August 27th, 2009
Verichip is back seeking sweet stimulus cash
Verichip, the controversial implanted RFID tag that was pulled from the market last year, is back in business, targeting cash from the government’s HITECH stimulus.
The move follows former CEO Scott Silverman’s puchase of a majority stake in the company from The Stanley Works, to which it had sold out in July 2008.
The sale and pullback followed by just a few months the launch of a consumer campaign for the chips, which are often implanted in animals and may help slow an epidemic of horse rustling in South Florida which turns the animals into meat for wealthy people.
Those implants, too, have been linked to tumors.
CASPIAN, the anti-RFID lobby that pushed an earlier report linking Verichips to cancer, is probably already at work on a press release condemning the move.
CASPIAN is not the most radical of the anti-Verichip lobbyists. There are also groups who call it the mark of the beast.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 08/27/09
