Why Are Doctors Still Providing Hackable Pacemakers and Medical Implants to Patients?

By B.N. Frank

In 2013, many media outlets reported about how Dick Cheney had been afraid that someone would try to murder him by hacking his wireless pacemaker. According to experts, this was a valid fear, so in 2007 he had the wireless capabilities disabled on it.

The possibility of death by hacked pacemakers and other implants has been reported by many media outlets over the years:

It was even a scene in the popular TV series, Homeland.

All devices can apparently be hacked.

Dick Cheney and his doctors knew this in 2007 and took measures to prevent this from happening to his pacemaker. Still, since then millions of Americans have been provided with hackable wireless medical devices. This makes no sense.

According to a 2015 Business Insider article,

in one of the creepiest scientific studies we’ve found in a while, a group of cybersecurity students hacked the pacemaker of a simulated human. And they killed it.

Also creepy:

A key feature of the latest generation of ICDs—and the one that makes them vulnerable to hacking—is that doctors and other medical professionals can tweak the settings on your ICD from up to five meters away using a remote called a “device programmer.” Even though these devices are not connected to the internet, the researchers found that it’s possible to listen in on the radio-wave transmissions, decipher the information sent, and then reverse engineer your own remote to send malicious commands.

[…]

Security experts have been sounding the alarm for some time that electronic medical devices are vulnerable to tampering. Earlier this year, Johnson & Johnson had to warn patients that their Animas OneTouch Ping insulin pump, which is worn under clothing but controlled with a hand remote, could be hacked remotely and overdose diabetics with enough insulin to cause life-threateningly low blood sugar levels.

From creepy to scary: in 2017, the FDA recalled almost ½ million pacemakers due to hacking fears. Privacy and data mining is also a concern with newer medical implants too.

You’d think by now that they’d realize the easiest way to fix all of this would be to simply STOP making these devices with wireless capability. But no. Only Dick Cheney seems to be getting special treatment.

What’s equally if not more disturbing: decades of scientific research has also already proven that exposure to all sources of wireless radiation can cause or increase cardiac issues and blood sugar fluctuations (as well as many other health problems). Even when it’s not known for certain whether or not wireless radiation exposure caused these health problems, it seems that using wireless medical devices could actually make them worse.

As the government and the Telecom Industry force the installation of additional wireless radiation-emitting infrastructure via the “Race for 5G”, “Smart Cities,” the Internet of Things (IoT), utility “Smart” Meters and more – we will all be involuntarily exposed to more harmful wireless radiation which will lead to more sickness and then probably more hackable wireless medical devices being prescribed to treat us. Oh the irony.

Wireless radiation has biological effects. Period. This is no longer a subject for debate when you look at PubMed and the peer-review literature. These effects are seen in all life forms; plants, animals, insects, microbes. In humans, we have clear evidence of cancer now: there is no question We have evidence of DNA damage, cardiomyopathy, which is the precursor of congestive heart failure, neuropsychiatric effects…5G is an untested application of a technology that we know is harmful; we know it from the science. In academics, this is called human subjects research. – Dr. Sharon Goldberg