A few things that come immediately to mind just for their possible usefulness as simple weapons:
A flammable liquid
A caustic acid
Lye water
A concentrated capsicum (hot pepper) solution
Even some substances that might conceivably be used in unexpected ways as part of a larger scheme:
Liquid LSD
Butyric acid (stink bomb, essentially, but you can pack a
whoooole lotta stink in a baby bottle)
So, basically, I think it’s a completely sound and sensible thing for airline personnel to do. Sure, there is a gross-out factor in this particular case. Sure, it may have felt demeaning or offensive for her personally. And of course, I suspect any hijacker, or someone who happens to greet their friend with a “Hi, Jack!” is likely to be turned into ground meat by their fellow passengers in this point in history. However, the fact remains that very dangerous liquids could conceivably find their ways onto a plane if these kind of security measures aren’t carried out. Little exceptions like baby bottles are the avenues through which the system might be thwarted again. Again, the possibility of a repeat airplane attack seems slim to me, but I think it would be boneheaded to not take simple security precautions.
Oh, and upon seeing some of the other posts that came in while I was typing and foolishly not previewing, I certainly think it is extremely unlikely that the woman was forced to drink the entire contents, and the link given presents no such impression. She was probably asked to drink a sip of each bottle, as a sip of anything useful in a hijacking is probably going to be very unpleasant. So, the baby probably did miss out on a few calories but gimme a break, depriving the baby of its dinner? Did you imagine they would make her chug down three bottles? If they were disallowing liquids altogether, she would just empty them, unless she was unusually concerned about wasting food. The bottom line her is the good ol’ ick factor. I’m totally in agreement with techchick.
I find it silly the press make a huge deal out of breast milk. And whats the big deal? The rules seem pretty straightforward- I for one am willing to be a little inconvenced/embrassed for the sake of security.
Terrorist 1: “Whats wrong? I thought we were going to go through with the plan of poisoning the plane?”
Terrorist 2: “Well that guard over there just made that woman drink three bottles of her own breastmilk who knows what they are going to do to us.”
I’m amazed the woman didn’t open the one container, glare at him/her, and slowly and succinctly pour the contents onto the security guard’s shoes. That’s what I would have done. . .
Tripler
They can arrest ya for terrorism, but not for being an asshole.
The woman is on TV right now and she says that her tasting it contaminated it so they baby couldn’t have any. WTF? Does she have a disease or something?
No, that’s the rule they taught us in our parenting class. Anything that touches the milk has to be considered as contaminating it, especially if the child in question is very small.
I heard the woman on the radio. They only required her to take a sip from each bottle, not drink the whole bottle. She said her problem with that was that was that drinking from the bottle would contaminate the milk, so she wouldn’t be able to give it to the baby. She also said she didn’t get anyone’s name-not the security personnel or any witnesses ( if there were any- when asked if anyone knew what happened, she said she told the woman bext to her on the planewho held a blanket up while she breastfed). I find it difficult to believe that someone whose real worry was contaminating the milk didn’t have the sense to ask for a cup to pour some into and that someone who was upset enough to be calling a radio station and thinking about filing lawsuits didn’t have the freakin’ sense to get anyone’s name or call for a suoervisor.
That reminds me of this story (12th paragraph down) about the 14 year old kid who was forced to drink from his science project, which was a Gatorade bottle full of water from his grandparents’ pond. He ended up getting sick :smack: and missed two days of school due to gastric problems.
They most certainly can arrest you for an overt assholic act like that, and in that situation, they most certainly would, I’m betting.
And I’d be rooting them on. They’ve got a thankless job, and if people are going to be assholes to them, in a way that goes beyond mere talk, just because they can’t understand why their job asks them to do what they do, then bust 'em.
OK, so she can politely explain that to the guard, and ask him for a paper or plastic cup that she can pour a spoonful’s worth of the milk into from each container, so she can drink it from the cup without contaminating the milk in the bottles.
On the basic point, I’m in full agreement with techchick: what’s so gross about this?
And if she’s flown since 9/11, she should certainly be aware that them’s the rules - they make you drink from any unsealed container of liquid you bring through security, for the reasons other posters have mentioned. (Perfectly legit reasons, IMHO.)
The point is, the guard doesn’t know the bottles have breast milk; he only knows that they contain a liquid that could be breast milk.
Actually, it goes the other way. While you are out profiling all those nasty dark people, they simply give their bombs to their white girlfriends who are, of course, above suspicion.
(I am not creating a strawman. This has already happened on at least two occasions.) Profiling doesn’t protect us, it just allows us to feel good that one of “ours” would never do this. I mean, look at Timothy McVeigh: obviously one of those suspicious looking, long-haired, dark-skinned, foreign-accented terrorists. We spotted him in a second.
I am also confused about the fuss over this. Yeah, it’s kind of stupid… but given the fact that people are willing to do horrendous things to hijack planes, I feel it is justified to prove what is in a container of liquid.
So she had to drink her own breast milk… so what?
My father had an open bottle of Jack Daniels confiscated by airport security YEARS before 9/11… and he was pissed! Let me tell ya! But he was willing to concede that it could have been some volitile chemical meant to cause harm (he wasn’t asked to take a drink, it was simply confiscated).
In today’s atmosphere, you need to be prepared to be inconvenienced if you want to fly. That’s the way it is. Suck it up, or find a different way to travel.
Had it been me, I would have taken a swig and said, “Oh yeah! That’s the stuff!”
Astrogirl has already been informed that if we ever have a child, one breast is for the baby… and one is for me!
I don’t really want to break up a perfectly good rant, but Snopes says that its only sort of true. Yes, at one time this was required, but that, as of June 24, 2002, its no longer a part of federal guidelines.
Security is under orders to check every open container for possible toxic substances by making the person carrying it try a litte…
Woman: “But it’s breast milk! I don’t want to drink it.”
Just because she says it’s breast milk doesn’t mean it can’t be anything else. And off the top of my head I can think of a few dozen very useful substances for taking over a plane or storming airport security.
As for the contamination part
I wasn’t aware you could backwash into a beverage container you had to suck on…
Or she could have squeezed some into her mouth. Or washed the damn little plasitc dohickey.
Agreed with the previous posters about how those could well have contained caustic/flammable/explosive substances.
As for the commentary about how many new mothers are terrorists or other criminals, let’s not forget that suddenly Israel was surprised by young Palestinian women becoming suicide bombers. Women with babies are sometimes used as drug-smuggling mules so they can hide drugs in the baby’s diapers/formula cans. For all those security people knew, she could have been smuggling some liquid drug component in the bottles, and they might have been concerned about that possibility instead of terrorism. And as to the question of race (I don’t know what the mother’s race was), John Walker Lindh was white, and the “shoe bomber” was, if I recall correctly, half black and half white.
If the mother was so worried about contaminating her own milk, she could have done a number of things to avoid it, as other posters have pointed out. Airports should consider carefully their policies with respect to this, but I don’t see it as being a horrible violation of civil rights.
Another point besides the contamination factor is that for some of us, expressing milk is not as easy as it sounds. I personally do not seem to be able to get much and I sure as hell don’t want to waste even one drop of it on a taste test. Who knows how long it may have taken her to get three bottles full? It would’ve taken ME the better part of a day! Even when I was breastfeeding a 12 pound newborn full-time and missed a feeding I could not seem to get more than a couple of ounces. We aren’t cows that you can get gallons from at a time, you know, even if it looks that way!
And as to drinking formula, all I can say is YUCK!! I would protest that as well! Not only does it smell unappetizing (to an adult), it is expensive as hell! One swallow, and there’s a dollar gone (OK, I exaggerate. Slightly.)
As to plain old cow’s milk, you aren’t supposed to give that to a child less than one year of age anyway, but it is far easier to replace than breast milk. It is my suspicion that people will object far less to you pulling out the extra milk to refill the bottle than they would to you whipping out the breast and pumping an ounce or two!
My point is that security is nabbing these “threats” while others have managed to board flights with knives before they were caught. I still say that many are enjoying their new power and are taking advantage of it by targeting those they feel to be easy marks. That is what gets me more than anything else. Not just that someone might have to do something slightly embarrassing or distasteful (no pun intended!), but that some security personnel seem to be becoming bullies about the whole thing.
I find this somewhat odd, since kids will stuff just about any old thing in their mouths. It’s not like a woman’s breasts are sterilized before use, right? You can’t stop babies from sucking on their own hands, hands that touch everything. I appreciate the effort to keep things clean, but some of this seems to go overboard.
I agree. A bottle of wine, say, or a cane would make a better weapon than a box-cutter.
The net effect of all this new security is a major increase in the annoyance and inconvenience of flying in exchange for a minor reduction in the ability to bring some sort of weapon on board.
But even if you say that minor reduction is worthwhile, you miss the point that a 9/11 type traditional hijacking is much less likely to occur now, post 9/11, for reasons that have nothing to do with increased security. Namely, of course, the fact that no planeload of passengers is going to sit still for it anymore.
To me, it’s not worth the hassle.
But FTR, I don’t think the breast milk issue is a particularly heinous example, either. It’s all overboard.
