Fergie's Tech Blog

Former Bush official signs up for RFID implant

Although I've seen this reported several places today, Boing Boing has the best summary of this dose of promotional insanity. David Pescovitz posts:

President Bush's former Health and Human Services Secretary, Tommy Thompson, onetime Governor of Wisconsin, is getting an RFID implant. Why is he volunteering for the Mark of the Beast? Promotional reasons! Thompson is on the board of Applied Digital, owner of RFID vendor VeriChip. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Thompson said people will eventually get beyond any queasy feelings about having a chip implanted.

"It will prevent babies from being picked up by the wrong people in a maternity ward and make sure people in nursing homes don't walk away," Thompson said.

So far, about 7,000 chips for people have been sold, with about 2,000 implanted worldwide, said Scott R. Silverman, chairman and chief executive of Applied Digital, which owns VeriChip.

Once Thompson gets chipped, chances are it won't help him in an emergency. Only two hospitals - Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston - read the chips, Silverman said.

No worries, said Rebecca Harmon, a spokeswoman for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

"We can always take him to the vet school," she said.

Link (Thanks, Xeni!)

posted by Fergie @ 7/19/2005 04:23:00 PM