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Last year, Joseph Sanguine was attending the Vanguard Biotechnologies conference in Amsterdam when an unknown individual posing as a hotel employee forced his way into Sanguine’s room. Several hours later, he awoke in a bathtub of ice, with instructions to call the hospital. He had become a victim of an organ harvesting ring.

At one time, this technique was only an urban legend. Today, the demand for human organs in third world countries where stem cell treatments are too expensive or unreliable has forced organ harvesters to become more creative. Ideas which were once fiction work well enough in the real world, and many of these have been adapted into actual methods.

Unbeknownst to the organ harvesters, however, Sanguine was one of the participants in an experimental nano-chipping technique developed by his employer, the Nanbio Center based in Boston, Massachusetts. Many people have opted to have their bodies chipped for security or medical reasons, but individual chips break down and must be replaced—a difficult process. Furthermore, it does little to aid those who are victims of bio-crimes, and even though soldiers may have half a dozen implanted chips to track lost limbs, it does not guarantee identification if the chips are lost or damaged. The new technique promises to eliminate these shortcomings.

“The program,” Sanguine explains, “is designed to provide all the functionality of a biochip on a nanometer scale. We call it Mote Technology. The motes are part organic protein, part man-made electrochemical machine. Each is customized with all the information desired stored at the molecular level. They are injected into the bloodstream. Once they permeate the body, any bit of flesh can be identified as easily as a larger tag.”

Nanbio engineers have developed what is essentially a nanoscopic RF tag. The motes resonate at certain frequencies, broadcasting back the information stored in their structure.

“It is faster and more reliable than DNA typing,” explained Nanbio President Lawrence Blinn. “It also allows us to retrieve information from the motes themselves, without having to reference another database.”

These advances are an important step in the fight against bioterrorists. In Joseph Sanguine’s case, his kidneys were found and identified a mere two hours after he awoke. “There was definitely some luck involved,” said Sanguine. “The harvesters tried to turn in the organs to a local hospital. If they had immediately fled the country, we might never have found them. But even after they showed up, the motes aided in rapid identification which ultimately saved my life.”

But not all are convinced that this full-body method of tagging is a step in the right direction. Privacy activist Joan Abernon: “This will exacerbate the problem, not solve it. Terrorists will harvest organs regardless—tagging them won’t actually prevent that. And when the organ is transplanted, we’ll have two people running around with the same tags in them. It’s simple, easy identity theft; no computers needed.”

Indeed, there are numerous issues to solve. Legitimate organ transplants or blood transfusions—as well as sex—will mix individuals’ motes. “You don’t realize how much bodily fluid gets shared between people until you use it as a permanent holding area for something else,” explains Dr. Milford Straussman, lead technical architect at Nanbio. “We are working on systems where motes self-destruct in the presence of others which are encoded differently. This is enough to prevent casual contact from disrupting individuals’ mote balance.”

In practice, the solution is not so simple. Recently, one of the subjects in Nanbio’s human test phase was killed by a stroke, which was the result of motes attaching themselves to capillaries in the brain. Nanbio maintains that this was evidence of a larger undiagnosed problem. The case is still under review.

Blinn says, “Overall, the motes have been very successful. Like with all tags, no one will be required to implant something in their body against their will—with the usual exceptions, of course: the military, criminals, terrorists, the elderly, the mentally disabled, unruly children, athletes, government employees, the employees of certain corporations, and pregnant women—but otherwise no one is required to get an implant. But when an implant is necessary, we believe Mote Technology is a step in the right direction.”

There is concern that, with enough involuntary tags, eventually children will be born with tags from their mother already present in their body from birth. Nanbio stresses that the technology is still under evaluation, and this issue is being given careful consideration. Some worry that, if Mote Technology is made a reality, within a few decades, every fetus will be acquiring them during the gestation period.

“There are no long-term studies on the effects of implants,” says Medical Technologist Dr. Mandy Richter. “Even typical RF tags are being rethought as the implants reside in the body for longer and longer periods of time. I cannot begin to imagine the sort of damage which could potentially be caused by a flood of nanometer-sized tags into the body. If these things are released on the general human population, it is very likely that we’ll never be able to get rid of them.”

Despite the possible shortcomings, Nanbio remains confident in Mote Technology. “Any advancement has pros and cons,” President Blinn reminds us. “And with all adopted advancements, the pros obviously outweigh the cons—otherwise it wouldn’t be adopted in the first place. It is clear that the benefits of Mote Technology more than compensate for any perceived problems. It will be adopted.”