Not feeling chipper

For the semiconductor industry, the spread of the microchip into more and more facets of everyday life is a shot in the arm. For Joan Stock of Saltford, England, chip proliferation is nothing but a pain in the neck. Literally. The 79-year-old great-grandmother suffers from a rare allergy linked to the growing plethora of mundane objects packed with chips. The electromagnetic fields generated by the likes of autos, cash registers, and PCs cause crippling pain that can sometimes keep her housebound for days.

Stock traces the beginnings of the malady to 1975, "when the office I worked in got a computerized typewriter. I would get terrible pains in the back of my head...like someone was drilling into my skull. It was 100 times worse than a migraine headache," she told the Bristol Evening Post. Her television is a small black-and-white model. Air conditioning and cruise control in newer-model cars force Stock and her husband to travel in a 25-year-old Ford. Until Stock began wearing a counteracting device called a Medigen on her chest, she couldn't enter her local supermarket.

It seems that the radiation generated by IC-laden conveniences the rest of the world takes for granted interferes with pulses generated by Stock's brain. Her MD, David Dowson, told the Evening Post that he has treated only eight similar cases in 15 years. Stock says the problem has gotten worse in the last 10 years. Unfortunately, as chip content continues to climb Stock's future looks, sadly, grimmer.