Itchmo Pet News Daily Digest
Microchip Implants Linked To Animal Tumors In Research Animals
Posted: 09 Sep 2007 08:51 AM CDT
Various veterinary and toxicology studies done since the mid-1990s found that microchip implants were linked to malignant tumors in some lab mice and rats.
"The transponders were the cause of the tumors," said Keith Johnson, a retired toxicologic pathologist, said in regards to a 1996 study he led at Dow Chemical.
The Associated Press is reporting the results of these studies were not made public by microchip companies or federal regulatory agencies. When the FDA was asked which studies they were aware of, they declined to answer. Microchip companies and even the American Medical Association said they were unaware of these studies.
The studies found that lab mice and rats injected with microchips sometimes developed subcutaneous "sarcomas" - malignant tumors, most of them encasing the implants.
In 1998, a Connecticut study including 177 mice reported cancer incidence to be slightly higher than 10 percent of research animals implanted with microchips.
A 2006 study done in France showed tumors in 4.1 percent of 1,260 microchipped mice.
In 1997, a study in Germany reported cancers in 1 percent of 4,279 mice. The researchers wrote that the tumors "are clearly due to the implanted microchips."
For some cancer specialists, seeing these results from lab studies is alarming.
"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.
Dr. Cheryl London, a veterinarian oncologist at Ohio State University said tens of thousands of dogs have been chipped. So far, veterinary pathologists have not reported outbreaks of tumors in the area of the neck, where canine implants are mostly done.
The Associated Press reported that there were two published reports about malignant tumors in two chipped dogs. In one incident, the researchers said cancer seemed to be linked to the implant of the microchip. In the other case, the cause of the cancer was uncertain.
She added that there is a need for a 20-year study of microchipped dogs to see the biological effects. Another veterinary oncologist at the National Cancer Institute agreed and said this evidence "does suggest some reason to be concerned about tumor formations."
Source: The Associated Press
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