Mike Langberg puts the "embedded" back into journalism in his San Jose Mercury News column, with a first-person tale of adventure that, well, made my skin crawl.

I'm rolling up my sleeve, ready to get injected with the VeriChip. That's the device cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this month as the first implantable electronic identification tag linked to a person's medical profile.

Langberg's entertaining column explores the privacy and medical safety concerns of the device and offers five guidelines for federal laws he hopes will be adopted to avoid abuse of the devices.

As I was reading it, I couldn't help remembering one of my favorite, cheesy sci-fi flicks of the '60s, day-dreaming about riding inside the VeriChip, with Raquel Welch in a 21st century remake of Fantastic Voyage.

After all, it's Friday.

Links:

Under my skin by Mike Langberg, San Jose Mercury News, 22 October 2004

Fantastic Voyage