Drug bottles get spy chips
p2pnet.net News:- Prescription bottles containing Viagra, one of the most counterfeited drugs in the world and much touted by email spammers, will soon have spy-chips.
The Food and Drug Administration and several major drug makers are expected to announce initiatives today that will put tiny radio antennas on the labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting and fraud," says the New York Times.
The FDA recently approved an implantable computer chip, "that can pass a patient’s medical details to doctors, speeding care".
Now ‘officials’ are quoted as saying tagged bottles holding Viagra and other drugs such as pain-killing narcotic OxyContin will start going to distributors this week.
The FDA’s involvement is "crucial" because drug manufacturers can’t change a label without its approval, says the report.
"In its announcement, the agency is expected to say that it is setting up a working group to resolve any problems that arise from the use of radio antennas on drug labels," states the NYT.
However, it doesn’t say whether or not the gropup will address privacy issues which are certain to arise from the use of spy-chips on drug containers.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is being used more and more, including in false teeth.
Governments and commercial entities pass this off as harmless, beneficial, cost-efficient. But privacy advocates, such as CASPIAN’s (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion) say the chips open up a frightening potential for abuse.
Will riffed drug bottles eventually be used by police under various ‘protection’ scenarios?
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See:-
tiny radio antennas – Tiny Antennas to Keep Tabs on U.S. Drugs, New York Times, November 15, 2004 implantable – FDA approves spy chip, p2pnet, October 13, 2004
frightening potential – Spy chip health hazards, p2pnet, October 22, 2004
November 18th, 2004 at 11:29 pm
If this comes to pass in a mass retrospec, then whats to stop them from putting these things in our hands. I know this is a pretty mondain topic the resides some where in everyone’s mind, but i wanted to know if anyone out there had seem any evidence of this in newspapers or whatever. Thx.