Microchips Are Already Being Implanted in Humans

(Sylvia Engdahl's background information for her novel Stewards of the Flame)

BACKGROUND ON CONTROVERSIAL
TOPICS DEALT WITH IN
STEWARDS OF THE FLAME

Closer than you may think

Remote health monitoring

Implanted microchips

Compulsory healthcare

Truer than you may realize

Mind's influence on health

Advaned neurofeedback

ESP and other psi powers

Fire immunity

Worse than you may know

Medical overtreatment

Harmful psychiatric care

Prolonged death

When I wrote Stewards of the Flame in 2005, I made up the whole idea of the implanted tracking chips. It seemed to me a likely distant-future development, considering that we now microchip cats and dogs. I wasn't aware that passive chips were already being implanted in humans, and that tracking-enabled active ones are not far off. I certainly didn't know that there were many blogs and articles on the Web opposing this invasion of privacy, which I didn't discover until later.

A 2007 news report revealed that implanted microchips have caused cancer in mice and rats and that some enthusiasts were therefore having second thoughts about them. Of course, the possibility that they might cause cancer is not the only, or original, objection to implants. One prevalent one is Christian fundamentalists' claim that they are the "Mark of the Beast" referred to in the Bible. One doesn't have to believe this to consider their widespread implantation a bad idea; many people fear that they could be employed as a means of government surveillance. And the scary thing is not so much the possibility that someday an arbitrarily-imposed law might require them, but that the public might very well come to favor such a law for healthcare reasons if not out of concorn for national security.

Implanted microchips were approved by the FDA in 2004 and are used by some hospitals to ensure the availability of patients' medical records. Once people get used to this -- and in the future, perhaps, to monitoring of serious medical conditions -- will they not be less adverse to the thought of the government making use of implanted chips for whatever purposes it finds convenient? It seems that my longtime conviction that medical "benefits" are a foot in the door for tyranny may not be far off base.

The Verichip was taken off the market in 2010 due to lack of public acceptance, but was renamed and continued to be sold to other nations. Similar passive chips are now available and their potential as a replacement for credit cards is limited mainly by the lack of scanners in stores. Some people have chips merely for the convenience of not having to carry door keys. As of 2014 a do-it-yourself kit for implanting them is available for just $99; the fact that its development was paid for through crowdfunding shows that resistance is fading. By the time implantable tracking chips become available, they may seem no more objectionable than GPS-equipped cell phones.

. Update, 2019. It's by now evident that before long Stewards of the Flame will, at least with regard to microchips, seem as anachronistic as 1950s-era science fiction that dipicts people using slide rules instead of computers to calculate spaceship orbits. In the novel I portrayed such implants as entirely bad, the immediate cause of my protagonists' decision to escape to a new world. Then only a few years later in Defender of the Flame, without thinking twice I had my hero using his to pay for a sandwich. And that is what will lead to their acceptance by the public, despite the many serious privacy concerns they raise. Already thousands of people in Sweden use them as a substitute for cash and credit cards. Employers here are beginning to offer them to workers for use at the snack bar as well as for ID purposes, leading to fear that the companies will track employees' activities both on and off the job. And most people, unlike myself, will welcome health surveillance; it has been specifically suggested that they be used for heart monitoring and aulomatic calling of ambulances. It's just not credible anymore that this would be an innovation on a colony planet in the distant future.

Like cell phones and the Internet, implanted microchips will have a major effect both on society as a whole and on people's daily lives. Future generations of children will wonder how their forebears managed without them. Hopefully some sort of protection against invasion of privacy will be established. but even if it is, there will be criminals, if not agencies, that break the rules. All technological advances (and for that matter, sociological ones) have both good and bad consequences, and we could not escape the latter even if we chose to forgo the former; that's an inherent aspect of human progress. We can only hope that the worst scenario -- the possibility that implanted chips might be made compulsory and used for tracking people or even for controlling them -- will never become a reality.

Some videos and links about implanted microchips.

The Day I Got Microchipped, John Converse Townsend discusses his microchip on YouTube. Fast Company, January 2018.

Will Microchip Implants in Humans Become Mandatory? by Selwyn Duke. New American, May 3, 2014. "Biometric scanners/RFID tracking devices are already used in college dining halls and some amusement parks, and the technology is even being used in Africa to keep track of who is being vaccinated. . . . There is precedent for acceptance of such intrusion; after all, your cellphone has an RFID chip and can be used to track your every movement, and its camera can be remotely activated by authorities."

Is There a Microchip Implant in Your Future? by John Brandon. Fox News, August 30, 2014. "Using chip implants to track people would require an infrastructure of transponders scattered around a city that read their identity in public buildings and street corners."

Microchips Will Be Implanted Into Healthy People Sooner Than You Think by Dina Spector. Business Insider, August 8, 2014. "The failure of VeriChip, later rebranded as PositiveID, highlights the legal issues of microchipping people. Since 2009, at least nine states have either passed laws or proposed bills to prohibit the enforced implantation of chips."

Chip Implants: Better Care or Privacy Scare? by Daniel J. DeNoon. WebMD, July 27, 2005. "John Halamka, MD . . . has one of the chips implanted in the back of his right arm. . . . 'If a chip could also serve as a GPS, reporting my location, or act as an emergency transponder, requesting rescue, I would definitely upgrade.' he says."

RFID Chip Inside: The Murky Ethics of Implanted Chips by Kenneth R. Foster and Jan Jaeger. IEEE Spectrum, March 1, 2007. "There is a darker side, namely the erosion of our privacy and our right to bodily integrity. After all, do you really want to be required to have a foreign object implanted in your arm just to get or keep a job?"

Human Bar Code by Philip S. Chua. The News Today (Philippines), February 2, 2007. "There is concern among various sectors of society that this 'human bar coding' would curtail individual civil liberties and violate the person's constitutional freedom and right to privacy, confidentiality, security and safety."

They Want Their ID Chips Now by Julia Scheeres. Wired, February 6, 2002. "An X-Files-type scheme where everyone is forcibly marked and monitored by the government worries both civil libertarians and [fundamentalist] Christians, who believe new technologies such as biometrics and biochips may be the feared "Mark of the Beast" of Biblical lore."

Mark of the Beast? by Geoff Metcalf. WorldNetDaily, January 28, 2002. "The device also has the capacity to monitor the user’s heart rate, blood pressure and other vital functions. Beyond just mere medical readouts, could it also analyze variances and become an ipso facto lie detector?"

GPS Implant Makes Debut by Sherrie Gossett. WorldNetDaily, May 14, 2003. "Once inserted into a human, the device can be tracked by Global Positioning Satellite technology and the information relayed wirelessly to the Internet, where an individual's location, movements and vital signs can be stored in a database for future reference." (Though this article is dated 2003, as of 2014 GPS-enabled implantable chips do not yet exist.)

A Chip in Your Shoulder by Josh McHugh. Slate, November 10, 2004. "Any potential revolution in human tracking or mundane convenience comes with a fundamental insecurity. . . . Any hobbyist can just buy an RFID reader and use it to keep tabs on the chip-implanted people that happen to walk by."

Cancer Fears Raised over Chip Implants by Todd Lewan. USA Today, September 8, 2007. "A series of veterinary and toxicology studies, dating to the mid-1990s, stated that chip implants had "induced" malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.... After reviewing the research, specialists at some pre-eminent cancer institutions said the findings raised red flags."

Under Your Skin by Penn Bullock. James Randi Educational Foundation, March 17, 2010. "In 2007, the PositiveID Corporation in Florida injected microchips into Alzheimer’s patients as part of what it termed a 'two-year study.' Up to 200 test subjects, many incapacitated, were supplied by a nursing home in West Palm Beach. . . . Today, based on new information, doctors allege the study violated medical ethics and regulatory law."

Would You Implant a Microchip in Your Child? Boston.com, June 9, 2010. "In spite of the whole "Big Brother" aspect, and in spite of the obvious privacy issues (not to mention health risks), the microchip may be making a comeback."

Microchip Implant Controversy: a Mark of the Beast or the Coming "Singularity"? by Jim Edwards. CBS News, November 9, 2009. "The serious debate here is over privacy and tracking concerns, and whether anyone might be required to have an implant. The vast majority of patients and consumers simply won't want one."

Satellites Track Mexico Kidnap Victims with Chips by Mica Rosenberg. Reuters, August 21, 2008. "Affluent Mexicans, terrified of soaring kidnapping rates, are spending thousands of dollars to implant tiny transmitters under their skin. . . . Detractors say the chip is little more than a gadget that serves no real security purpose. The company injects the crystal-encased chip . . . into clients' bodies with a syringe. A transmitter in the chip then sends radio signals to a larger device carried by the client with a global positioning system in it."

Human GPS Microchipping: Embrace It or Ban It? by Hank Pellissier. Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, March 14, 2011. "Microchips probably will be 'optional' in many categories at first, then they’ll be 'suggested,' then 'recommended,' and perhaps finally 'required.'”

Bionic Age: 'Body Hackers' Try Microchip Implants by Tim Johnson. Government Technology, August 8, 2017. "Manufacturers say implantable chips with greater memory and more “out of the box” functionality — such as starting a car, or measuring body functions such as blood sugar and oxygen levels — may be in the offing soon."

Why Implanted Microchips in Humans Could Go Mainstream Sooner than Later by Dale Hurd. CBN Newa, October 23, 2018. "Right now, thousands of people in countries like Germany and Sweden have already opted to get chipped for easier financial transactions."

Microchip Implants Are Threatening Workers’ Rights by Bjorn Larsson Rosvall. The Conversation, November 22, 2018."Research also suggests that implanted chips are susceptible to security risks and increase the potential for identity theft given that it is relatively easy to hack a microchip implant."

Wisconsin Company Known for Microchipping Employees Plans GPS Tracking Chip for Dementia Patients by Chloe Aiello. CNBC, August 22, 2018. "It’s not only GPS, it’s not only voice activation, it’s working on monitoring your vital signs. . . . It’s going to tell my doctor’s office I have an issue.”

Chip Implants: The Next Big Privacy Debate by Dan Lohrmann. Government Technology, November 25, 2018. "The company estimates that it will be selling chips capable of tracking a wearer’s live vital signs in a little more than a year."

Last updated in June 2019
Text copyright 2019 by Sylvia Engdahl
This series of pages about background for Stewards of the Flame is not meant to be a comprehensive or balanced overview of the topics covered; it merely offers support for the ideas expressed in the novel.