implants

This page considers questions about use of RFIDs to identify living organisms, in particular through subcutaneous implants.

It covers -

• introduction
• companion animals
• livestock management
• personal identification
• other applications
• implementation
• legal issues
• studies

     introduction

The preceding page highlighted a range of applications involving use of RFID tags for identification of physical entities - whether simply to alert an observer that the entity exists (and for example is being smuggled out of a shop or library) or to uniquely identify the specific entity (whether through an isolated identity number or through integrating that number with one or more databases).

The same technology can be used in implants for the identification and management of animals, living or dead. It is already in widespred use among companion animals and as costs fall is spreading from sporting animals (high-end racehorses) to ordinary farm livestock. That use appears to strike most people as unexceptional (there have been no comprehensive rigorous attitude studies), is arguably more humane than some traditional methods of animal identification and more effective.

In principle the technology can also be used for the identification of people, with implantation being fully consensual or otherwise.

Identifying people via detachable RFID tags - such as passports, wallets and the identity cards used to access many buildings and devices - strikes some as acceptable or merely inevitable. Identification via implanted tags, which in theory might operate throughout the individual's lifetime and be 'invisible', poses questions for policymakers and generates anxiety (or merely useful headlines) for those in a 'rage against the machine'.

     companion animals

One reason for the communication gap between RFID proponents and antagonists is perhaps because proponents are conscious that many people in advanced economies use RFID technology on a day to day basis without angst (albeit without recognition). Apart from traffic management systems, many Australians for example encounter RFIDs as the basis of domestic pet registration schemes.

Some jurisdictions in Australia, for example, mandate subdermal 'chipping' of cats and dogs as part of pet registration schemes. The tags are inserted by veterinarians as a condition for licencing of the beasts, replacing detachable collars and tattoos that were not robust, easily identifiable and readily integrated with government/private databases.

In practice performance has been limited by non-compliance (with estimates that upwards of 40% of Australia's seven million companion animals are unregistered) and implementation teething pains, with disagreement about standards and competing registries.

Polemicist John Gilmore - who apparently thinks that both information and moggies should always roam free - grizzled in 2004 that

The people we spoke with in the shelters were confused by our opposition to their "safe, sane, and humane" policy of RFID-tracking every animal that came within chip-gun range of them. When a cat is lost, they scan 'em like a bag of potato chips, pull 'em up in the database, and call their owner.

Identification and response - better to scan Rover and thereby reunite him with his family than euthanase him as an unowned and unwanted dog - have however attracted support from vets, government agencies and pet owners. Is reading an RFID tag necessarily worse than reading a barcode on the cat's collar, or checking a serial number featured on the detachable tag dangling from that collar?

Media-savvy US 'end times' advocacy group CASPIAN has asserted links between implants and cancer, uncritically accepted by some journalists.

CASPIAN's polemic appears to be at odds with implants in cats and dogs; one reader of this page commented that

if there is a strong link it's very surprising that hasn't been reported in Australian veterinary journals and newsgroups. Wouldn't you think pet owners and vets would have been making noises?

That scepticism is consistent with the paucity of negative coverage in the broader life sciences literature examined by the author of this page.

     livestock management

There is increasing interest in extending the same technology to management of other animals, particular in ways that 'add value'.

The US Department of Agriculture for example announced moves in 2004 towards "giving every cow in the United States its own unique identification number", with an official announcing "We want to allocate an individual identification, just like you and I have Social Security numbers". The primary rationale appears to be quarantine and contamination management, with claims that tagging can provide 'paddock to plate' identification and facilitate extension of projects such as Heritage Foods in the US, which offers a tracking number with every piece of turkey sold (the number provides consumer access via the web to details of the bird's medical and feed history).

That is problematical, given breaks in continuity and uneven data capture. In particular there are difficulties in identification through successive links in the supply chain from farm to consumer: a single tag (even less than a single ID number) cannot be used for the one animal in the field, for its carcase and individual slices of meat.

In Australia most projects have been less ambitious. The Australian Sheep Industry Co-operative Research Centre's Remote Individual Animal Management (RIAM) system uses RFIDs as the basis for remote automatic logging and weighing of sheep. Tagged sheep are automatically logged and weighed as they move through a race from one field to another or to feed or drink. It is envisaged that automatic gates will in future be linked to the walk-through scales, with underweight animals being separated from their healthier peers.

RIAM offers clear advantages over existing branding and ear-marking schemes.

     personal identification

The same technologies can be used for the identification (and thereby control) of humans through RFID tags parked under the skin - the subcutaneous or subdermal chip - an extension of notions of the 'body as data' that is explored in the privacy guide and surveillance profile elsewhere.

From a technical rather than policy perspective there is little difference between "giving every cow in the United States its own unique identification number" and having a unique RFID number for every person in the US, Netherlands or Australia.

System vendors and researchers have proposed various schemes, some smelling of journalistic licence or corporate desperation. These include

children - 'chipping' kids so that can be identified if they suffer an accident (something that presupposes large-scale and open health services or police databases) or stray beyond the bounds of particular reader-equipped zones (eg leave the schoolyard)

seniors - similarly tagging seniors suffering from Alzheimers ... the alarms sound when they wander past the readers at the building's exits

prisoners - keeping tabs on those incarcerated by the law rather than biology

supremos - mexican law enforcement officials and some wealthy investors have attracted attention over publicity regarding 'chipping' to allow them access to restricted facilities and facilitate identification of their corpses if kidnapped

payment - various venues have mooted (or supposedly trialled) implants as the basis of payment systems in bars or nightclubs. The director of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona thus boasted "I know many people who want to be implanted. Almost everybody now has a piercing, tattoos or silicone. Why not get the chip and be original?"

cadaver management - inventory management in conventional mortuaries (pending cremation or inhumation) and in forensic environments (eg after events such as 9/11) where people are dealing with large numbers of bodies and body parts, traditionally controlled through segregation in containers and through mechanisms such as toe-tags

Enthusiasts have already appropriated the technology.

Provocateur Eduardo Kac - otherwise known for his transgenic GFP Bunny - for example garnered the requisite nanosecond of esteem and accompaying footnotes in 1997 by inserting a tag into his ankle during a live performance in Sao Paulo and then registered himself in an online pet database as both animal and animal owner. Presumably less squirm-worthy than Stelarc's infibulations but, for us, not a major advance in art.

Anecdotal accounts indicate that some geeks have implanted RFID tags in their hands or upper arms to unlock computer screensavers or open RFID-enabled doors, an illustration of geek chic and less unsightly than a stud through the tongue or the urethra.

In 2006 US insurer Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey invited chronically ill policyholders to participate in a two-year trial to test implanted VeriChip RFID tags for accessing their medical records.

The expectation was that participants admitted to the Hackensack Medical Center emergency room will be identified by a handheld reader that will link the tag's 16-digit ID (134 kHz) to the patient's medical files in the multi-hospital electronic health network. People with chronic diseases might not be able to communicate their medical history during admission (or be bearing an electronic identity card); the pilot's promoters suggest that immediate access to information via the tag might save lives and costs by avoiding adverse drug interactions or wrong diagnoses

     other applications

Preceding paragraphs have highlighted intentional implantation of RFID tags in human and other animals. In practice their greatest use within animals may be as tools in the mundane detection of things that have been unintentionally left inside people (or indeed other creatures): surgical gauze, towels, sponges, clamps, scalpels and so forth.

Figures for such 'foreign bodies' are problematical (one US guesstimate by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality was 2,700 incidents per year) but the scale of medical malpractice awards means that proposals are being taken seriously, despite problems with scanning tags in an environment where there is a lot of metal and a lot of water.

Media reports suggest that in 2007 the German Patent Office rejected a patent application from a Saudi inventor covering a 'death chip' implanted under the skin of visitors with the expectation that migrants could be readily tracked and remotely killed if those people overstayed a visa or otherwise misbehaved. The tag would reportedly be linked to an implanted cyanide capsule for 'release' by remote control. The zany application is consistent with other rejected patent proposals such as time machines, perpetual motion machines and ghost detection devices.

     implementation

In dealing with implants the RFID industry is grappling with five issues.

The first, discussed in more detail later in this profile, is integration of tags with other information in a seamless and effective way.

The second is to address legal concerns, in particular privacy and security.

Particular challenges and regulatory frameworks are highlighted below.

The third is to address what are often uninformed or quite bizarre but deeply felt anxieties about the difference between humans and other animals (fine to tag the family cat or lunch-on-the-hoof, abhorrent to tag a person) or about globalisation, the illuminati and the mark of the beast.

Some of those anxieties are considered in the final page of this profile.

The fourth is questions about health issues. Does implantation pose unacceptable health hazards? Does scanning is a health hazard, akin to use of mobile phones, CRT monitors and microwave ovens?

Research so far appears to suggest that injection of a tag is no more dangerous than other subcutaneous injections (and is less dangerous than genital or other piercings favoured by many teens and wannabe hip adults), provided the practioners adhere to protocols regarding sterilisation, feedback and location of the tag. Tags for example should be implanted in arms (away from major blood vesels) rather than in facial or breast tissue. Exposure to scanning appears to pose lower risk than exposure to dental xrays, the radon found in some houses and schools, high voltage powerlines and poorly insulated microwave ovens.

The fifth issue encompasses questions about the mechanics of implantation, the robustness of tag readers, interference problems and difficulties with tag removal or conflicts where the subject has multiple implants.

As with any technology, particularly micro-equipment, tag failures do occur. On veterinary surgeon in Canberra, for example, noted that a tag was dead on arrival and addressed that problem by simply injecting a new tag, sparing the family dog the unpleasantness of being probed for removal of the initial defective tag.

If nightclub (or health service) payment tags become a fad presumably some people will bear several tags. In principle that should not be a problem, if the tags have unique numbers (discussed in the next page) and appropriate encryption. Some critics have fretted that fashion victims will demand removal of tags, a process that is considerably messier than implanting a tag through an injection. Others have forecast forgery, duplication and even illicit sale of tags.

So far we have not encountered reports of tags 'migrating' within bodies and properly implanted the tag should stay put under the bearer's skin rather than wandering into a blood vessel en route to the person's brain, heart or other useful organ. It appears likely that if you ingest a tag while eating what used to be Bessie the cow you will at worst suffer a chipped tooth - the sort of trauma common to people who have found bone splinters or buckshot in their steak - rather than something more serious.

     legal issues

Those technical challenges are arguably more tractable than some legal issues.

One starting point is the basic legality of implants in humans under national health law. There is no international convention on human RFID tagging (by implants or otherwise) and treatment in national law varies considerably. In advanced economies tags are typically regarded as implants under national medical device or broader therapeutic goods regulation. Implantation thus requires authorisation by government.

The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced in 2004 that it would licence tag implants for specific purposes. In Australia implants are covered by the national Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, which encompasses stents, pacemakers, artificial joints and other medical devices. The Act is administered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the Australian equivalent of the FDA, which appears be watching overseas developments and is not under significant pressure for commercial trials by local/offshore RFID developers and their associates.

The 2005 Ethical Aspects of ICT Implants in the Human Body Opinion (PDF) by the European Group on Ethics in Science & New Technologies notes potential use/misuse of implants for continuous surveillance or covert identification of individuals. It concludes that implants are not a danger per se to human freedom or dignity but that their application must be carefully evaluated, with a guarantee of personal data confidentiality through new legislation.

The Opinion notes that human implants must be considered in relation to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (in particular informed consent - Article 3), the 1997 Council of Europe Convention on Human Rights & Biomedicine and the 1997 UNESCO Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights. Article 8(2) of the EU Data Protection Directive provides that express consent by the 'data subject' is insufficient to allow others to use that person's sensitive data, so that other authorisation must be sought - thereby preventing data subjects from inappropriately providing electronic information that could jeopardize their integrity.

It also notes the importance of ensuring that " implants are not used to create a two class society or to have an adverse effect on the developing world", arguing that "enhancement implants should only be used to bring humans into the 'normal' range of the population or for health improvements". There should be no marketing without "controls and checks on safety and security", with the European Commission to instigate legislation regarding "non-medical ICT implants", covering data protection and privacy issues.

     studies

Questions about implant applications and problems have attracted academic attention. One example is Nathaniel Mishler's 2006 thesis A Method of Cloaking Passive RFID Medical Implants in Humans (PDF).

There is a broader discussion, with a useful bibliography, in Katina & MG Michael's The Social, Cultural, Religious and Ethical Implications of Automatic Identification (PDF) and Kenneth Foster & Jan Jaeger's 'Ethical Implications of Implantable Radiofrequency Identification (RFID) Tags in Humans' in 8(8) American Journal of Bioethics (2008) 44-48.

For perspectives on geek chic and the 'cyborg turn' see Bryan Turner's 'The Possibility of Primitiveness: Towards a Sociology of Body Marks in Cool Societies' in Body Modification (London: Sage 2000) edited by Mike Featherstone, Victoria Pitts' In The Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2003), Amelia Guimarin's 2005 dissertation In the Flesh: Body Piercing as a Form of Commodity-Based Identity and Ritual Rite of Passage (txt), Kevin Warwick's Cyborg Identity’ in David Birch [ed] Digital Identity Management: Perspectives on the Technological, Business and Social Implications (Aldershot: Gower 2007) 227-238 and works highlighted here.




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