Microchip Update

Last month, I wrote about a story that was broken by Associated Press reporting that implantable microchips are linked to the development of sarcomas in laboratory animals. On November 20, a group called CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) released a comprehensive 48-page report reviewing the academic literature on this topic. They identified 11 articles related to implantable microchips. In 6 of these articles, tumors were reported in laboratory mice or rats adjacent to implanted microchips. Between 0.8% and 10.2% of the animals developed tumors, depending on the study. There were also two reports of microchip-related cancer in dogs.

In my blog entry, I suggested that one manufacturer of these chips (VeriChip) might have engaged in some less-than-honorable behavior by hiring as a board member the man who was the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) at the time that these chips were being evaluated for safety. HHS directly oversees the Food and Drug Administration, the group charged with determining the safety of medical devices like these. This questionable behavior continued, as the CEO of VeriChip was quoted recently as saying that none of the tumors found in mice in a 2006 French study were malignant. This is not true – the study identified these tumors as sarcomas, and sarcomas are malignant.

In the words of the author of Cool Dog Hall of Fame, the decision to microchip pets has become much more difficult in light of these reports. Pet owners now need to weigh the risk of cancer against the benefit of potentially being reunited with a lost pet and make a tough decision. Much more research is necessary before the use of these devices in humans can be condoned. Based on the evidence available so far, Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was quoted as saying, "There's no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members."