Would an implanted chip help to keep my child safe?

If your child could wear an implant – a microchip that could tell a computer where he or she was at any time to within a few metres – would you buy it? After the horrific snatch of three-year-old Madeleine McCann from her bed in Portugal, the answer from many parents seems to be “yes”.

Would an implanted chip help to keep my child safe?-Life & Style-Women-Families-TimesOnline.

Sigh…

While what has happened to Madeleine McCann is truly awful and while her parents are doubtless beside themselves with a combination of anxiety and guilt over her disappearance, now is not the time to indulge in paranoia. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening. The reality; despite the hyperbole; is that there is not a perverted child abductor waiting on every street corner. These cases tend to be high profile, but then look at them in the context of a population of sixty million, eleven million of whom are children, and ask is it really necessary to start talking about implanting other peoples’ bodies with tracking chips?

Professor Kevin Warwick, who developed the technology that made it possible for the first child in Britain to volunteer to be “chipped” in 2002 – after the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman – has been bombarded with e-mails over the past few days from parents desperate to keep tabs on their children.

I understand their worry, but Professor Warwick is merely feeding off that worry and fear. I mean, having implanted a child with a chip… What, exactly do parents think an abductor would do? It doesn’t take over much imagination – and it is highly unlikely to involve sitting around waiting for plod to knock on the door; the solution is likely to be somewhat more bloody and painful for the victim.

 The question that must also be asked is: should we be tagging and monitoring our children to such an extent?

No,

Is there a danger that we may lose perspective and fill our children with suspicion and fear?

Yes.

Indeed, could we become overreliant on technology and consequently more blasé about basic supervision?

Quite.

Michelle Elliot, director of the child protection charity Kidscape, says that she opposes the idea of micro-chipimplants but understands why many parents want to use phone-tracking devices or wristbands.

She worries, however, that such devices might hamper children’s development of a sense of independence. “It doesn’t teach them what to do in a problem situation – eg, if you are lost, go into a shop”, she says. “Having children relying on a parent getting to them and finding them doesn’t encourage independence.” Of implants, she says: “We don’t know what the physiological effects – and a child isn’t giving informed consent to what is a minor operation on their body.”

Indeed. Ms Elliot is eminently sensible about this whole thing. As a child I was exhorted by my parents not to talk to strangers, and like today, there were a handful of cases where children were abducted and murdered. During my school days, I lost three of my peers and all three were a consequence of tragic accident; two road fatalities and a drowning. Chipping would not have saved them and these accidents, close though they were did not change my parents’ attitudes towards their offsprings’ development, we still walked alone to school, we still rode our bicycles unsupervised on the roads and for much of the time, they would have been hard pushed to know exactly where we were. So, in the wake of the McCann case, I am bemused by the response of a coworker who declared that when she has children, they will never be out of her sight. Quite apart from the practicalities involved, how will she allow them to develop into adults? Indeed, my friend David drowned in sight of his mother…

I was taught independence and self reliance at a very early age and that the world was a dangerous place. The actual rate of abduction and murder has changed very little since my childhood despite the ranting headlines:

“We have 11 million children in the UK,” says Elliot. “For the past 25 years between five and seven children have been abducted and killed by a stranger each year, and that has not changed.

Quite so, let’s keep a little proportion, please. Tagging children, treating them like chattel, not allowing them the freedom to grow and develop because something awful may happen fails them at a time when they need to be learning resilience and that, indeed, this world is a dangerous place and that they need to learn to handle it.

 “Are we becoming paranoid to the point where we give children the message that life is so dangerous that they have to be tagged? There is no guarantee of your child’s safety. But the chances [of something like this happening] are so remote that you have to think about the message you’re giving them.”

Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening. Our society has become so force fed with lurid stories and hyperbole, that a sense of proportion has been lost. Yes, for those affected it is awful and my heart goes out to them, but they are a very small proportion of the population and the risk to children is small. Small enough to be managed without treating them like cattle.

 But Professor Warwick says that if there was sufficient demand from the public and the initiative was backed by child-safety groups, it would not be difficult to make chip implants – about an inch long – available nationally in a relatively short period of time.

Professor Warwick would appear to be morally destitute.

To get things into perspective; rather more children are killed by ordinary child loving people who drive motor cars than are abducted and killed by paedophiles. And then there is the little matter of accidents in the home…