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Third Reich to Fortune 500: Five Popular Brands the Nazis Gave
Posted on 1/13/2008
By Mike Huang

Already today you've used at least one product from a company that, at one time, worked for the Nazis. Now, in the name of not getting sued, we'd like to make it clear that we're not accusing any of the below companies of still being in bed with the Third Reich. All of them, to our knowledge, have long disavowed Hitler's regime as being both monstrous and no longer profitable.

Hugo Boss

No yuppie's wardrobe is complete without their standard Hugo Boss suit, Hugo Boss dress shirt, Hugo Boss tie, Hugo Boss sunglasses, Hugo Boss cologne, Hugo Boss man-thong and Hugo Boss socks (to stuff the thong). Even if you're too poor to afford Boss' goods, you can recognize Boss ads from a mile away. They always feature serious-looking men who, despite having enough money for expensive suits, appear to be addicted to heroin. They typically wear tight clothing, and gaze at you wantonly with hollow eyes of infinite, longing that scream, "I'm attractive and I'm really very unhappy about it."

Job with Nazis:
Speaking of stern, closeted white men, Hugo Boss manufactured the sleek all-black uniforms for the Schultzstaffel, better known as the SS. While today Boss uses black for slimming effects, in the SS uniforms it was used to command respect and fear in the populace. While their guns and propensity for genocide probably handled all required respect commanding just fine, the black uniforms did soak up sunlight during the summer months, causing the wearer to sweat uncomfortably and stink like a pack of Mongolian shit-camels. Members of the Hitler Youth were also decked out in Boss wear, teaching children an early lesson in looking good whilst beating up minorities.



So how evil were they?
Most of the uniforms were made in what can be considered the forerunner to the modern day sweatshop, at times by Prisoners of War. Also, it's impossible to underestimate the importance of those uniforms to the whole Nazi image. To this day, they are essentially synonymous with "evil." The influence of the design has been widespread, especially in film where their influence has been noted in the outfits of the Imperial officers from Star Wars.



But, unlike the products of some other companies on this list, the uniforms weren't directly responsible for killing people. In fact, since they actually made the wearers uncomfortable and smelly for a quarter of the year, relative to the rest of the companies on this list Hugo Boss probably deserves a medal of some sort.

Volkswagen
German automaker Volkswagen came on the scene just before World War II, and was founded by Ferdinand Porsche. He's the granddaddy of those fast and expensive cars that wind up becoming fast and expensive fireballs upon impact with a solid object.
Long before the name Porsche became synonymous with expensive toys for rich people, Ferdinand was the lead designer of the most mass-produced car of all time: the Volkswagen Beetle.

Job with Nazis:
What's more surprising, however, is that Porsche's partner in masterminding the Beetle was also the mastermind of World War II: that crazy, affable buffoon Hitler. Hitler specifically wanted a cheap, sturdy vehicle everyone in Germany would be able to drive. Being the opportunistic businessman that he was, Porsche quickly whipped up the Volkswagen Beetle and lobbied heavily for the Fuhrer's approval. Soon, Porsche had his slave labor factories churning them out by the thousands, and eventually, flying out of dealerships.



So how evil were they?
If anything, the Beetle is perhaps one of the most misconstrued cars in history. People look at its rounded shape and anthropomorphic face and instantly think of love, peace and smoking massive quantities of pot. But, it was really designed as a tool for everyday life in the always-cheerful Third Reich. Give credit to Porsche for designing a car so impossibly cute that we forget it was built by diseased slaves in some dark, dank factory in Stuttgart, Germany.

IBM


IBM is one of the few IT companies whose history dates back to the 19th century, a time when information technology presumably involved putting a helmet on your carrier pigeon. On the one hand, this means they've been a Fortune 500 company since 1924, giving them a 60-year head start on the likes of Microsoft and Macintosh. On the other hand, over a century of history gives you a lot of opportunities to make some monstrous PR blunders.

Job with Nazis:
You're probably thinking, "Wait a minute. IBM was American! The closest America ever got to the Nazis was when Indiana Jones wore that uniform as a disguise in Raiders of the Lost Ark!"

Actually, prior to the war, American business took what can be generously described as a morally ambivalent stance on the whole Hitler thing. American groups, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Institute, directly funded Nazi eugenics projects in the early '30s (where the goal was to find ways to breed a master race). Of course, once the war started, most American businesses cut ties with Hitler. IBM, on the other hand, decided to stick around and see where he was going with this whole final solution thing.

And, this is the point where things take a horrific turn. To get through this, we're going to try to offset the horror with some kittens playing on computers. We'll just look at them while we type.



Back in those days, the only way to keep track of huge databases was with an extremely complicated system involving punch cards, and IBM was the best at constructing and maintaining those databases. IBM's punch card databases could keep track of anything: financial ledgers, medical records, Jews.

According to a book a guy wrote about it, as soon as the Nazis invaded a country, they would overhaul the census system using IBM punch cards. Then they'd track down every Jew, Gypsy and any other non-Aryan until they were all rounded up onto cattle carts. And, next stop wasn't Space Mountain.

So how evil were they?
The unabashedly anti-corporate documentary The Corporation shows actual footage of IBM punch cards used in prison camps, about two minutes into this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkoM8RB-kJ0

That tracked people based on their religion, their location and even how they'd be executed. For instance, Prisoner Code 8 was Jew, Code 11 was Gypsy. Camp Code 001 was Auschwitz; Code 002 was Buchenwald. Status Code 5 was execution by order, and Code 6 was gas chamber. Holy shit, people. Seriously, IBM. What the fuck?

These days, IBM claims they were a victim of circumstance. They had a subsidiary in Germany long before Hitler took over. They say the company just fell under Nazi control, like every other company over there at the time. The records show that's not completely true, though. IBM sent internal memos in their New York offices acknowledging that their machines were making the Nazis more efficient, and they made no efforts to end the relationship with the German branch.

IBM has never made an apology or admitted any need to apologize at all, hoping instead that with time everyone would just forget about it. And, we pretty much have, because, hey, they make such awesome computers!

Bayer

Bayer, the massive pharmaceutical company that's most famous for making Aspirin, also is behind such wonder drugs as Levitra and, at one time in their history, heroin.



es, we can go on for ages about how wonderful aspirin is to stop heart attacks, or how Levitra can give you wood for weeks, but really, Bayer is most important for given heroin its name. The drug was promoted as having "heroic" properties, which is ironic since it by all accounts turns you into a shivering shell of a man.

Bayer also lent its name to a German soccer team, and to be honest, we're not sure if it's such a good idea to have your team named after a company that sold smack. Just imagine what the mascot would have to look like. We're thinking a Pete Doherty decked out in a blue suit with furry antennae who passes out halfway through the chicken dance.

ob with Nazis:
Then again, it's probably even worse to name your team after the company that made Zyklon B gas, the stuff that killed millions of people in the concentration camps. Yep, Bayer was once part of a large conglomerate, IG Farben, that churned out thousands of killer Zyklon-B gas canisters. The gas was originally invented by Fritz Haber, a man whose life is so incredibly pathetic that you almost forgive him for indirectly causing millions of deaths, while looking as evil as humanly possible.

After he oversaw the first use of chemicals in warfare, his wife killed herself in their garden with his service revolver in protest. Once Hitler took over, Haber decided to renounce Judaism to fit in, only to be told that he was still Jewish according to the Nazi rule book because his mother was Jewish. He died of a heart attack while fleeing the country he spent his life serving. The chemical he originally invented to kill insects was used to kill a number of his relatives in the Concentration Camps.

So how evil were they?
On one hand, the company that actually manufactured the gas was just partially owned by IG Farben, and Bayer was just one part of IG Farben. It's like the way we don't think of General Electric as a military contractor, because they make so many other things.

Bayer, though, has continued some of its old douchebaggery into the modern era. First off, Aspirin was invented by a Jewish man, Arthur Eichengrun, whose name Bayer still refuses to acknowledge. To this day, the "official" history of the company denies Eichengrun's involvement in the invention of aspirin, and states that an Aryan invented the drug, because as we all know, Aryans are better at everything.

One such Bayer-employed Aryan was a nice, thoughtful fellow by the name of Josef Mengele, who Bayer sponsored to seek out medical discoveries in the important field of torturing people to death. We have some hard questions for Bayer. Actually, just one question, which is, "What the fuck, Bayer? Dude."

Siemens

Siemens AG is the massive global conglomerate that makes everything from circuits to wind turbines to Maglev trains. It has almost half a million employees worldwide and is listed on every stock exchange imaginable. The company had its roots back in the 19th century when famed scientist Werner von Siemens got tired of discovering stuff and decided to make some money instead.

Of course, he was dead long before the 1940s, so Mr. Werner von Siemens is guilty of nothing more than not entering the world of porn with that gift of a name. The company he gave that name to may as well have it's corporate headquarters inside a dormant volcano, because it probably couldn't have been more evil if it were trying its hardest.

Job with Nazis:
Siemens was the major player in the Nazification of Germany. The company, run by Werner's son, Carl, and then his grandson, Hermann, struggled in the wake of World War I and the Great Depression and had to earn some dough fast. When Hitler rose to power in the 1930s, it was the signal for the Siemens executives to start building factories, and nowhere was the real estate better than near the homey neighborhoods of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.



Hundreds of thousands of slave workers were employed to build all sorts of goodies for the German military to use on both the western and the eastern fronts. Though they weren't the only company at the time supplying the German war effort, they were certainly the most prolific. Siemens was in charge of Germany's rail infrastructure, communications, power generation ... the list goes on. If the Reichstag was the brain behind the war, Siemens was definitely the right hand that stroked Hitler to ecstatic glory.

So how evil were they?
We'll let you be the judge. At the height of the Nazi terror during the 1940s, it was not atypical for a slave worker to build electrical switches for Siemens in the morning and be snuffed out in a Siemens-made gas chamber in the afternoon.
Why else would the Allies destroy four-fifths of the company's factories during the war? Because they were bored? Fuck no. It's because they intended to blitz the marque brand of Nazi Germany back into hell where it belonged.

These days Siemens is being forced to pay due to a series of lawsuits from survivors. So, at least they own up to it, right?

Well, a few years ago, in an act of insensitive fuckery so colossal it could blot out the sun, Siemens tried to trademark the name "Zyklon" with the intent of marketing a series of products under the name. Including gas ovens.
Fuck it. If you need us, we'll be on the island.
http://tinyurl.com/38lrhh

How corrupt are the Democrats with the Mormon Mafia/CIA?
January 11, 2008
by Steve Davis with Patrick Martin
(Posted by Doug Wallace)

For many years I have warned members of the Mormon Church about secret operations the CIA uses through foreign returned LDS missionaries in controlling every day life throughout the world. The only location not under the control of the Mormon Mafia is the US general public. Americans still believe Mormons are a cult. Since the days of Brigham Young and the announced “Utah War” in 1857 after Albert Pike and the Freemasons (including Heber C. Kimball and BYoung) murdered Mormon Apostle Parley P. Pratt near Fort Smith, Arkansas (9/11/1857 Mountain Massacre beginning event) the One World Order group has (money-changers) failed to destroy the US of A. The following special question given to the three leading Democrat candidates in New Hampshire, plus a recent exposed Democrat letter reflect how corrupt politics has become:

Steve Davis

A warning to the American people: “Thinking the unthinkable” at the Democratic presidential debate

One exchange during Saturday’s debate among the Democratic presidential candidates in New Hampshire underscores the turn by the US ruling elite and its major political agencies—the Democratic and Republican parties and the media—to unfettered militarism and away from any genuine commitment to democracy.

ABC News anchorman Charles Gibson asked a question which he called “the central one in my mind on nuclear terrorism.” He continued:

“The next president of the United States may have to deal with a nuclear attack on an American city. I’ve read a lot about this in recent days. The best nuclear experts in the world say there’s a 30 percent chance in the next 10 years. Some estimates are higher. Graham Allison, at Harvard, says it’s over 50 percent. Senator Sam Nunn, in 2005, who knows a lot about this, posed two questions that stick in my mind. And I want to put them to you here. On the day after a nuclear weapon goes off in an American city, what would we wish we had done to prevent it? And what will we actually do on the day after?”

The “probability” estimates cited by Gibson have zero scientific credibility, since they come from “experts” associated with the US military/intelligence apparatus, who have a professional interest in terrorizing the American people with the prospect of nuclear annihilation in order to intimidate opponents of American military aggression around the world. But none of the Democratic candidates challenged Gibson for echoing the scare-mongering tactics of the Bush administration.

Former senator John Edwards embraced Gibson’s premise, saying, “In the short term, we’re faced with very, very serious threats about the possibility of these nuclear weapons getting in the hands of a terrorist group or somebody who wants to attack the United States of America. The first thing is we have to immediately find out who’s responsible and go after them. And that is the responsibility of the president of the United States. Because if someone has attacked us with a nuclear weapon, it means they have nuclear technology, it means they could have gotten another nuclear weapon into the United States that we’re unaware of. We have to find these people immediately and use every tool available to us to stop them.”

Senator Barack Obama regularly denounces the use of the 9/11 attacks by the Bush administration and the Republican presidential candidates to spread fear and win votes, but he likewise accepted the question as legitimate and sought to demonstrate his willingness to use force. Obama faced media criticism last summer when he failed to promise instant retaliation when asked a similar question during a debate.

“I think this is the most significant foreign policy issue that we confront,” he said—an extraordinary statement given the hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed by the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq.

He continued: “We would obviously have to retaliate against anybody who struck American soil, whether it was nuclear or not. It would be a much more profound issue if it were nuclear weapons.”

Gibson then turned to Senator Hillary Clinton, reminding her that it would be a terrorist group, not an identifiable state, responsible for the hypothetical nuclear attack. Clinton first criticized the performance of the Bush administration in such areas as port security, and then argued, “The stateless terrorists will operate from somewhere. I mean, part of our message has to be there is no safe haven. If we can demonstrate that the people responsible for planning the nuclear attack on our country may not themselves be in a government or associated with a state, but have a haven within one, then every state in the world must know we will retaliate against those states.”

Citing the Cold War doctrine of nuclear deterrence, she concluded, “We have to make it clear to those states that would give safe haven to stateless terrorists that would launch a nuclear attack against America that they would also face a very heavy retaliation.”

It is notable that not one of the three leading Democratic candidates made reference to the measures that would be required to deal with the massive human cost of a nuclear attack. In this, they follow the lead of the Bush administration, which, while hyping the threat of terrorism incessantly, has done little or nothing in the way of practical preparation to deal with the possible consequences—as the dismal response of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to Hurricane Katrina demonstrated.

There is a more fundamental issue, however, than the efforts of the Democrats to take up the mantle of the “war on terror.” That issue is what the very posing of the question says about the state of American democracy.

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration and the main repressive agencies of the federal government—the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI—have been developing plans for the suspension of constitutional rule and the establishment of an executive branch dictatorship.

Nearly six years ago it was revealed that the Bush administration had assigned hundreds of federal officials to ensure “continuity of government” in the event of a terrorist attack on Washington DC. This was to be an openly dictatorial regime, drawn solely from the executive branch. No judges or elected legislators were to be included in the “shadow government,” and top legislators were not even aware of its existence.

In the years since, a definite modus operandi has emerged. Whenever the Bush administration feels under siege politically, the threat of terrorism is used to spread fear and anxiety among the American people, distract them from the deepening social and economic crisis of the capitalist system, and intimidate political opponents of the administration’s program of endless war.

In the spring and summer of 2004, with Bush trailing in opinion polls, there were numerous suggestions originating in the White House and the military-intelligence apparatus that the presidential election might have to be postponed in the event of a new terrorist atrocity. Bush administration officials told the press, referring to such an attack, “It’s going to happen.”

The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice even began investigating the legal basis for suspending or postponing the November vote. Ultimately, the listless campaign of the pro-war Democratic candidate John Kerry provided so weak a challenge to Bush that such measures were unnecessary.

The 2004 election was only one occasion in which such police-state preparations came to light. They have been ongoing throughout the entire course of the Bush administration. They originated well before 9/11, within weeks of Bush’s installation in the White House after the Supreme Court intervention in the 2000 presidential election.

These measures include the establishment of a vast apparatus of domestic spying and eavesdropping, first broached to several domestic telecommunications companies in early 2001; the passage of the Patriot Act; the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security; the creation of the Northern Command, the first-ever Pentagon command controlling all troops in the continental US; the creation of a worldwide network of CIA-run detention camps; and a series of “counter-terror” exercises in which federal civilian and military authorities simulated the imposition of a state of emergency in the United States.

In August 2005, the Washington Post revealed that the US military had developed plans for imposing martial law on cities, regions or the entire country in response to a terrorist attack. The existence of the plans was made known to the Post’s senior military correspondent at the direction of the White House and Pentagon.

The planning envisioned as many as 15 different scenarios in which “the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources.” The Post cited military statements that such a declaration of martial law “probably would be temporary.”

The World Socialist Web Site observed at the time (“Pentagon devising scenarios for martial law in US”): “The anti-terrorism scare has a propaganda purpose: to manipulate the American people and induce the public to accept drastic inroads against democratic rights. As the Pentagon planning suggests, the American working class faces the danger of some form of military-police dictatorship in the United States.”

While he made no mention of it in framing his question about nuclear terrorism, Charles Gibson is undoubtedly well aware of these preparations for military rule. So are the presidential candidates who gave answers emphasizing their willingness to use military force—and implicitly sanctioning whatever restrictions would be deemed necessary on democratic rights at home.

The leadership of the Democratic Party has given one demonstration after another over the past decade that it is hostile to any struggle to defend democratic rights—even when, as in the Florida election crisis of 2000, its own access to power and privilege was directly affected. Saturday’s debate in New Hampshire was a further demonstration of this fundamental political fact.

Declassified letter exposes Democratic Party complicity in CIA torture

Last week, January 2, 2008, the CIA declassified a February 2003 letter from Democratic Representative Jane Harman of California discussing the planned destruction of videotapes depicting the interrogation and torture of prisoners held by the CIA.

Harman requested that the CIA release the letter in order to show her supposed criticism of the agency’s plans to destroy the evidence. In a statement on the letter, Harman said that it “makes clear my concern about possible destruction of any tapes.” In fact, the letter only underscores the fact that the Democratic Party was aware of and supported the CIA’s secret policy of torture.

Democrats knew of plans to destroy evidence of interrogations, but made no serious attempt to stop it or inform the American people. Indeed, Harman’s “concern” was in effect an indication to the CIA that the Democrats would not challenge a decision to destroy the tapes and would not expose the agency if it did so.

The videotapes, involving hundreds of hours of interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were secretly destroyed in November 2005. Their destruction was only publicly disclosed last month, though several Democrats had been made aware of the action at least a year ago.

Perhaps the most significant section of the three-paragraph letter is that dealing with the CIA’s interrogation policy, not the plans for destroying the tapes. Harman made clear that she supported the program of “enhanced interrogation,” which included the use of the notorious torture technique of waterboarding. The letter amounted to a green light for the continuation of the program, which was kept secret from the American people for several more years.

In the letter, addressed to CIA General Counsel Scott Muller, Harman discusses a briefing given to a few leading Democratic and Republican congressmen the week before. She says that the briefing “brought home to me the difficult challenges faced by the Central Intelligence Agency in the current threat environment. I realize we are at a time when the balance between security and liberty must be constantly evaluated and recalibrated in order to protect our nation and its people from catastrophic terrorist attack...”

Harman reported that at the hearing, Muller “assured us that the [redacted] approved by the Attorney General have been subject to an extensive review by lawyers at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council and found to be within the law.”

Harman, who is a graduate of Harvard Law School, indicated no disagreement with these legal findings, even though the methods employed by the CIA are clear violations of anti-torture statutes and international treaties. She merely questioned whether or not what she later calls “enhanced techniques” were consistent with US policy and whether or not they had been “authorized and approved by the President.”

Many of the documents arguing for the legality of torture have never been released to the public. However, one such document was leaked to the public—the infamous August 2002 “torture memo,” prepared by Justice Department lawyers—which argued that the president has the constitutional right to torture as part of his war powers. This memo presumably formed part of the legal rationale presented by the CIA to Harman and others to justify the torture methods.

Harman’s acceptance of the legal rationale for torture was in line with the reaction of the entire Democratic Party to the antidemocratic policies implemented by the White House, using the “war on terror” and the attacks of September 11 as a pretext.

According to a Washington Post article published last month, in 2002 four congressional leaders, including the current speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, another Democrat from California, were “given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators devised to try to make the prisoners talk.”

The meeting with Harman in February 2003 evidently also included a discussion of the CIA’s plans to destroy the tapes. Harman wrote to Muller, “You discussed the fact that there is a videotape of Abu Zubaydah following his capture that will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes his inquiry. I would urge the Agency to reconsider that plan.”

Harman does not suggest that the tapes should be preserved because they depict illegal activity and therefore constitute evidence of a crime. She also does not oppose the Bush administration’s determination that the destruction of the tapes would be legal. Rather, she suggests, “The videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future. The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the Agency,” she concludes. In other words, Harman’s concern was largely one of public relations.

The references to an inquiry by the CIA inspector general apparently refers to an examination, carried out by inspector general John Helgerson, into the CIA’s interrogation techniques. The inquiry was completed in the spring of 2004, but there were no public references to it until November 2005. It was reportedly critical of the “enhanced interrogation” techniques.

On November 9, 2005, the New York Times published an article citing officials familiar with the report. According to the Times, the officials “said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.”

The Times exposure of the Inspector General report is another possible motivating factor behind the CIA’s decision to go ahead and destroy the tapes in November 2005. That same month, other reports exposed for the first time the existence of the CIA network of secret prisons. The government was also being pressed in several court cases to turn over all evidence and records of interrogation.

The role of the Democrats in supporting and helping cover up the CIA’s torture program and the subsequent destruction of videotapes ensures that any Congressional investigation will be a whitewash. It appears increasingly likely that Democrats will scale down Congressional inquiries on the grounds that the Justice Department has launched its own criminal investigation.

Last week, Democrats moved quickly to praise an announcement by Attorney General Michael Mukasey that a criminal investigation will begin. Mukasey’s selection of John Durham, a deputy US attorney from Connecticut, has been portrayed in the media and by Democrats as a move to give the investigation greater independence. This is false. Durham’s work will be subordinate to and filtered by the Justice Department, which means the Bush administration. It will have no “independence” from those who are deeply complicit in the crime that is supposedly under investigation.

The attitude of sections of the liberal establishment was expressed in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times on January 4. The Times is the principal newspaper in California—the home state of both Harman and Pelosi.

The editors wrote that Mukasey “has displayed a commendable sensitivity to appearances” by appointing Durham to lead the criminal investigation. The newspaper said that congressmen “shouldn’t complicate his assignment by forcing key figures in the criminal investigation to testify on Capitol Hill—at least for now.”

Meanwhile, the Justice Department investigation will likely be dragged out for an extended period of time and possibly through the end of the Bush administration’s term of office.
http://tinyurl.com/2jnfnh

RFID implants linked to cancer tumors: Newstarget.com
Tucson 1.08.2008 08:09 GMT (FINDITT)

Small electronic chips approved by the FDA for implanting beneath human skin have been linked to cancer in laboratory animals, according to a research review conducted by the Associated Press.

The radio frequency identification (RFID) chips are made by VeriChip Corp. They are designed to carry a serial number, which can be read when scanned by anyone with an RFID sensor. Medical workers can then use that number to access a patient's medical history from a web site maintained by the corporation, provided they have paid the annual access fee.

The chips, which are approximately twice the size of a grain of rice, were approved by the FDA for human implantation in 2005. But the Associated Press has revealed that as early as 1996, researchers had uncovered a link between the devices and cancer. Rodents implanted with the chips were found to develop malignant tumors beneath the skin, usually surrounding the devices. The rates were high enough -- as high as 10 percent of animals implanted, in a 1998 study -- to raise warning bells with the researchers, who reported their concern in peer-reviewed journals.

None of the studies were looking for carcinogenic effects from the RFID tags, but in each case the researchers ruled out other possible causes. Although there was no non-implanted control group in many of the studies, the evidence is strong enough to convince many researchers that more research is needed before any more human implantation takes place.

The conclusion of this article appears on NewsTarget.com, the independent natural health news source for consumers. This article, along with other related articles and uncensored news on important consumer health topics, can be found blow.
http://tinyurl.com/2hmxyp

Originally published January 8 2008
RFID Implants Found to Cause Cancer Tumors
by David Gutierrez

(NewsTarget) Small electronic chips approved by the FDA for implanting beneath human skin have been linked to cancer in laboratory animals, according to a research review conducted by the Associated Press.

The radio frequency identification (RFID) chips are made by VeriChip Corp. They are designed to carry a serial number, which can be read when scanned by anyone with an RFID sensor. Medical workers can then use that number to access a patient's medical history from a web site maintained by the corporation, provided they have paid the annual access fee.

The chips, which are approximately twice the size of a grain of rice, were approved by the FDA for human implantation in 2005. But the Associated Press has revealed that as early as 1996, researchers had uncovered a link between the devices and cancer. Rodents implanted with the chips were found to develop malignant tumors beneath the skin, usually surrounding the devices. The rates were high enough -- as high as 10 percent of animals implanted, in a 1998 study -- to raise warning bells with the researchers, who reported their concern in peer-reviewed journals.

None of the studies were looking for carcinogenic effects from the RFID tags, but in each case the researchers ruled out other possible causes. Although there was no non-implanted control group in many of the studies, the evidence is strong enough to convince many researchers that more research is needed before any more human implantation takes place.

"There's no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members," said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

"This research review clearly shows cause of concern over the mass microchipping of our population for medical purposes," explained consumer health advocate Mike Adams. "Intelligent, reasonable people will naturally reject such chip implants, which is exactly why the company is targeting individuals suffering from cognitive decline, such as Alzheimer's patients," Adams added.

So far, 2,000 people have been implanted with VeriChip's RFID chips. The company has identified is target market in the United States as 45 million people, starting with Alzheimer's and diabetes patients.
http://tinyurl.com/yq4a4m