An associated Press article stunned cat and other pet owners. A series of extremely accredited study studies, done over the last decade, show the same microchips used to track pets are the cause of fast-growing, malignant cancers in 1% to 10% of lab animals tested. Now animal owners are faced with what to do.
Why are the microchips causing cancer?
Mouse
As Dr. Katherine Albrecht, a consumer teacher and privacy advocate who helped study and break this story, explains what scientists believe is happening is similar to a base splinter. When you get a splinter in your finger, your body does everything it can to get rid of it. The site gets red, it swells up and attempts to dislodge the foreign object.
What to Do if Your Cat Gets Fast - keen Cancer From Microchip Tracking Devices
However, when a microchip is embedded deep in the fatty tissue of your cat or other pet, its body can not push the chip out like a splinter. Instead an inflammation forms colse to the microchip. Scientists believe these inflamed cells can turn malignant and then metastasize and move colse to in the body. What's worse is these tumors can be fast-growing and malignant.
What the study shows
Between 1996-2006 eight published veterinary and toxicology journals reported that lab mice and rats injected with microchips sometimes had a tendency to fabricate subcutaneous "sarcomas" or malignant tumors surrounding the implants. Below are a brief overview of the some of the major conclusions.
- A 1998 study in Ridgefield, Connecticut of 177 mice reported cancer incidence to be slightly higher than 10 percent. Researchers described the results as "surprising."
- A 2006 study in France detected tumors in 4.1 percent of the 1,260 microchipped mice. This was one of six studies in which the scientists did not set out find microchip-induced cancer but noticed the results incidentally.
- In 1997 a study in Germany found cancers in 1 percent of 4,279 chipped mice. The tumors "are clearly due to the implanted microchips" the authors wrote.
What the researchers are sayingIn investigating the story, associated Press asked scientists to weigh in on the ready research. Specialists at some famed cancer institutions said the findings raised red flags.
--"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 house members," said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics agenda at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer center in New York.
--Dr. George Demetri, director of the center for Sarcoma and Bone Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer fabricate in Boston, agreed. Even though the tumor incidents were "reasonably small," in his view, the study underscored "certainly real risks" in Rfid implants. In humans, sarcomas, which attack connective tissues, can range from extremely curable to "tumors that are incredibly aggressive and can kill citizen in three to six months," he said.
--At Jackson Laboratory in Maine, a leader in mouse genetics study and the initiation of cancer, Dr. Oded Foreman, a forensic pathologist, also reviewed the studies at the Ap's request. At first he was skeptical, suggesting that chemicals administered to some of the studies could have caused the cancers and skewed the results. But he took a distinct view after finding that the control mice, which received no chemicals, also industrialized the cancers. "That might be a minuscule hint that something real is happening here," he said.
--"The transponders were the cause of the tumors," said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, explaining in a phone interview the findings of a 1996 study he led at the Dow Chemical business in Midland, Michigan.
What can cat owners do?
- Check your microchipped cat or other pet regularly for swelling or lumps, especially colse to the injection site. If owners or veterinarians find anything abnormal in that area or any other area (as the chips may migrate), an x-ray or biopsy should be performed.
- Dr. Albrecht also suggests pet owners help her volunteer to educate and sense animal advocacy and animal proprietary groups as well as veterinarian organizations by taking activity at her website. Many of these animal-loving groups endorsed microchipping pets without having passage to the studies above. Dr. Albrecht hopes group pressure will also force Verichip Corporation, the builder of the chip, to take responsibility or face a class activity lawsuit.
- Report any incidences of pets who have died of cancer or animals who have been cured of cancer to Dr. Albrecht at AntiChips, especially if it is known or suspected that the tumor is or was associated to a microchip. This will help supplementary document proof of the cancer and stop microchipping.
Sources: AntiChips.com; WashingtonPost.com
What to Do if Your Cat Gets Fast - keen Cancer From Microchip Tracking Devices
