Micro-Chip Implants Linked to Animal Cancer

From AP News, via Yahoo!:

http://thnlnk.com/yahoo/Chip.implants.linked.to.animal.tumors/890

Published in veterinary and toxicology journals between 1996 and 2006, the studies found that lab mice and rats injected with microchips sometimes developed subcutaneous "sarcomas" — malignant tumors, most of them encasing the implants.

We got Ruki micro-chipped. This is disturbing because if every vet should have known TEN YEARS AGO that these microchips are causing cancer.

Understand, though, that the experiments were done on lab mice and not on dogs. Lab mice might be more prone to cancer than other animals, and some of the tests found the cancer incidental to other tests--so they don't know whether the mice were going to develop the cancerous growths anyways.

But this is definitely something to ask your vets about when considering micro-chipping in the future.

More from the article:

• A 1998 study in Ridgefield, Conn., of 177 mice reported cancer incidence to be slightly higher than 10 percent — a result the researchers described as "surprising."

• A 2006 study in France detected tumors in 4.1 percent of 1,260 microchipped mice. This was one of six studies in which the scientists did not set out to find microchip-induced cancer but noticed the growths incidentally. They were testing compounds on behalf of chemical and pharmaceutical companies; but they ruled out the compounds as the tumors' cause. Because researchers only noted the most obvious tumors, the French study said, "These incidences may therefore slightly underestimate the true occurrence" of cancer.

• 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.

Caveats accompanied the findings. "Blind leaps from the detection of tumors to the prediction of human health risk should be avoided," one study cautioned. Also, because none of the studies had a control group of animals that did not get chips, the normal rate of tumors cannot be determined and compared to the rate with chips implanted.

Still, after reviewing the research, specialists at some pre-eminent cancer institutions said the findings raised red flags.