Implanted Microchips for Kids

Abstract

Over the past years the use of the microchip in humans has been a matter of debate. The Microchip is already been used in animals to store data and to locate the animal. The Food and Drug Administration (FAD) has already approved the use of implanted chips for health care. Despites the advantages of the microchip it's been a matter of controversy. Some people refer to microchip implants as "the mark of the beast". Researchers agree that the use of the microchip in kids can be very useful to help locate lost kids as well as to prevent kids from being kidnapped. This paper compares some of the uses for the microchip, as well as some opposition to its use. The paper will put emphasis on the positives ways the microchip can be used in kids and how parents can benefit from it. And it will also explore some concerns from parties that think the microchip should not be used in humans.

INTRODUCTION

The implantation of a microchip beneath the human skin has created a remarkable history in art and technology. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved an implantable computer chip that can pass along a patient's medical details to doctors, providing easy access to individual medical records. (FDA Okays Implanted Chip for Health Care 2005).

Many believe that the microchip can help keep children safe using a verification microchip (VeriChip) that could tell a computer where the children are at any time to within a few meters. The VeriChip comes in a miniature form and generates a passive radio frequency identification device or RFID that stimulates and transmits a small amount of radio frequency energy of its data as the scanner, a special VeriChip device reader, passed through the VeriChip.

The VeriChip will be embedded with personal identification data and will adequately recognize the user as it connects to the information resource, which is an online secure database. Therefore, the information resource has a potential to keep track of the wireless device or the VeriChip and its carrier location by using global positioning system or GPS satellite technology.

Remarkably; this experimentation of implanting microchip has been around since the late 1950s and early 1960s. But it wasn't until Kevin Warwick a professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, England developed the technology that made it possible for the first child in Britain to volunteer to be "chipped" in 2002 after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman Carol (n.d). Not only kids have been implanted with microchips but also here in the United States families like the Jacob family have experimented with this technology. To weigh relevant facts that microchips can be utilised and be considered to be use on humans, in Palm Beach, Florida, the Jacobs' family was the first family voluntarily to get an implant (Goldman, 2002). As the pioneers among humans, they are the ones who have raised the controversial issue of implanting the new VeriChip.

The new vision of the VeriChip, which the Jacobs were interested in, has the capacity of a megabyte of programmable data. Therefore, with that quantity of data storage, this will definitely make possible for the advance surveillance technology to detect the wireless devices with the capability of global positioning system satellites (Goldman, 2002).

There is no doubt that the microchip implants can be of good use for many people. Art and technology have constructed a correlated scheme of ideas on the perfect future, while some groups believe that a microchip could be used maliciously for evil purposes in the near future (Hussin 2003). Some may argue that tagging children is wrong and unethical. Religious groups argue that the microchip is the "Mark of the beast", as mentioned in the Revelation chapter of the Bible.

He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666. (Revelation 13:16-18)

Also there is concern over the ethics of tagging our children's bodies. Some groups, including Barnardo's and Kidscape as well as sections of the media, said that it is a neurotic overreaction that would not benefit children in the long run Carol (n.d). in regards of implanting a microchip Professor