Brickbat: Broken Pump

When Savannah Berry went through Salt Lake City International Airport, she told Transportation Security Administration screeners that she was a Type 1 diabetic and wears an insulin pump. She showed them a doctor's note saying the pump should not go through a body scanner and told them that she is usually patted down by airport security. They sent here through the scanner anyway and the pump broke.

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Comments

[Suthenboy]

Savannah Berry should be grateful. I know that I sleep more soundly at night knowing the geniuses at TSA are keeping America safe. It warms my heart that these heroes will soon be unionized.

[Mensan]

I thought they were already unionized.

[Whiterun Guard]

Better to kill a thousand diabetic scum than to allow a single inept bomber get his inept bomb onto the plane so that it can fail horribly.

[Whiterun Guard]

Also is Type 1 the fatty kind or the skinny kind? 'Cause I'd be all about keeping the fatty kind off of planes. At least ones that I'm on.

[PS]

Yeah, Type I is when you are born with a bad pancreas, more or less, Type II diabetes mellitusis, of called adult onset, is caused by eating crap until the pancreas is worn out and the body is very insulin resistant. I've known people to contract T2DM who weren't particularly overweight. I've also known T2DM people to completely reverse, essentially cure, themselves using an LC diet.

Before the discovery of insulin, T1DM was almost invariably fatal before puberty, with the children looking like Auschwitz victims from their inability to store fat.

[SugarFree]

And it's this exact attitude that keeps T2 diabetics from getting adequate care. "They brought it on themselves, so fuck 'em."

I've struggled for years to get recognized as a very rare late-onset Type 1. Now that I have, my quality of care has gone up.

[Whiterun Guard]

Shut up fatty.

[SugarFree]

Touch?, douch?.

(Your comment does not appear to be written in an English script. Please comment in English.)

[Whiterun Guard]

I kid because I love.

Not you, I mean, but fat people in pain.

[Fatty Bolger]

Wat?

[Auric Demonocles]

You're just scared of candy.

[Dagny T.]

They are supposed to allow you to opt out of the scanner for any reason you like, much less a medically necessary reason. When dealing with goons, the best approach is to avoid confusing them at all costs. If she'd used the code words they've been trained on ("opt out") I bet the Pavlovian response would've kicked in and she would've been groped by a female-type thug like I always am.

Not that that makes what they did any less shitty, of course.

[Suthenboy]

"...she would've been groped by a female-type thug like I always am."

Heh. The porn thread is under the Sullum article.

[Dagny T.]

It would be a shame to ruin it for you by reminding you what the average female TSA employee looks like.

[Suthenboy]

Dammit! Why did you have to say that? Ugh.

[SugarFree]

la belle dame sans merci

[Lost_In_Translation]

Well except they have no training when it comes to implanted devices. I imagine if I said I had some internal device, the guy patting me down (as I always opt out just to make their job more time consuming) would probably freak out and call his supervisor, who would probably call a SWAT official to march me through the machine because they have no procedures on how to proceed. Somehow I imagine that's what would have happened. Opt out is only for us normals to appease us, not for anyone that might actually have a real immediate issue with not wanting to go through the body scanner.

[Kaptious Kristen]

Yeah, I can't figure out the part about "they sent her through the scanner". I have opted out of the scanner at least 4 times already, without any problems. I just say "I'd like the pat down instead", TSA calls for a female patter-downer, they offer me a "private" location (as if), and they feel me up. Never heard of a scanner being mandatory.

[sage]

I can't for the life of me think of why they have an image problem.

[Fist of Etiquette]

She's been a bad girl, she's like a chemical.
Though you try to stop it, she's like a narcotic.
You want to torture her, you want to talk to her...

[Drake]

Thank goodness the TSA is unionizing so they don't have to tolerate this kind of mistreatment.

[Fatty Bolger]

Look, the TSA has rules to follow, and one of those rules is that teenage girls go through the scanner. No exceptions.

[squarooticus]

Especially the hot ones. With big boobs.

[Mr. Weebles]

My daughter has Type 1 diabetes and uses a pump. We've flown several times and never had a TSA idiot force her to have it scanned.

They did give her shit about not having her extra vial of insulin in a bag though. It was in a small insulated carrier with an ice pack and I had to slowly and carefully explain that it needed to be kept chilled or it could go bad. I then asked why a plastic bag would make a difference. They had no explanation, it was just "them's the rules."

You would think they would cover this in TSA training, no?

[BigFire]

They are not paid to think.

[KangaTooo]

Dude seems to know what he is talking about. Wow.

http://www.At-Anon.tk

[wT]

The amount of radiation that could damage a medical device would either kill you or induce cancer

[tarylcabot]

You should probably get a photo of the Animas pump. You're showing the Medtronic glucose sensor/transmitter and the infusion set (pump in the pocket). Gives a misleading impression.

I am a bit curious as well why the pump would die in the scanner and do not believe the $10,000 figure in the news report.