How the FDA's New Plan for Wireless Medical Implants Will Delight and Horrify the Conspiracy Theorists

(MoneyWatch)  When PositiveID (PSID) announced earlier this month that it had stopped marketing its VeriMed microchip implant, a whole set of conspiracy theories about how the government wants all Americans implanted with RFID-enabled tracking devices imploded. No one wants PositiveID's chips -- which link to your online medical records --- and now, no one is making them (at least for medical records). Call it the conspiracy that never left the drawing board.

But yesterday the FDA and the FCC breathed new life into the worries of those on the far-right who believe that, ultimately, the federal government will take over American healthcare and require all citizens to submit to the chip before receiving treatment: The two government agencies announced a joint agreement to make approval of implantable wireless medical devices easier.

The agreement will hearten PositiveID, which has repurposed its chip into an implantable glucose monitoring device for diabetics. The chip has yet to receive FDA approval for that purpose, but the new memorandum of understanding between the FDA and FCC purports to make that process easier.

If you read the details of the FCC-FDA plan, most of it is a boring agreement about creating liaison officers at both agencies so the FDA knows where to go to make sure that a wireless device doesn't infringe on the bandwidth being used by WKRP in Cincinnati. But the tinfoil-hat crowd will doubtless be fascinated by the section of the agreement that states:

Build infrastructure and processes that meet the common needs for evaluating broadband and wireless enabled medical devices.

That "infrastructure" is likely just a bunch of committees that will assess new medical devices -- such as this one for stimulating paralyzed limbs. But history shows that government action in this area is often misinterpreted. Before healthcare reform was passed, a lot of people wrongly believed that a section of the bill required microchip implants for all Americans (it didn't). The Australian government's attempt to reduce medical errors by issuing everyone a 16-digit health ID number was interpreted as preparing the way to implant everyone with chips, which also work on a 16-digit system (that hasn't happened).

So I'm guessing that the word "infrastructure" in this case will be interpreted as an intent to build a system into which American sheeple will be herded prior to being tagged.

Related:

• Down With the Chip: PositiveID Axes Its Scary Medical Records Implant
  
• Does Newt Gingrich Favor Microchipping Alzheimer's Patients? His Sponsor Sure Does
• Inside the Australian Government's Scary Web Site on Microchip ID Implants
• Chip Implanter PositiveID Aims to Clean Up a PR Mess -- One of Its Own Making