The creators of the cellular phone, personal computer, Magnetic Imaging Resonance (MRI) scanner, and even top NASA engineers and scientists all acknowledge the role Star Trek played in the birth of their technological advances.

Documentary film maker Alan Handel sat down with these top inventors in his film “How William Shatner Changed the World.” While their specialties and areas of expertise range from astrophysics to telecommunications, the one thing all have in common was their quest to make real their favorite Star Trek technologies.

One such gadget was the famous “communicator” William Shatner was always speaking into while playing the role of the dashing Captain James T. Kirk. The communicator allowed Kirk to give orders to his ship or crewmates from great distances.

Today, chatting on a mobile phone is commonplace, but back in the late Sixties the only way to make a call was to use a phone plugged into the wall.

Dr. Martin Cooper found himself tripping over his phone cord when he saw Star Trek appear on the TV playing in the background. Cooper watched with envy as Captain Kirk calmly conversed while walking across an alien landscape.

“Suddenly there was Captain Kirk talking on his communicator,” remembers Cooper. “Talking! With no wires!”

Cooper, who was General Manager of Systems at Motorola, thought to himself, we need to communicate the way they do on Star Trek. “To the rest of the world it was a fantasy. To me it was an objective.” It was the moment the cellular phone was born.

It took a few more years to turn the dream into reality, but in April of 1973 Martin Cooper made the world’s first cellular phone call on his prized invention, the Motorola Dyna-Tac. With true Star Trek flair, Cooper rang his competitor, Joel Engel, chief of research at Bell Labs.

While the clunky 2.5 pound Dyna-Tac was a far cry from Captain Kirk’s sleek communicator, today’s cell phones are almost identical. They even flip open to speak.

Every day we’re catching up to the futuristic vision inspired by Star Trek. No where could this be more true than with the personal computer. In the 50s and 60s computers were huge room sized machines. But onboard the Starship Enterprise they could sit on a desk or even fit in your pocket.

This tantalizing vision of computers that were small enough to be used for everyday tasks helped to inspire the Computer Revolution and the quest to create the microchip.

It sounds like an exaggeration until you discover that the first working personal computer, the Altair 8800, was named after a fictional galaxy from Star Trek. On this Star Trek inspired computer both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates developed the world’s first software. Their subsequent companies, Microsoft and Apple Computers, would change the world forever.

And now millions of people carry Personal Digital Assistants like the Palm Pilot or Windows Smartphone – devices that could have come right out of the hands of Mr. Spock. And in a way…they did.

Robert Haitani, the designer of the Palm Pilot, revealed to the San Francisco Chronicle, “my first sketches were influenced by the Enterprise bridge panels…Years later the first Treo (a combo phone and wireless PDA) had a form factor similar to the communicator. You could stand there and talk into it like Captain Kirk.”

More than just adding convenience, the television show’s effect on innovation may one day save your life. On Star Trek, advanced energy medicine could cure every human sickness. Dr. John Adler, a brain surgeon from the Stanford School of Medicine, works every day to turn that dream into reality.

“In the 1960s diagnosis of many illnesses required messy and painful exploratory surgery,” explains Adler. “It was very common to do a big operation on a patient, open their skull, look inside, and find nothing.”

“By contrast, Dr. Macoy’s Sick Bay on the Enterprise did diagnosis quickly and painlessly without having to cut open patients. Star Trek gave the medical community a tantalizing glimpse into the future.” Doctors in Star Trek would wave a handheld device called a “tricorder” over patients and instantly diagnosis and heal on the spot.

The trick was Star Trek medicine used energy instead of scalpels. Now Adler is leading a revolution to bring real energy medicine into hospitals and doctor offices around the world.

Dr. Adler is the inventor of the “cyber knife,” a highly focused computer controlled laser that can remove cancer without ever opening up the patient with a single cut. “Not quite as cool as the Star Trek tricorder,” he laughs, “But we’re getting there.”

And Star Trek has helped us to decide just how far we want to go. It is the worst kept secret of America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration that Star Trek is the force that lured many of their top scientists and engineers to join the space program. NASA even named their first space shuttle “Enterprise” in honor of the fictional ship that inspired so many of the shuttle’s designers as children.

“I was always fascinated by Star Trek. It offered a vision of what could be,” explained Dr. Marc D. Rayman, Chief Propulsion Engineer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, during his interview for Handel’s documentary.

When prompted Raymon rattles off whole chunks of memorized lines from Star Trek, spouting the science fiction he has turned into science fact. His boyhood hero was Scotty, Chief Engineer of the Enterprise.

“One of the reasons I think the control room in the space mission simulator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is so cool is that it looks like something right off the Starship Enterprise,” says this designer of real life space ships.

Raymon and his colleagues have even used the science fiction of Star Trek as the starting point for developing real space technologies. Raymon helped develop Ion Propulsion, a highly advanced thrust technology. He first heard of it on a Star Trek episode, forty years before he made it real. “The opportunity to connect what I saw on Star Trek to what I’m doing now is very exciting.”

And the Star Trek vision helped launch not only NASA’s space craft, but the careers of those who fly them. Many astronauts credit the TV show with shaping their life long dream. These future astronauts aspired to the same mission as the crew of the Enterprise, “to boldly go where no man has gone before.”

For Mae Jemison, who would become the first black woman in Space, Star Trek offered a vision not only of attractive alien worlds, but a better Earth to call home. Growing up amidst the racial and social turmoil of America in the early Sixties, Star Trek’s gender and racial equality offered a brighter future.

Jemison’s girlhood hero was the sexy and sharp communications officer of the Enterprise, Lieutenant Uhura. “Not only because she was an African-American woman on the show,” Jemison told Handel, “but because it was the first time a woman was portrayed as technically savvy and a full member of a crew. That opened up possibilities.”

Indeed, Gene Roddenberry wanted the show to serve as a blueprint for a more harmonious tomorrow. “Gene said that the Starship Enterprise was a metaphor for the Starship Earth,” explained George Takai who played Mr. Sulu, “and he believed the strength of this starship was in its diversity.”

Star Trek even made history in 1968 when black Lieutenant Uhura and white Captain Kirk shared the first interracial kiss ever seen on American television. “Star Trek gave us the opportunity to consider social problems in this context of a completely different world,” says Jemison, “and showed us and how we can learn to get beyond them.”

The show’s optimistic vision of the future provided the fuel that inspired Mae Jemison to earn a PhD and eventually lifted her all the way into space aboard the shuttle Endeavour.

“When I was on the space shuttle I would begin my communications with ‘All hailing frequencies are open’,” said Jemison. It was the signature line of her TV hero, Lieutenant Uhura, and Jemison’s way of paying tribute to the show that helped her believe she could rise above every limitation and soar amongst the stars.

In 1993 Jemison saluted to Star Trek when she exchanged her NASA uniform for an Enterprise costume and made a guest appearance on the sequel show, Star Trek: The Next Generation. And in 1996 she hosted the 30th Anniversary celebration.

While Jemison and her astronaut colleagues were inspired by Star Trek to take mankind’s first baby steps toward the stars, other scientists were motivated by the show to find out who we might meet when we finally get there.

Are we alone in the universe? It is a question man has been asking since the dawn of time. Our most sophisticated attempt to find the answer is a project called SETI, The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, which uses massive radio telescopes in the hope of hearing a faint signal from an alien civilization.

Leading this search for real life aliens is Dr. Seth Shostak, SETI’s chief astronomer. You guessed it, he’s a Star Trek fan. “I still have very pleasant memories of my grad school days when we would have our physics homework spread out on the floor and Star Trek playing in the background,” reminisces Shostak. “The emotional appeal of that show had a lot to do with the fact that I went into astronomy.

And Shostak says that Star Trek has actually helped legitimize his field. “Decades ago, when SETI first got underway, the public’s reaction was fairly skeptical. I think that has changed. They have met Mr. Spock and seen lots of aliens on Star Trek. They’re convinced now that they are out there.”

But more importantly, Star Trek convinced generations that no matter who we find or don’t find on other planets, we can make this one a better place to live.

“Rodenberry possessed something very rare in Hollywood,” said William Shatner, “something called morality. To him Star Trek was far more than a TV show, it was a vision of the future in which mankind would use their advanced technology to march across space. And there would be no greed, no war, no hate, and no hunger – a perfect tomorrow where we would all just get along.”

While the social vision of Star Trek seems a long way off, our technology is looking more and more like the techno-wizardry of the television show that has inspired so much innovation.

In 1991 Gene Roddenberry died, but he left behind a planet remarkably changed by his vision. In recognition of his contribution to moving mankind one step closer to reaching the stars, NASA launched his ashes into space. In death, as he did in life, he travels ahead of the rest of us “boldly going where no man has gone before.”

The End
By Lance Laytner
Copyright 2009
Meritum Media

click on photos for Lightbox

Many of the key technologies of our modern world were inspired by the TV Show Star Trek. For 40 years the world's top inventors have been laboring to bring to life the dream gadgets they first saw on their favorite TV show. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

The Star Trek "Communicator" allowed Captain Kirk to stay in touch with his crew while exploring alien worlds. The inventor of the cellular phone was inspired by seeing the Communicator in action. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

The cellular phone was inspired by the Star Trek "Communicator." The two devices are almost identical and both even flip open to talk. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

In today's world talking on the go seems normal, but back in the early 60s when Star Trek was first aired, all phones worked only with cords. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Martin Cooper, the inventor of the world's first cellular phone, the Motorola Dyna-Tac, first had the idea from watching Captain Kirk talk over his Communicator. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Before Star Trek, computers were massive machines taking up whole rooms. But the crew of the Star Trek Enterprise had small useful computers that could be carried around with them. This "Tricorder" inspired the inventors of the personal computer and the Palm Pilot. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

The world's first personal computer, The Altair 8800, was named after a fictional galaxy mentioned on Star Trek by the computers inventor, a die hard fan. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates wrote the first software on this computer, bringing in the Computer Age. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

The designer of the Palm Pilot, Rob Haitani, says he used the bridge of the Starship Enterprise as his inspiration. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Star Trek offered an exciting future for the medical profession where energy instead of scalpels healed the sick. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Star Trek's vision of diagnosis without painful exploratory surgery planted the seeds for the invention of medical imaging technology like the MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

The Enterprise's beloved Chief Engineer, Scotty, inspired a whole generation to enter the space program and become the engineers and scientists who went on to build the Space Shuttle, Earth's first real life space ship. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Dr. Marc D. Rayman, Chief Engineer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says Star Trek inspired him to become an engineer and seek a career at NASA. This brilliant scientist has memorized almost all the lines of his childhood hero, Scotty. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

The sexy and sharp communications officer of the Enterprise, Lieutenant Uhura offered young black girls growing up in the racially divided America of the 1960s a vision of a brighter future and helped inspire them to build it. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Mae Jemison was inspired by her childhood hero, Lieutenant Uhura, to become an engineer and astronaut. The show’s optimistic vision of the future provided the fuel that inspired Mae Jemison to earn a PhD and eventually lifted her all the way into space aboard the shuttle Endeavour. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Mae Jemison was inspired by her childhood hero, Lieutenant Uhura, to become an engineer and astronaut. The show’s optimistic vision of the future provided the fuel that inspired Mae Jemison to earn a PhD and eventually lifted her all the way into space aboard the shuttle Endeavour. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

In addition to visions of advanced technology, Star Trek displayed a dizzing array of aliens. One of the most terrifying is "The Borg," displayed here. The Borg merged tissue and technology and some Earthlings think it is a great idea. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

This young disciple of the "Cyborg Movement" believes that merging man and machinery is the next step in Human Evolution. Notice the eerie similarity to The Borg. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Dr. Seth Shostak is the Chief Astronomer for SETI, the Search for Exter Terrestrial Life project. Shostak first became interested in finding aliens by watching Star Trek and attributes the show to his choice in career. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

SETI scientists scan deep space with huge Radio Telescopes in the hopes of picking up a signal from an alien civilization light years away. The NASA started project was first met by skepticism until Star Trek made aliens seem more plausible to the public. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, used the show to offer an optimistic vision of mankind's future where greed, hate, bigotry and hunger were all solved. In recognition for his role in inspiring the space program, NASA launched his ashes into space after his death in 1991. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

The dashing Captain Kirk played by actor William Shatner became the face of the allure of space, The Final Frontier. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

The Star Trek crew was carried to distant galaxies aboard the Starship Enterprise which could travel faster than the speed of light. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

NASA's first Space Shuttle was named "Enterprise" after the fictional spaceship that helped inspire its designers. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

Star Trek has helped inspire 40 years of technological innovation, and every day we draw closer to Star Trek's vision. This TV show has helped map what the world of tomorrow will look like today. PHOTO MERITUM MEDIA

But despite the incredible beatings, Troy remains unharmed. No, he does not have super powers. Like Tony Stark, the fictional creator of the Iron Man armor, Hurtubise’s invincibility comes from his skills as an inventor.

After twenty years of development, spending his entire family savings, and almost one thousand hours of construction, Troy Hurtubise claims to have built a suit of armor that can protect the wearer against any attack.

“This is The Trojan,” says Hurtubise as he walks out wearing a hard black shell looking like a cross between Iron Man, a ninja assassin, and a giant black insect. “It is the first full exoskeleton ballistic suit of body armor.”

The space age looking suit of armor includes two magnetic hip holsters for holding death-dealing weaponry, a solar powered air-conditioning unit, laser targeting sensors calibrated to the wearer’s line of sight, a pepper spray capable of dispersing a mob of 40 people, and even a world clock with a readout for 20 time-zones unfolding out of the crotch protector.

Underneath the perfectly form fitting joints that allow for running or even rolling maneuvers, lies a mysterious substance of Hurtubise’s design called “shadow armor” that Troy claims can stop knives, bullets, shrapnel and even explosives.

But while Troy has yet to secure a military contract, this is by no means his first suit of armor. In fact, Hurtubise has done real-world field testing that would sound extreme even for a comic book hero.

When Troy was 20 years-old he was attacked by a grizzly bear. Although he survived the skirmish, Troy says part of him will always be frozen in time, seeing his own reflection mirrored in the hard black eyes of an enraged 680 kilogram beast.

That close encounter on August 4th, 1984 set Troy upon a quest for invincibility that he has pursued ever since. Hurtubise consulted physicists, biologists, and zoologists about the exact amount of force and dangers a human would face in a bear attack.

He set to work on armor prototypes using materials salvaged from his junk yard business and super strong composites of his own design. After seven years and $150,000 dollars, Troy hobbled into the world spotlight wearing his 140 kilogram Ursa VI bear protection suit. Troy is naturally 172 cm tall, but in the armored suit he towers at 220 cm.

Images of Troy wearing the massive armor while being hit by speeding trucks, standing in raging bonfires, knocked down by chain-held swinging tree trunks, and fired at with double barreled shotguns quickly became a sensation. In 1996 the Canadian National Film Board made a full documentary that is to this day a cult classic praised by mayhem fans. Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino, known for screen violence, highly endorsed the documentary.

But even fighting bears can grow boring after a while and Hurtubise eventually put aside his armored aspirations and pursued a host of other inventions for nearly a decade - until the Iraq War.

“I started getting calls and letters from friends of mine in Iraq and Afghanistan,” says Hurtubise. “They asked if I could help them survive I.E.D.’s (Improvised Explosive Devices). They wanted the strength of the bear suits, but with flexibility and lightness needed on the battlefield.”

Troy immediately went to work. “Well, I went back to my earlier designs. I did look at Star Wars and I looked at H.A.L.O. the video game.” Hurtubise believes that the best designs come from creativity, not just engineering prowess.

“Then I started talking to the professionals in the field: United States Rangers, Green Berets, and Canadian Special Forces. I told them what I was building and asked them what they need – what has to be part of the suit. They just broke in and started interrupting, saying ‘we need this, this, and this.’ And that’s how I went about the design.”

Hurtubise believed that this ground up approach, talking to the soldiers, rather than the generals or politicians, is what would make his armor succeed where huge military Research and Development budgets failed.

Hurtubise believed the key was to talk to the soldiers who really need a better way of staying alive on the battlefield. “The Brass doesn’t understand it and the politicians couldn’t spell war, let alone comprehend what these guys have to go through,” says Troy, whose brother was in the Canadian military for many years.

Hurtubise set about interviewing every soldier returning from the war zone he could find. “I got a Ranger coming back from Iraq. He said, ‘Troy, we’re getting killed with our face – we’ve got no protection for our face. Your suit goes full helmet, it looks good but we are in 120 degrees out there!’ So what do I have to come up with? Now the suit has got an intake fan and full solar-powered air-conditioning.”

“A sniper told me that one of the problems our guys face is when they get in an ambush situation with sniper fire the guy in front can see where the sniper is, but has no good way to signal back the shooter’s location so he can be taken out. Well, I developed the solution with an eye doctor. When you put the helmet on, a laser tracking system that is perfectly centered puts a laser beam along your line of sight. All a soldier would have to do is order, “Follow the red dot and fire!’”

And the Trojan Armor conceals a few tricks Hurtubise picked up in his bear fighting days, too. “The Rangers told me that Black Hawk Down is the kind of situation they can face at any moment. Imagine one soldier left, out of bullets, with 40 insurgents coming at him with machetes.”

Troy drops into a crouch and flips open a spray gun hidden into the right forearm of his armor. “The way you stop 40 people instantly is the same way you stop a bear,” says Troy. “I learned the hard way there is no bear spray that is going to stop a bear because all sprays have only 1% Capsaicin,” says Troy, speaking of the stun chemical found in pepper spray. “Want to stop a bear or an angry mob, go for 3%. This is not the pepper spray police officers use. This stuff is illegal.”

Troy says he thought of everything, all he needed was the backing of the military. “We’ve already done the ballistic tests, I know it works. I’ll show you that our boys are going to walk out of these vehicles when a bomb goes off. I’ll wear the suit. I’ll show you what this thing can do!”

Troy was ready to go and said he could immediately start mass producing armor units for just $15,000 dollars. But so far he has had no military buyers.

And although Troy Hurtubise has been able to withstand being peppered by shotguns, run over by trucks, and thrown off of cliffs; he has not been able to fend off bankruptcy.

It turns out that the comic book creators of Iron Man were right to make Tony Stark a billionaire – invincibility is an extremely expensive hobby.

After seeing no financial return on his twenty year and $150,000 investment, Troy Hurtubise who dreamed of saving troops on the battlefield finds himself in need of a bit of rescue himself.

Hurtubise put everything on the line to build his armor and ended up losing his junkyard business and going deep into debt.

Troy even tried to earn enough money to support his wife and children by selling his first prototype suit of armor in an internet auction on eBay but the bidding never reached his $35,000 bare minimum asking price.

But Troy has not given up on his dreams and is already hard at work on his next suit of armor which he claims will be even tougher than all his previous suits. Once you’ve wrestled with a 850 kilogram bear, financial troubles just don’t seem so scary.

- The End -
Copyright 2009
Meritum Media

But fears of a Big Brother future where governments monitor which citizens show up at political rallies, bosses keep track of how many hours an employee sits at their desk, and jealous spouses demand an accounting of every delayed errand hounded VeriChip Corp. since they first announced plans to begin implanting RFID chips in humans in 2001.

A tremendous backlash from privacy advocates, cautious government regulators, and ordinary people who found the idea of microchips under their skin just plain creepy held up widespread adoption of the chip and led to rapid turnovers of corporate management at VeriChip’s Florida offices.

“This just simply goes way too far outside the realm of what we believe in as a society,” said Randall Marshall, of the American Civil Liberties Union back when the VeriChip human trials were first announced.

But society has changed since 9/11, citizens of most countries have now bargained away some privacy for more security. And VeriChip Corp has learned from past mistakes - like proposing a GPS tracking system to go with their chip, an idea that was greeted with horror.

The American Food and Drug Association has given VeriChip a complete green light and every day more people are being injected with the tiny 12mm microchip now sporting the current, more benign sounding title “The VeriMed Patient Identification System.”

It seems like VeriChip Corporation has finally gotten it right and the net result is that, more and more, human beings may end up on the Net - tagged by radio waves that will allow authorized people to access their records with the same way we now track our packages from the FedEx website.

And even the most diehard privacy pundits can’t argue with its success. Even with a relatively small number of early adopters, the VeriMed microchip has already managed to help save at least two lives in its first six months of use.

After a terrible car accident during a high speed chase, New Jersey police officer Sgt. William Koretsky was brought into Hackensack University Medical Center with head, neck and back injuries.

Chasing down a criminal, Koretsky hit a steel pole dead on going 40 miles per hour without wearing a seat belt and slammed into the steering wheel after the airbags in his police car failed.

But the danger didn’t end with the crash. Koretsky has diabetes.

Thankfully, Hackensack University Medical Center is one of the 110 hospitals that have committed to using the VeriChip technology and after doctors scanned the unconscious cop, they discovered the VeriMed microchip and were able to see that he was diabetic.

Koretsky credits the microchip with saving his life and VeriChip Corporation points to his experience as a perfect case study.

Here is how it worked. Months earlier Koretsky visited a local doctor after agreeing to take part in the VeriChip trial. The chip is so small that it is injected just like a shot of medicine.

“It takes just a few seconds and there are no sutures required, just a Band-Aid,” explained Allison Tomek, VP of Corporate Communications at Applied Digital Solutions, the parent company of VeriChip Corporation.

The tiny pill-shaped gadget holds an antenna and micro-chip encased in silicone to prevent rejection by the body and is slicked with a substance called Bio-Bond that forms a cocoon of scar tissue in the body that keeps the chip from moving around.

The VeriMed microchip uses no batteries but lies asleep until scanned by the necessary reader. The chip is then charged by the energy of the scan, wakes up and begins transmitting a sixteen digit number by radio waves.

When the doctors about to treat Sgt. Koretsky after his car crash got the number by holding the scanner six inches above his arm, they went online to the database setup by VeriChip Corporation, logged in with their password, and entered Koretsky’s 16 digit ID.

Instantly Bill Koretsky’s complete medical records, insurance information, and medications list were available and could be printed out for hospital staff. Doctors saw Koretsky was diabetic and began giving him the necessary medicine to prevent him from slipping into a coma.

VeriChip Corporation imagines a world where every doctor’s visit is that easy.

Anyone who has seen a loved one seriously injured knows how frustrating hospital Emergency Rooms can be. It goes against every instinct to sit their rattling off lists of allergy medicines and verifying insurance when someone your care about is in pain.

With the VeriMed microchip checking into the hospital would be as easy as checking out at the grocery store. And that is what is fueling its ever more rapid adoption by the elderly who find themselves well out ahead of their grandkids in this particular technological frontier.

“I think someone has to take the first steps and it has got to be done,” said Suzan Shipper, 57, who had her 84 year-old husband suffering from Alzheimer’s disease chipped and decided to be implanted herself, too.

The Shippers are taking part in a two year trial tracking users’ and doctors’ experiences with the RFID chip. The trial is being sponsored by Alzheimer’s Community Care, a local South Florida non-profit that provides services for dementia patients and their families.

“The families think it is great,” says Mary Barns, CEO of Alzheimer’s Community Care. “They feel for the first time there is a better protection out there for their safety.”

That’s definitely what motivated Suzan Shipper who is counting on the chip to help return her husband to her Palm Beach, Florida home if they get separated and he is unable to remember where they live or even his name.

“How often in the paper do you see that someone wanders away?” asks Mrs. Shipper. “It happens all the time. My friend got a call that her mother was out at 4am knocking on neighbors’ doors trying to get in.”

It gives Suzan Shipper a sense of peace knowing that she’ll never again have to fearfully call hospitals and police stations the way she once did when her husband once got confused and took of on his electric scooter with her car keys, leaving her stranded and he lost for half a day.

“If they scan his arm they can pull his address and phone number up on the computer,” says Shipper with visible relief. “And they can also print out his medications with no mistakes in communication.”

When told about how the VeriMed microchip works the healthy 57 year-old decided it was a good idea for her, too. “I got a chip because I could get hit by a truck and they could pull up my records and see I’m allergic to latex.”

Suzan says people who are worried about getting chipped have got it wrong. “There is absolutely no pain at all, you don’t feel it going in,” she says. “The dentist is much worse.”

And privacy concerns? “The database only contains what I want,” answers Shipper. “I just keep our medical records, insurance, stuff like that on it. And I can change that whenever I want from any computer.”

Mary Barns says all one hundred of her Alzheimer Community Cares patients are reporting similar good feelings about the microchip in their bodies or the body of their loved ones.

Barns adds that the technology has already helped in at least one emergency situation. “In St. Lucy county one of our caregivers brought their spouse to the hospital after they stopped breathing. But the caregiver was in such a heightened emotional state they couldn’t talk. The VeriMed chip allowed the hospital to get all the necessary medical records and rescue the patient.”

With the implant procedure free and the only requirement being a mandatory two years subscription to VeriChip’s medical database at a cost of $9.95 a month, many taking part in the study feel it is some of the best money they are spending on healthcare.

But all these health benefits may come with a few health risks, too. A series of animal studies dating to the mid-1990’s, indicates a greater than normal risk of cancer in animals implanted with an RFID chip.

“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 in comments to the Associated Press.

Some in the medical community are asking why the FDA would approve a technology for human use if it seems it could lead to illness.

The anti-VeriChip internet website WeThePeopleWillNotBeChipped.com is even running a campaign spoofing the famous “Got Milk?” ads, asking “Want Cancer? Get VeriChip.”

And the blogosphere erupted with recriminations when a possible conflict of interest was found concerning the VeriChip’s approval for human use.

At the time of the FDA’s approval, Tommy Thompson led the Department of Health and Human Services which exercises oversight of the FDA. Two weeks after the implantable microchip’s approval on Jan. 10, 2005, Thompson left his post. Within five months in the civilian sector, Thompson became a board member of VeriChip Corp. and Applied Digital Solutions. He was compensated in cash and stock options.

Thompson says he had no personal relationship with the company as the VeriChip was being evaluated, nor did he play any role in FDA’s approval process.

As for Applied Digital, they vigorously denounce concerns over their product, pointing to several other medical studies that conclude RFID chips are safe in animals, the fact that the FDA is standing by its approval, and an impressive 15 year record of implanting their chips into millions of animals with no red flags by veterinarians that there is a health risk to pets.

Despite the concerns of a few, it may be too late to hold back the tide of humans being implanted with Radio Frequency ID devices.

RFID is literally everywhere: last year alone, 500 million RFID chips were shipped to the U.S. military and companies like Wal-Mart for use in inventory tracking. Tolls on highways and bridges are increasingly charged automatically through RFID, the latest US Passports contain one of the chips, and even your pet may be one of the six million who have been chipped since 1991 in Applied Digital’s “Home Again” Program, their original business.

VeriChip Corp. even helped during Hurricane Katrina, making the job of coroners infinitely easier by implanting flood victims corpses’ with their RFID chip for free, so that bodies could be easily tracked and returned to loved ones once they stepped forward.

In a world where RFID has proven so useful, it may seem foolish not to extend the benefits of the radio web to people.

But there is one thing all sides of the implant controversy can agree on – being chipped needs to remain voluntary.

Wisconsin passed legislation this summer banning mandatory chipping. And Ohio is following suit, after a Cincinnati company told workers they’d have to be implanted to access a data center.

VeriChip Corp. says they quite agree. “The overall standards of our company,” says Allison Tomek, “is that VeriMed is a voluntary procedure.”

- The End -
By Lance Laytner
Copyright 2008
Meritum Media

Now drug companies are scrambling to get their hands on the patent and rush the drug to market.

And Maria Rupnick may go down in history as the woman who won the war on fat – a war that claims the lives of several million people each year due to obesity related diseases like diabetes and heart disease.

The drugs are called angiogenesis inhibitors and they work by killing off the blood vessels that feed tumors. Unlike radiation and chemotherapy, they do not have the negative side-effects of nausea or hair loss.

But this miracle medicine is proving even more effective at fighting fat than battling cancer.

“I didn’t go into this to find a cure for obesity,” explains Dr. Rupnick, “Fat just looked like the best way to study whether or not blood vessels control normal tissue just like they control tumors.”

Fat and cancer share a unique property – both need a lot of blood to keep growing. To get it, they form tubes called blood vessels that hook into veins and arteries.

“They sprout,” says Rupnick, “like new branches on a tree.”

This process of forming new blood vessels is called ‘angiogenesis’ and angiogenesis inhibitors interfere with it in a number of ways depending on the particular drug.

If you stop the tumors from growing new blood vessels by using angiogenesis inhibitors, then the cancer can no longer grow or spread.

Maria Rupnick wanted to know if the drugs would have the same effect on fat. “If there is angiogenesis in fat growth, then if you stop the angiogenesis you should stop the fat growth.”

To test her theory, Rupnick recruited hundreds of super fat mice. Each are the rodent equivalent of a Sumo Wrestler, weighing more than three times the weight of a normal mouse.

The mice belong to a particular strain called OBOB. “They are a normal mouse that lacks the hormone lepton,” explains Rupnick. “Lepton tells the brain, ‘I’m full.’

These animals don’t have that so they eat and eat. They end up being furry balls of fat with a tail.”

When Dr. Rupnick and her team began giving the fat mice the angiogenesis inhibitors, they expected the animals would stop gaining weight.

“We not only saw that,” recalls Rupnick, “but they lost a tremendous amount of weight! They were losing 1/60th of their body weight every day. They quickly went from their obese weight of more than 75 grams to the weight of their normal counterparts at 25 grams.”

What is that in human terms? “So if someone were 75 kilograms, he would lose 1.5 kilograms a day!” says the excited scientist.

“Depending on the angiogenesis inhibitor, they lost more or less. Taken off the drug, they would regain the weight. We did that over and over again.”

At first the researchers were worried that the drugs were poisoning the animals and that was why they were losing so much weight.

“But the animals were fine,” says Rupnick. “OBOB mice are usually sedentary, but these guys actually became active like their normal counter-parts.”

“So I spoke to experts in the obesity field and they didn’t buy it,” remembers Rupnick. “I received pretty harsh criticism. I was even told by one very prominent person that they had seen many young scientist’s careers crash and burn by doing things just like this.”

“A lot of whether or not you make it or break it in science depends on the decisions you make at a given crossroads and how far ahead you can see. And there is such a fine line between persistence and stubbornness.”

“It was a frightening decision to keep going, because I didn’t have an explanation for what was happening. And the paper got rejected so many times I lost count. And the grants got rejected.”

Despite the opposition and lack of funding, Maria Rupnick decided she couldn’t ignore the amazing results. The obesity epidemic was too serious to pass up an opportunity to help.

“I initially wanted to go into research because you could potentially help thousands of people, in a hospital you only help one at a time.” Dr. Rupnick felt this was her chance and redoubled her efforts to prove her work.

“We spent a lot of time trying to make sure the animals weren’t sick,” says Rupnick. “We had veterinarians check them and the animals were fine.”

“But a pharmacologist and toxicologist told me I could never 100% prove they weren’t being poisoned. I went home depressed and watched Law and Order on television. The attorneys were having a hard time proving their case. Then one said, ‘Well, if we can’t prove that this person committed the crime. Than we have to prove who really did it.’”

“It was an ‘AHAA moment’ for me. I had spent months trying to disprove toxicity. What I should have done instead was figure out what was causing the weight loss. If it is a normal, what is it?”

After months of searching, Dr. Maria Rupnick found the missing piece of the puzzle. It turns out that it was something that stares us in the face every time we put on a bathing suit and check to see if we look fat.

Fat is special.

Explains Rupnick, “if you eat ten pizzas, you’ll gain weight. Even if your weight has been stable forever. And if after ten years you suddenly don’t have access to food, your fat tissue is going to shrink.”

We’ve all experienced putting on a few pounds during the Holidays or struggling to lose ten pounds for that vacation to the beach, so we take it for granted. But, biologically speaking, this is very unique. Your heart doesn’t get bigger or smaller depending on what you eat.

“The blood vessels in fat tissue must specialize to accommodate that ability to grow and shrink,” says Rupnick. And that was the key.

Like many people, blood vessels become less adaptable as they get older. Your heart won’t grow or shrink because its blood vessels are too old and rigid.

But fat is the Peter Pan of the body, it never quite grows up. “The blood vessels that supply fat tissue never fully mature,” explains Rupnick. “That keeps them readily able to grow or shrink as you need.”

But this eternal youth has a price. “The payback is they are vulnerable to angiogenesis inhibitors.” That was the missing link, the reason the fat was melting away.

As its blood vessels die off, the fat cell is forced to get rid of bulky fat to survive –Like sailors on a sinking ship who start throwing everything overboard to stay afloat.

This discovery goes way beyond helping people lose fat, it will also help angiogenesis inhibitors beat cancer.

Chemotherapy and radiation kill cancer by destroying everything around it, including healthy tissue. It is like a nuclear bomb. The big advantage of angiogenesis inhibitors is they only attack the cancer, like a smart missile.

But, despite their promise, the results have been mixed. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved one angiogenesis inhibitor called Avastin, but many others have been held up by mixed results in clinical trials.

Dr. Rupnick’s findings are the missing link. Angiogenesis inhibitors can be made more effective by first using drugs that de-mature the blood vessels in the tumors making them more vulnerable.

The opposite can make fighting fat even easier. Maria Rupnick discovered that if she gave the mice drugs to age the blood vessels in their fat, then the mice became frozen at whatever weight they were. “They just stabilized out,” says Rupnick, “the animals couldn’t gain weight or lose weight.”

Now Rupnick and her team are developing a two step fat fighting system. First they melt away excess fat with angiogenesis inhibitors, then they lock the new weight in with drugs that mature the blood vessels within the fat.

Imagine safely losing 30 pounds in a week and then taking a pill along with your daily vitamins that will guarantee that you will never gain it back. It will be a revolution in how we deal with fat.

“The problem we had in treating obesity is that we didn’t understand it,” says Rupnick. “We blamed it on the patient.”

Doctors would never tell someone with diabetes, “just be more disciplined.” But that is exactly what many fat people are told. “Obesity is a deregulation of body weight just like diabetes is a deregulation of blood sugar,” says Rupnick. “It is a disease.”

And now being fat may have a cure.

When asked when we might see these drugs on the market, Dr. Rupnick said it was too early to say. “Obesity being the epidemic that it is, the FDA wants to push it towards clinical trials as fast as possible. But, I think it is too dangerous to even speculate.”

The fact that the drugs have already been approved for treating cancer will go a long way in speeding up the process. It is possible we might begin seeing ‘fat melting’ medicines available world-wide in the very near future.

But there are still questions to be answered. “There is a huge difference between a mouse and a man. Right now we can say that we can make mice look pretty good,” says Maria Rupnick. “We don’t have any indications yet that it won’t translate to humans, but the place where you always get into trouble in science and medicine is that you don’t know what you don’t know. Still, I would say it is hopeful.”

If the drugs end up fulfilling their promise we may be entering a Fat Free millennium. Since the 1930’s most industrialized countries have been fortifying milk and bread with nutrients. This century may eventually see the same being done with the ‘anti-fat drugs’ being developed by Maria Rupnick.

“The only way you can get a drug from the lab to the bedside is to have a drug company pay for it. There is no other way to fund, develop, or market these things.

Because of that reason, it may end up going in that direction and I can’t control that.”

But the idea disturbs her. “Obesity is a disease, and I want this to be a treatment for a disease,” says Rupnick, “not to lose 5 pounds for the little black dress on Saturday.”

“If your objective is to eat poorly, and not exercise, and just take the pill a couple of days before you want to go out; I couldn’t be more opposed to that. Because the drug itself may be safe, but what you’re really doing is abusing yourself. This is not supposed to allow you to eat ten thousand hamburgers.”

But despite Doctor Rupnick’s reservations, her drugs may end up being used in precisely that way.

- The End -
Lance Laytner
Meritum Media
Copyright 2008

click on photos for LIGHTBOX

THESE TWO MICE WERE ONCE ALMOST IDENTICAL. AFTER JUST

DOCTOR MARIA RUPNICK MAY GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS THE

THIS FAT MOUSE MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE. OBESITY CAUSES A NUMBER OF HEALTH PROBLEMS INCLUDING HEART DISEASE AND DIABETES. THE RESEARCH BEING DONE ON THIS MOUSE MAY SPELL THE END OF OBESITY AND A NEW ERA OF IMPROVED HEALTH. PHOTO BY LANCE LAYTNER MERITUM MEDIA

OUR BODIES WERE SIMPLY NOT BUILT FOR THE KIND OF OVEREATING THAT IS POSSIBLE IN OUR MODERN WORLD. THE RESULT IS 'GLOBESITY,' A WORLD-WIDE EPIDEMIC OF FAT RELATED DISEASES. PHOTO BY RON LAYTNER EDIT INTERNATIONAL

IF ANGIOGENESIS INHIBITORS PROVE AS SUCCESSFUL ON HUMANS AS THEY HAVE ON THESE MICE, THE CHOICE BETWEEN FAT AND THIN MAY BE AS EASY AS TAKING A PILL WITH YOUR VITAMINS. PHOTO BY LANCE LAYTNER MERITUM MEDIA

HUNDREDS OF MICE HAVE BEEN TESTED BY DR. RUPNICK AND OTHER LABS AND THE RESULTS ARE IRREFUTIBLE - ANGIOGENESIS INHIBITORS WORK BETTER THAN COULD HAVE BEEN IMAGINED. PHOTO BY LANCE LAYTNER MERITUM MEDIA

WHEN RUPNICK FIRST STARTED WEIGHING THE MICE AFTER GIVING THEM THE DRUGS, SHE WAS SHOCKED. THE MICE WERE LOSING MORE THAN 1/60th OF THEIR BODY WEIGHT EACH DAY. PHOTO BY LANCE LAYTNER MERITUM MEDIA

EVERY PHASE OF HER WORK IS CAREFULLY DOCUMENTED BY MARIA RUPNICK, A TOP AMERICAN SCIENTIST WHO EARNED A MEDICAL DOCTORATE FROM HARVARD AND A PHD FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON UNIVERSITY IN PHYSIOLOGY, CELL BIOLOGY, AND MATHEMATICAL MODELING. PHOTO BY LANCE LAYTNER MERITUM MEDIA

HERE A CLUSTER OF FAT CELLS IS SHOWN WITH THE HELP OF A HIGH POWERED ELECTRON MICROSCOPE. THE TENDRILS THAT LOOK LIKE YELLOW VINES ARE BLOOD VESSELS. ANGIOGENESIS INHIBITORS KILL THEM CAUSING THE FAT CELLS TO SHRINK AND EVENTUALLY DIE. PHOTO BY SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

LIKE A PROUD PARENT, MARIA RUPNICK SHOWS OFF THE MICE THAT MAY CHANGE THE FUTURE OF WEIGHT LOSS. PHOTO BY LANCE LAYTNER MERITUM MEDIA