Would you implant a microchip in your child?

With the search still ongoing for 7-year-old Kyron
Horman, who disappeared from his Portland, Oregon, elementary
school on Friday, some parents are wondering whether it's worth taking
the idea of implanted tracking devices for kids more seriously.

The question of whether or not to implant microchips in our children
isn't new. In 2002, CNN reported that parents
in the United Kingdom were asking for microchip tracking devices
for their kids after two 10-year-old girls were abducted and murdered.
And Wired magazine wrote about it back in 2003, when Solusat,
the Mexican distributor of VeriChip, launched its VeriKid program
in Mexico.

What is new is that, in spite of the whole "Big Brother" aspect, and
in spite of the obvious privacy issues (not to mention health risks),
the microchip may be making a comback.
According to the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, about 800,000 children are reported
missing, but more than half of them are runaways or only missing
temporarily. About 204,000 were kidnapped by members of their own
family, 58,000 were kidnapped by non-family members whom they know, and
just 115 of them were the stereotypical, headline-making "snatched off
the street" abductions involving "someone the child does not know or a
slight acquaintance who holds the child overnight, transports the child
50 miles or more, kills the child, demands ransom, or intends to keep
the child permanently."

Even though sterotypical kidnappings are rare, the fact that they
happen at all is enough to make parents worry about it could happen to
their children. As Kyron's case may show, security measures in schools
may not be enough, so why not outfit the child with a permanent tracking
system, you know, just in case?

Microchips and other radio-frequency identification devices (RFID)
have been imbedded in pets and attached to items in order to track them
for years. VeriChip is one; it's been sold in the US since 2002 and was
approved for implantation in humans by the FDA in 2004, in spite of the
fact that tests from the mid-1990s showed that the implanted microchips had
"induced" cancer in laboratory animals, with most of the tumors
encasing the implants. By 2007, about 2,000 of the devices had been
implanted in humans around the world, The Washington Post
reported.

While the current technology available for human implantation doesn't
store much data -- just a 16-digit ID number -- the possibilities are
there. And though it could provide peace of mind for parents -- police
and FBI could track the child with the chip much in the same way
security companies can track stolen cars that have RFID devices built-in
-- they're easy enough to remove with just a knife (as anyone who has
watched The Bourne Identity knows).

So, parents, weigh in: Would you implant a microchip in your
child? Do you think it's a "better safe than sorry" move or a sign of
helicopter parenting going too far?

Lylah M. Alphonse is a Globe staff member and mom and
stepmom to five kids. She writes about juggling career and parenthood at
The
36-Hour Day and blogs at Write. Edit.
Repeat. E-mail her at lalphonse@globe.com and
follow her on Twitter @WriteEditRepeat.

Maybe implant a microchip in all DCFS children. Of course that creates an infringment of rights issue....