Posted on 02/20/2015 8:04:00 AM PST by surroundedbyblue
With sales of bogus prescription drugs amounting to tens of billions of dollars worldwide, imperiling public health systems and pharmaceutical supply chains, counterfeit medications are an enormous threat — but the solution to that threat could be smaller than the period at the end of this sentence.
And it could be designed here in Pittsburgh.
Oh, and you’d have to swallow it.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are working on a radio-frequency tagging system that could be embedded into pills and encrypted with codes that would guarantee the provenance and authenticity of the medication.
“Think of a grain of salt. A fraction of a millimeter,” said L. Richard Carley, one of three primary researchers on the project. “You could swallow that. It wouldn’t do anything to you.”
Radio ID tags are everywhere, in various sizes and forms — they have replaced the stamped due-date cards in the back of your library books, and they are fastened to leather coats to make sure you don’t steal them. They are implanted in pets, in case they get lost. Runners wear them on their shoes or ankles so they know their exact marathon time. And if you have an E-Z Pass transponder in your car, that, too, is a radio tag.
Radio-frequency identification, or RFID, technology is already used to track how prescription drugs move across international borders and through the medical supply chain. Mainly, it’s deployed on packages and pill bottles — but not on the pills themselves, which allows for the possibility that counterfeiters could get their hands on a properly tagged box or bottle, then fill it with fake meds.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
No thanks.
....you’d have to swallow it. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are working on a radio-frequency tagging system that could be embedded into pills and encrypted with codes that would guarantee the provenance and authenticity of the medication.
Since when is the Mark Of The Beast supposed to be stamped across your belly button?
/sarc>
When it come to stuff like this: “Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should...”
Exactly
Industries grow where there is a need, and it seems to me there will be a growing need for devices and technology that defeats surveillance and restores privacy. I certainly hope so.
You know? I once read parts of Gulliver’s Travels and a portion in it, I forget exactly where, there was a passage about the ‘scientists’ of this particular realm actually studied the feces of people. Their theory that when a person was on the pot, they were at their most pensive state, and that great insight could possibly realized from their leavings.
A little off topic here, but it shows you that weird people have been around for a very long, long time. In some cases they go to great lengths to know what people ‘think’ (not do) because complete control is in their basic psyche. And as the case usually is presented, the claim is held up as a ‘benefit’ and sorely needed, blah, blah, blah.
A ruse? A trick? Maybe. All I know is that nothing would stop them from introducing these little critters into everything. Nothing would stop them from putting sensors to ‘pick up’ the signals, basically anywhere. With the right tracking and data storage, it wouldn’t be hard to correlate ‘newer IDs’ with older ones and keep on trackin’ - perpetual tracking of individuals anytime, anywhere. Just so they can keep prescription medicine from being stolen.
I like the technology; I like the ability to prove the pill is what you want it to be.
But for decades the medical community was telling people that polyethylene glycol was safe to give constipated babies and small children (brand name Miralax) because the tiny (grain of sand tiny) plastic balls just went right THROUGH the digestive tract and never got into the bloodstream.
Now we learn in medical and mass media that this was never true. Kids who took it are having terrible neurological damage.
I don’t see how we can ever trust any medical authority claiming things are safe. Many many things we ingest or are injected into us have bad sequelae and iD like to really have everyone examine this radio emitter ball first.
RFIDs are not radio transmitters.
There’s too much potential for this technology to be abused. Way too much. And the abuses are serious.
Ping. Of potential interest to you.
This is a great idea, then make sure that a persons ID also transmits their personal info and the drug police can do on the fly drug busts! Just one more way to brand the cattle and control the herd. Do microwaves destroy RFID’s? I may have to start a new procedure after picking up my pharmaceuticals.
Ever notice how, when faced with some “problem”, the solution inevitably involves having the “victims” do or suffer some type of inconvenience rather than the obvious solution which would be to enact some hideous penalty for the crime???
If I am going to eat any radio transmitter it is gonna be KDKA’s.
Freakin’ Liberal Putz Mangino.....
LOL
Very interesting.
How long before these tags monitor when and how often you take your meds and report back when you take too many/too few? Or when you eat a dessert? Or when you eat beef? I don’t trust this in the least, particularly if the feds tie it to whether your insurance will cover you? No, thanks.
For all practical purposes the RFID tags under discussion effectively transmit a radio signal. Yes, I know they are active reader/passive tag devices. Nevertheless the detector is detecting RF emanations from the tag.
That’s not really how RFID technology like this works.
It probably would be used more to prosecute people who deal illegally in prescription drugs. So, when the police catch a criminal with prescription drugs, they scan them and can look up who was originally prescribed those drugs, and go arrest them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.