RFID Implants Can Cause Cancer: Media Report

The hot item in the pet accessories industry sometime back and increasingly in the human world too, radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips may not be hot for much longer, if a media report in the U.S. is to be believed. The report says RFID chips can lead to cancer.

An increasing number of studies about these devices, conducted on mice over the past decade, have shown disturbing results, the media report says. A number of the mice have been found to develop tumors after being implanted with the RFID chips.

The media report says a number of these studies showed many of the implanted mice developed malignant tumors around the RFID chip implants. These studies have been published in journals of toxicology and veterinary science.

RFID chips are small radio devices that were earlier implanted in pets, to ensure owners were able to keep track of them. The devices contained vital data about the animal so even if he was lost or wandered away from home, they could be brought back home safe.

In recent times, the same technology is being used in people, especially Alzheimer’s patients. These patients are asked to wear the implants, which contain the patients’ medical history and records. Experts use a remote sensing device to read the data on the RFID chip.

Approximately 2,000 people all over the world use RFID chips today. If the media reports are true, this would be a big blow to the companies manufacturing the RFID chips, as the success of the chips would have meant installations in millions of patients and huge profits.

Different studies have come up with different percentages of implanted mice developing the tumors. While a 1998 study conducted in Ridgefield, Connecticut, on 177 mice showed more than 10 percent of the mice developing cancer, the number was sufficiently lower in another study, conducted in 2006, on more 1,260 mice in France – 4.1 percent.

The media report, while mentioning these statistics and the other findings of the studies, has insisted that its contents were of a cautionary nature. The report said the findings of these studies could not be used to forecast the numbers of cancerous mice in future studies.

The report also noted that none of these studies involved a control group of mice without the chips. While researchers said that was not a big enough reason to ignore the findings of the study, chip manufacturing companies are singing a different tune.

VeriChip Corp., one such company that manufactures these RFID chips, says millions of dogs and cats have been implanted during the past 10 to 15 years. The number of cases where animals have developed adverse reactions to these chips during this time has been negligible, almost non existent.

The company also has two studies of its own to show, studies that have found absolutely no connection between the chips and cancer in mice.