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Drug Identification Bible

Applied Digital Solutions Inc. is preparing to ask the Food and Drug Administration for permission to sell microchips that can be implanted in people's bodies. The VeriChip could be read by scanners for identification or medical information while embedded in people's arms, legs or other body parts. The company says it intends to limit its marketing to companies that ensure its human use is voluntary.

"The problem is that you always have to think about what the device will be used for tomorrow," says Lee Tien, a senior attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-rights advocacy group. "It's what we call function creep. At first a device is used for applications we all agree are good, but then it slowly is used for more than it was intended."

"The line in the sand that we draw is that the use of the VeriChip would always be voluntary," responds Keith Bolton, chief technology officer and a vice president at Applied Digital, based in Palm Beach, Fla. "The people who use this technology want that medical information known. There is security within the technology. It lies dormant in the body until it recognizes the scanner. The reader is used very close to the body, about two inches [away]."

But the company gives up control of the devices when they are sold to customers, which could include government agencies. Groups such as the Cato Institute, a libertarian public-policy foundation, warn that the government protects its own interests first.

"History proves that government database and ID systems are often abused by government officials when the `crisis' of the moment -- illegal immigration, handgun ownership, terrorism, drugs, etc. -- trumps the protection of every American's basic civil liberties and privacy rights," Cato said in a policy statement.

Hughes Aircraft Co. has developed a similar microchip that could be implanted with a syringe and used to identify workers with an alphanumeric code. Applied Digital is developing another implant device that would work in conjunction with the chip to allow satellite tracking of an individual's every movement.

More than a decade ago, Applied Digital bought a competitor, Destron Fearing, which had been making chips to be implanted in animals. Those chips were bought mainly by animal owners wanting to provide another way for pound workers to identify a lost pet. Most animal shelters that pick up lost pets have scanners for reading the implants. The scanners display numbers linked to a national registry of names, addresses and phone numbers of pet owners.

Chips for humans aren't much different. The tiny device -- about the size of a grain of rice and as long as a quarter -- contains a millimeter-long magnetic coil activated when a scanner is run across the skin above it (a transmitter sends out the data by radio signal). Without a scanner, the chip cannot be read.

Applied Digital plans to sell the chips to people or companies for about $200 each. Individuals will be able to encode it with the desired information before having a physician implant it into their bodies. Applied Digital will give away chip readers to hospitals and ambulance companies, in hope they will become standard equipment.

Applied Digital's management was hesitant to market the chips because of ethical questions -- until the terrorist attacks. "It's a sad time ... when people have to wonder whether it's safe in their own country," Bolton says. The risk of government abuse is small, he insists. "I find it hard to believe anyone in the government would want information about my pacemaker or my artificial hip. I guess I would be foolish not to say nothing is impossible, but I don't think it's realistic."

The chip has drawn attention from several religious groups. Theologian and author Terry Cook worries the identification chip could be the "mark of the beast," an identifying mark that all people will be forced to wear just before the end times, according to the Bible. Applied Digital has consulted theologians and appeared on the religious TV program The 700 Club to reassure viewers.

TOM RAMSTACK WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER DAILY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.

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