Chipping Fido is considered an act of love. Chipping Grandpa, however, has been described as "Orwellian," "creepy" and even “satanic."
Regardless, human "tagging" was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2004 to make it easier to retrieve medical records. An estimated 2,000 people worldwide have volunteered to have tiny RFID (radio frequency identification) chips embedded just below the tricep, including 111 dementia patients and their caregivers at Alzheimer's Community Care in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Privacy advocates, who protested at the Florida care center, argued that Alzheimer’s patients can’t necessarily give informed consent. Implanting a chip, they say, is a violent, invasive act. Critics also worry about potential long-term effects on health, even though they’ve been used with pets for more than a decade.
But supporters say it's important to have instant and accurate access to medical records, especially for dementia patients. In addition to the estimated 4.5 million Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s—a number that is expected to quadruple by 2050—the tags could be used for high-risk patients suffering from diabetes, cancer, heart disease and autism.
"The most important thing the chips have done is give our families peace of mind," said Mary Barnes, CEO of Alzheimer’s Community ...   more »

Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
Instead of asking friends "How do you feel?" or doctors examining patients, one day such queries and examinations may be replaced by tiny radio antennas implanted under the skin to act as remote sensors of humans' emotional, physiological state. Scientists at the Hebrew University's applied physics department have discovered a method for remote sensing of people's physiological and emotional state.
Their initial results were published last week in the prestigious scientific journal The Physical Review Letters and have aroused much results in physicians and scientists. Their invention has been patented and commercialized by Yissum, HU's technology transfer company.
The researchers - Profs. Yuri Feldman and Aharon Agranat with Dr. Alexander Puzenko, Dr. Andreas Caduff and doctoral student Paul Ben-Ishai - believe the discovery theoretically could help help monitor medical patients from afar, evaluate athletic performance, diagnose disease and remotely sense stress levels - which could have significant implications for technology in the biomedical engineering, anti-terror and security technology fields.
The key is in the surprising shape of human sweat ducts. The researchers discovered that human skin is structured as an array of minute antennas that operate in the "sub-terahertz" frequency range.
This discovery is based on investigations of ...   more »