Radio Identification For Medicine Bottles

one source (scroll down a bit)
Drudge just started a story on radio antennas on medicine bottles, which seems a bit ridiculous at first. However, the radio transmitters would be RFID (Radio Frequency Identifier) chips, which would be used to prevent counterfeits. Similar chips are used in security systems to prevent theft, along with many other uses that I don't have the knowledge to list.
What Drudge hasn't mentioned is that this system is already in use, although only to a small extent.

In an effort to detect counterfeit drugs before they reach consumers’ medicine cabinets, big pharmaceutical companies are beginning to implement radio frequency identification, or RFID, technology, the Associated Press reports. By putting tags that transmit radio waves on medicine bottles sent to drug stores, company officials intend to find fake drugs that are not moving through usual supply chains.

According to the AP, a distribution center in Delran, N.J., owned by wholesaler McKesson Corp., is one of several centers nationwide involved in a pilot project shipping small quantities of RFID-labeled drug bottles from manufacturing plants to pharmacies. At the center a worker sets a box of tagged drug bottles on a table where a radio-wave scanner and computer run through a list of scenarios involving theft, recalled drugs, outdated drugs or other logistical errors. So far, the “track record has been pretty good with it,” officials at the distribution center report.

The RFID tags look like ordinary labels, but are actually computer chips with antennas wrapped around them. Sensors at distribution centers use radio waves to activate the tags, which are read electronically and stamped with a record of where they have been, the AP reports.

The $3 million project includes drug makers such as Johnson & Johnson, Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc., Merck & Co. and Wyeth. Distributors, such as Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp., and retailers, such as CVS Corp. and Rite Aid Corp., are also participating.

Overall, the plan isn't much of a "big brother" system. It is one of few possible methods to recall all drugs that need to be recalled. Usually, only a few percent of a recalled item are actually returned.

There are also some plans to use microchips to announce the information that is written on the pill bottle, in order to help patients with bad vision.