RFID Implants cause cancer?

http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/09/rfid-implants-linked-to-c ancer-in-lab-tests/

I don't know what to think about this. Certainly I don't want to get cancer, however I don't know how reliable this is. It says about 1% Which is a very small percentage, but is it worth it? Should I have mine removed? I love my tag. I'm one of about 2000 people in the world that have it done. What else can you say that about? I'd like to hear everyone else's take on this

cyberpunk_hex wrote: I'm in the same boat, I have an implanted RFID tag too. I would like to state a few logical things though. A RFID tag is the size of a grain of rice, now that is small, but on a rat's size scale that is rather large. What about all of the other implanted items that have been used for decades, like pacemakers, artificial joints, and subcutaneous birth control systems. Also what about all the pets that have been chipped for over a decade now?

well, the pets that have been chipped over a decade is where they are finding the issues, according to the article i posted. I agree that the chip for us is rather small, unlike how it is to another animal. Have there been any instances of cancer among humans that anyone knows of?

A few months (May) ago I posted about this very issue here, and even sent the link to several media outlets. I received absolutely zero response from them, but I guess some AP guy got ahold of it and put out a PR about it that was run by several media outlets.

Below is the contents of that post which detail my thoughts about it. The short story is that I believe the cause of this is the coating on these implants, and not the glass encasement or action of the implant itself. Now, here's the contents of the post:

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Below is an interesting email I got a couple days ago and my response. Very interesting:

email wrote: What about the risks of cancer? Some animals like rats and dogs died from chip-induced cancer (http://www.vetpathology.org/cgi/content/short/43/4/545 and one more here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&a mp;a mp;a mp;db=PubMed&list_uids=9314053&dopt=Abstract )

The main difference between animal implants and the glass tags I have which I repurposed for implantation is the fact that all animal implants have a special coating around them which allows the body’s flesh to grow into the porous material in an effort to “lock” the implant in place and not let it migrate (move) around in the body. Migration is a major concern when implants are injected into certain areas of the body, including fatty masses, muscular tissue (as the VeriChip human implant is), and membrane areas that separate body cavities.
 
Glass is chemically inert, and the body does not even really know my implants are in there. But, by covering the glass implants with this special coating, I see two potential problems for the body… the first is that I suspect that parts of this coating are chemically reactive, and can break down and/or react with chemicals in the body. The second issue is that, by it’s very nature and purpose, it provides a rather random and rough physical structure for the body’s cells to attempt to grow into. Animal cells have a special mechanism in them that tells them to stop growing into a space once it detects a “wall” or boundary. When placed in a Petri dish, healthy cells will grow to cover the dish with a flat, uniform surface that is exactly one cell thick. The cells will stop expanding across the surface once they reach the walls of the dish. The same thing happens in the body. Cancer cells divide at a much higher rate and do not pay attention to the space they are growing in. Cancer cells in a Petri dish will grow until they run out of food or the dish is overflowing with bulbous mounds of mutated cells. While I’m no medical doctor, I believe the anti-migration coating on pet implants is the cause of these medical findings, and not the glass wall of the implant, and definitely not the function of the implant itself. Because the implant is totally powerless and inert while not being scanned by a vet, pets are getting more radiation from being around the 110v AC house power wiring than from the one to three seconds of exposure to very very low amounts of electromagnetic radiation generated by the reader and implant when functioning.

Oh, I should mention one thing… it was stated that animals died due to cancer caused by the chip implant, and I have to say I don't think those articles directly state that the animals died specifically of cancer, they just say the tissue surrounding the implant site was examined and various abnormal cellular growths were found. There's a big difference between dying of malignant cancer tumors and simply finding abnormal / cancerous tissues surrounding the implant site. That being said, I wouldn't want ANY abnormal or cancerous tissue in my body if I could help it, and that's why I'm more concerned than ever about the anti-migration coating that these pet and VeriChip human implants all have on them.

Also, I'd like to point out that cancer cells form and grow naturally in everyone's body each and every day. Your immune system fights them off and that's the normal course of things. If the balance is tipped by something, either your immune system is compromised, or you have something in your body (toxins, radiation, chemicals, etc.) that cause more cells to mutate and become cancerous, then you get malignancy and "cancer". It could simply be that the anti-migration coating does increase the tendency of healthy cells to mutate and go "rouge" and become cancerous, and that these specific pets did not have strong enough immune systems to take care of the outbreak of cancerous cells... thus causing these soft tumors to grow faster than the pet's immune system could control the outbreak.

Anyway, thanks a lot for bringing this up... it's a very important issue, and I'd be really curious to see if these types of abnormal tissues show up in human VeriChip implantees over time.

Edited by amal - 09 September 2007 at 10:03pm

hurleyint1386 wrote: hmm, that's interesting. So it seems as if it's the material on the outside of the implant that's causing the cancer. So if someone (like myself) were to buy the glass chip from Phidgets, and had it sanitized, then I shouldn't have issues with it? That's definitely a big relieve. I've grown accustomed to my RFID. I'd hate to get rid of it.

Of course, I'm not going to hand out medical advice... that would be lunacy in our society ;) I will say that I personally feel that I am safe because I can't find anything aside from the anti-migration coating that could cause these kinds of problems. Check out my blog post for more insight into this issue. Well, I guess it's not more insight... just a reiteration of what I said here ;)