Chipping Katrina's Dead

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/09/28/katrina.bodychips.ap/index.html

 

Chips help morgue track Katrina victims

 

Thursday, September 29, 2005; Posted: 1:33 a.m. EDT (05:33 GMT)

 

 

Harrison County Coroner Gary T. Hargrove holds up a VeriChip, which has

helped him do his job.

 

GULFPORT, Mississippi (AP) -- As body counts mounted and missing-person

reports multiplied after Hurricane Katrina, some morgue workers began

using tiny computer chips to keep track of unidentified remains.

 

Radio frequency identification chips -- slender red cylinders about

half an inch long -- were implanted under the corpses' skin or placed

inside body bags at two Mississippi counties.

 

Each VeriChip, donated by a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions

Inc., emits a specific radio signal, enabling morgue workers to quickly

locate and catalog the remains, speed the morgue-management process and

reduce errors.

 

With 48 of the 133 bodies recovered in Harrison and Hancock counties

still unidentified as of Sunday, Harrison County Coroner Gary T.

Hargrove said the chips have been a boon to the Disaster Mortuary

Operational Recovery Team he oversees.

 

" It's better enabled me to do my job as the coroner -- tracking and

getting people's loved ones back to them quickly, " he said.

 

Beside tagging the storm victims, which are kept in refrigerated trucks

at Gulfport-Biloxi Regional Airport, the chips are helping Hargrove

catalog other human remains that the flood waters dislodged from

caskets and burial vaults.

 

Product manufacturers and retailers such as Wal-Mart use similar

technology to monitor the movement of goods. VeriChips, which were

approved by the Food and Drug Administration for human implantation in

2004, have been used for tagging pets and identifying high-security

workers, but not for managing morgue cases before, Applied Digital

spokesman John O. Procter said.

 

The RFID chips are being used only with remains from Harrison and

Hancock counties. Their combined death toll represents more than half

of the 220 people killed by Katrina in Mississippi. At least 1,079

deaths have been attributed to Katrina in five states.

 

Each chip comes packaged in a white plastic injector that looks like a

bulky pen attached to a thick hypodermic needle. The chips are

implanted in the corpse's shoulder or placed inside the body bag and

handheld scanners read the radio signals.

 

The beige plastic scanners, which resemble TV remote controls, have

screens that display a 16-digit number when passed within six inches of

a chip.

 

" The VeriChip allows the technicians to accurately and quickly identify

the remains inside the body bag without having to open the body bag at

each step along the process, " Procter said.

 

While officials in Mississippi are using the technology for free,

Applied Digital recommends doctors charge a total of about $200 for the

chip, the injector to place it under a person's skin and for performing

the procedure.

 

While some privacy advocates fear that implantable chips could lead to

unwanted tracking of humans, relatives of those who died in the wake of

Katrina welcome the technology.

 

" If it helps the families find their loved ones, then I think it's a

good thing, " said Chuck Kerr, a Murfreesboro, Tennessee, businessman

whose parents' bodies were kept in Gulfport for nearly two weeks.

 

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