But one technology is crawling towards realisation — the idea of human beings being “chipped”, or implanted with a microchip containing personal information. One of America’s largest medical insurance companies is sponsoring a two-year trial in which chronically ill patients will be implanted with a chip containing their medical information.

The chip, inserted in the upper arm, is the size of a grain of rice and will reveal, when scanned, a 16-digit number that links to the patient’s medical records. It could provide all the information needed in an emergency.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an insurer, has invited members to participate in the project at Hackensack University Medical Centre. The company hopes that it will “save lives and provide a measure of comfort to our members with chronic conditions and to their families”.

Laudable stuff — but in its wake trail issues of privacy, power and autonomy. Will future patients have to be chipped as a condition of insurance cover? Also, these chips, which can be read through clothing, are RFIDs — radiofrequency identification devices. The signals they emit can be picked up 30ft away without the “chippee” knowing; a delight for stalkers.

VeriChip, the company providing the chips, has already seen its products used by anxious parents wishing to track their kids, by employers who want their workers to have keyless access to secure areas and by Hurricane Katrina rescue workers, who chipped unidentified bodies.

Now consider that Scott Silverman, president of Verichip, recently suggested that the US Government use the RFIDs to track migrant workers coming from Mexico. Interestingly, Tommy Thompson, the former US Secretary for Health and Human Services, skipped over to VeriChip’s board after leaving office, and then suggested that every American should be chipped. With ID cards in Britain on the verge of being scrapped, and Home Office hysteria over unwanted visitors, could identity chips take over as the fresh scourge of the civil libertarians?

• IN THE DEBATE on climate change, goodwill between opposing sides appears to be melting faster than an Antarctic ice sheet. Take, for example, the squabble between Associated Press and Republican politicians on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

  At the heart of the dispute is Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, which argues passionately that climate change is real and man-made. Seth Borenstein, an AP reporter, contacted 100 climate experts and asked them to rate the film. Of the 19 who had both seen the film and agreed to the request, most said that Gore had got the science right.

  Cue a sour missive from the Senate committee headlined, rather pathetically, “AP Incorrectly Claims Scientists Praise Gore’s Movie”. The press release, from the Republican majority on the committee, claimed that AP “chose to ignore the scores of scientists who have harshly criticised the science presented” in the film. It asked AP to disclose the names of the 100 scientists approached by Borenstein, and the 19 who helped with his article. Is the intention, one wonders, to illuminate or intimidate? AP insists the story is fair and is standing by its man.

• STARE AT A WORD for long enough, and it can begin to look unfamiliar. This is an example of jamais vu (never seen), the opposite of déjà vu. Chris Moulin, of Leeds University, asked 92 volunteers to write out “door” 30 times in 60 seconds. At the International Conference on Memory in Sydney last week he reported that 68 per cent of his guinea pigs showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that “door” was a real word. Dr Moulin believes that a similar brain fatigue underlies a phenomenon observed in some schizophrenia patients: that a familiar person has been replaced by an impostor. Dr Moulin suggests they could be suffering from chronic jamais vu.

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