I spent some time today reviewing the mass of comments on “Animal Tags for People?”—there were 68 of them at last count—and two things stand out to me:
–Weariness, and wariness, about the fear mongering that has come to permeate so much of our lives. It’s generated by both government and corporations. VeriChip’s big pitch on behalf of the RFID chip-in-the-arm is that the information could save your life if you are brought into a hospital unconscious or confused. One of the readers asks these pointed questions: “What does my ID have to do with how you’d treat me in an emergency? Maybe you could start by whipping out that stethoscope? By the way, when was the last time I was unconscious with no one to identify me? Never.”
–The genuine sadness that people feel about what’s happening to privacy and independence in our country. I used to think that people railing against big government were kooks out in the wilds of Colorado and Montana, but no longer. The same feelings of betrayal underlie so many of the comments that it’s clearly no longer a fringe thing. Some of the feeling is tied to prophetic Biblical stories associated with marking animals. Some is just out-and-out upset about the symbolism of these chips grabbing another chunk of our freedom. Fairly typical is this one: “This is no longer a free country. Corporations and their lobbyists control this country and have decided your individual rights and freedoms are too costly. With an RF chip embedded in our bodies, our freedoms will be as limited as the cattle we eat.”
The comments have opened my eyes even further to the growing need to question closely supposed technological miracles, especially in health care. We are so encouraged to look to technology to solve our problems, whether through miraculous new drugs from biotech companies that will cure cancer, or bio-engineering to predict what diseases we’ll get. Stanford Medicine Magazine has a very interesting new article pointing out that more than 3,000 new medical devices were introduced last year, with an expected $139 billion in sales over the next five years. Even this center of the medical establishment feels compelled to ask: What the hell is going on here?
We want much of this technology so as to allay our fears, and to avoid responsibility for our negligence in caring for ourselves. Unfortunately, there is always a quid pro quo. And freedom is an awfully high price to pay.
Recent Comments