fields, unlike RFID chips. I know they don't transmit, but absorbing energy from a field has to generate a small amount of heat that's channelled or dissipated into the surrounding tissue, right?

Er...

[spasticfraggle]

just take a small needle and continue to keep poking it in the same spot in your hand continuously for a year.

Er... Thanks, but no thanks...

Re:Someone better tell Kari from MythBusters

[Joe The Dragon]

You can see that more on MythBusters TOO HOT FOR TV COMING SOON ON DVD!

Up to?

[LS]

from the submission: up to 1% to 10%

"up to" is the equivalent of "maximum". How can you have a range for a maximum value?

LS

Re:Up to?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can have a range for a maximum value when you calculate uncertainty in your sample standard deviation calculations (calculate variance uncertainty according to chi-squared distribution, then square root it).

That is not, however the case here.

Foreign object, with a coating...

[mpaque]

The chip is a foreign object in the body, a glass capsule. It's not surprising that the body reacts to it in some way, trying to encapsulate it. These devices also include a coating to promote growth of connective tissue in the vicinity of the device so as to anchor it and prevent movement of the capsule.

So, what we have here is a biologically active foreign object. This result is, unfortunately, not surprising.

So, will Citywatcher.com be laying off their data center workers as being 'at-risk' for higher future medical costs?

Hmmm....

[lbbros]

I admit I haven't RTFA'd, but as far as I know, it may be not linked to radio frequencies but instead to a known effect in pathology. Basically, it has been known for a while that implanting any artificial matter in mice or other laboratory animals will increase and most likely induce the formation of tumors.
As works with prostethic arms or other artificial organs (like hearts, heart valves, etc) this is clearly not the case with humans. Not that I like RFID implants or anything, just my personal opinion on the matter.

Re:Hmmm....

[cnettel]

Clearly not the case? Well, the frequency is lower. (Inducing cancer in humans is in general harder, we are far more longlived and seem to have a protection system that's simply better tuned.) The most important aspect is naturally that the artificial implants are highly desirable in those cases. That claim might be a bit harder to make for RFID implants, especially if they would turn into something that would be considered for maybe even a majority of the population (not mandatory, but for "convenience"...).

Humans are electrical machines

[Maxo-Texas]

I imagine having a radio transmitter inside your body might do this.

OTH, it might be a trace element in the glass.

Re:Humans are electrical machines

[Dunbal]

OTH, it might be a trace element in the glass.

      Or the glass itself, causing a prolonged foreign body reaction, with the corresponding long term exposure to growth factors in the tissue surrounding the implant. A great promotion phase that just needs a bit of initiation. Radio induced genetic mutation could be an excellent initiator. Therefore, cancer.

Re:Humans are electrical machines

[Maxo-Texas]

I'm thinking that we have used glass, ceramics and other materials safely for a few decades now tho.

What's so different about this capsule?

1) It may generate radio signals every time that power passes over it (like high tension power lines that you can hear on your radio).
2) The glass might be tainted.

I googled glass implants and got a ton of hits- including for bone repair. But maybe the particular kind of glass is the issue.

This is scary

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ever considered implanting RFID inside your body,
watch the movie (especially third part) and reconsider:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

Re:No control group? WTF? Read TFA?

[j_w_d]

They had control groups. The control groups were chipped too. They were using the RFIDs as a book keeping device for data collection and control. The cancer was noted empirically and independently of the research they were undertaking. The appearance of sarcomas developing physically around some of the chips looked like an observation worth reporting. It offered a new line of potential investigation.

The real reason religious fundamentalists think science is pseudo-religious is because too many "scientists" believe the advance of scientific knowledge is limited to the purposeful reporting of the results of studies guided by the scientific method. Too often we forget that Darwin wasn't out there conducting a lab experiment; he was in the REAL world, observing real things. The real essence of science is the observation that leads to a "that's odd" remark, or an experiment where the operator goes from "oops. The culture spoiled" to "that's interesting" like Fleming did. The results of experiments under controlled conditions are just half of science. The rest is the observation of things outside the experiment, things that could lead to entire new realms of empirical and experimental investigation.

hard to believe

[Jeff1946]

Let's see, folks have pacemakers in them long term. Pacemakers contain a receiver and transmitter so that doctors can checkout how they doing and make adjustments to them. Many years ago friend of mine was almost killed in a chemistry lab explosion. To this day pieces of glass still surface on his body. So it is awfully hard for me to understand how a glass encapsulated microchip could cause a health problem.

Parent is full of win

[Scrameustache]

It's also safe for the humans, fast, cheap, and easy to scan in a busy loading dock or port without the cooperation of the animal. This is especially handy if the animal is ill, or the animal is from another country where rabies, antrax, or bird flu are active health risks. High-tech branding it is.

??? But they've been doing it for years in pets

[dpbsmith]

Veterinarians have been offering this for something like a decade, maybe more.

If they were inducing "malignant, fast-growing cancers" in "1 to 10%" of the implanted animals, you'd think that someone would have noticed.

When you are emporer...

[Reality Master 201]

Will you take remedial spelling lessons?

Return of the Anonymous Idiot

[Gary W. Longsine]

A few minutes with Google shows clearly that the corporation filed chapter 11, and that those proceedings protected the assets of corporate officers and other significant assets worth at least 900 million dollars, and furthermore the bankruptcy court denied compensation to over a half a million victims who apparently missed a filing deadline.

An apparently well researched and well respected source of information on the corporate fiasco that was the Dalkon Shield is this book:
Bending the Law: The Story of the Dalkon Shield Bankruptcy (by Richard B. Sobol. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991.)

A review of the book containing enough details to confirm that a simplistic interpretation "AH Robins went out of business" is not sufficiently detailed to be a meaningful contribution to the discussion:
Reviewed by Cary Coglianese, Department of Political Science, University of Michigan

An article from the day that bankruptcy was filed:
Robins, in Bankruptcy Filing, Cites Dalkon Shield Claims

A band named after the fiasco, with MP3 files online:
Dalkon Shield

Please, get a login, use it, and post under your real name. It might help provide you with incentive to read more and mouth off less.

Well California will just have

[JohnnyGTO]

to come up with a new sign.
This human contains materials known to cause cancer in the State of California.

I always wonder what it is about California that makes so many things cause cancer?

RFID Method of Operation

[GanjaManja]

ah, the article even says:
"When prompted by an electromagnetic scanner, the chip transmits a unique code."
so that is how it works. The electromagnetic scanner must activate it with an RF code too.

Re:Possibly Masked by Other Cancer-Agents

[Telephone Sanitizer]

Vets used to inject vaccines in the same place as the favored site of the implant -- midline above the shoulders at the back of the neck.

Vaccines are now given in the leg because many animals developed cancers in their neck in a poorly-understood phenomenon labeled "vaccination associated sarcoma." (It's easier to live with a missing leg than a missing neck...)

It's possible that many of the cancers caused by the implants were mistakenly attributed to vaccinations.

Trebek

[Das Auge]

Ahh...not a fan of the ladies, are you Trebek?!

Dogs were not included in these studies

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, controls were not used. Plus, these results cannot be used to judge the risk to humans. Certainty about the risk to humans, as well as, dog and cats will be hard to come by in the short term.

Government Corruption at its Finest

[milette]

>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.


Sounds like Tommy boy was on the take for quite some time.

FDA approvals are not granted overnight -- they can take many years. For him to claim he never heard of the company means he was either lying or not doing his job overseeing the FDA by being ingnorant of such a major case.

Of course, nothing will ever be done -- same as in most similar cases...

pure glass

[zahl2]

Pure glass is pretty inert stuff. If you try to add color, at least to metal, you quickly run into problems. At least, that's what I recall from pacemaker leads.

cause of cancer in lab rats

[Harald Paulsen]

Study shows scientists are the leading cause of cancer in lab rats.

Non-ionising frequiency RF may not be safe...

[MindKata]

This work on RFID could provide an clue to the biological effects of non-ionising frequencies. The currently accepted idea about RF is that non-ionising frequencies are safe. However it is known that cancers can be caused by chemicals causing or disrupting some free radicals. However a changing magnetic field can induce current flow in a conductor. The body while resistive, can still conduct a current. Hence provide a mechanism to disrupt free radicals.

Therefore, making the body conduct a current many times over a long period of time, could then provide an alternative mechanism to increase the chance of cancer.

(Think of it a bit like electroplating something. A small amount of current, can cause a build up over time etc.. although in reality, its going to be many substances and far more complex combinations in a body and the body actively changing and processing substances etc..).

Inducing current conduction in a body, could provide an alternate mechanism, to increase the probability of cancer, by disrupting some required free radicals, that are used and required in normal body processes. The risk factors would vary with frequency, power etc., but it is possible.

Here's some more info if you are interested...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_radicals

Re:Non-ionising frequiency RF may not be safe...

[maxume]

OK, but let's talk about it in equivalent-seconds-of-sun-exposure. My completely baseless, off the wall, out of my ass guess is that a lifetime of low level rf exposure(like you get from the wimpy radio in even an old time cell phone) is something like 25 seconds.

Doing things like not smoking and limiting your consumption of alcohol and peanuts, and eating a little healthier every day is a much bigger deal than wearing a tinfoil hat when it comes to avoiding cancer(I'm under 30 and will likely get cancer, as both of my parents had it by the time they were 60, I have an opinion about this).

Re:Non-ionising frequiency RF may not be safe...

[MindKata]

Some people have a genetic disposition towards an increased probability of developing cancer, however some cancer cases are caused by damage to the body. These cases can happen to anyone.

"wimpy radio"
Say that about something like for example, the transmitter at Crystal Palace.
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_transm itting_station

From that page: "The station carries the London regions of BBC One, BBC Two, ITV1 and Channel 4 in analogue, each with an effective radiated power of 1 MW, as well as all six digital terrestrial television multiplexes."

So imagine 1 Mega Watt ... in other words imagine standing next to 1000 electric fires each drawing 1k Watt. That is a lot of radio frequency power and that is just one example of so many sources of RF.

Then you have for example power lines e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line

And that's just two sources of changing magnetic fields. There are many others.

No one is suggesting a tinfoil hat, (as you imply), but an increased risk is an increased risk. Medically if there is an increased risk, then that is important to the medical profession, even if it isn't to you maxume.

For example, say there was even just a 0.1% increased risk from say using a mobile phone for 40 years, then even at 0.1% you would expect to have around 2 million new cases of cancer within the 40 year period as a direct result of that source of damage to the body. Of course it would be difficult, (very difficult) to point the finger of blame over a period of 40 years simply at a mobile phone (even if it was say 0.1% which I just use to illustrate the size of the numbers of new cases possible), as there are so many sources of RF (some of which are very high power) its difficult to point at any one of them as the cause.

But if there is an increased risk, then solutions can be engineered into future designs. Currently they are not considered, as its simply believed that only ionising frequencies can cause cancer (e.g. UV, XRays, Gamma Rays etc...) and so it would just add extra cost to avoid something which is believed to not cause harm.

What I was saying is that potentially the other frequencies can also be an additional risk factor. Something this RFID research could well help to show add evidence to that case it is possible for non-ionising RF to be a source of harm to biology.

Doesn't they know?

[drolrevO]

Everything causes cancer these days, some just cause it more and some less..

theft of human privacy: Another cancer

[scifiber_phil]

I don't even use supermarket loyalty cards. The thought of implanting an object inside my body to track my actions, or person is beyond the pall. We deserve more privacy not less. Give us back our private lives. We have the right to act legally without notice.

just get a barcode tattoo instead....

[josepha48]

.. on your forhead with the number 666 ;-)

I can't believe people want a radio transmitter implanted in them and then think there wont be repercussions..

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

Not Informative. -5 Incorrect.

Re:I still don't get it - THX1138

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS..

DON'T FORGET THE MOVIE "THX 1138"

Okay? One viewing of this and you understand what is going on today and in the future.

I bet it's the coating

[amalgraafstra]

My response: http://blog.amal.net/?p=48

The short story here is, I believe it's the anti-migration coating on "implantable" RFID tags that is causing the issue. Good thing both mine are not meant to be used as implants, and do not have this coating.