Please Remove Your Prosthetic Breast: The TSA Horror Story to Trump Them All

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A TSA technician Gilles demonstrates the new full-body scanner.

There’s been plenty of discussion about the Transportation Security Administration’s new and aggressive pat-down techniques, as well as debates about children being frisked. But here’s the TSA horror story that will leave you heartbroken and outraged: The flight attendant (and cancer survivor) who was forced to remove her prosthetic breast. Yes, really. (via WBTV)

Her name is Cathy Bossy, a 32-year industry veteran, and in a remarkable interview with WBTV she recalls a screening episode that played out some three months back. (Pat-Downs 101: Find out what’s in store for you)

Working as a flight attendant, Bossy tells WBTV that she was subjected in North Carolina to one of the first rounds of inspections via full body-scanners; a procedure that concerned this breast cancer survivor from the start, due to the radiation involved.

But it was when she was selected for a more thorough pat-down that she says an uncomfortable situation crossed the line.

Bossy told WBTV that her screener zeroed in quickly on her right breast – a prosthetic breast she was fitted with after cancer surgery – and demanded to know why the breast felt unusual. When informed that it was a prosthesis, the inspector allegedly instructed Bossy to both show, and then remove, the artificial extension.

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Bossy says she was so mortified by the scenario that she forgot to write down the name of the North Carolina screener, but the TSA tells WBTV that it is now investigating this claim. That said, the TSA rules make it clear: Agents are absolutely allowed to ask about, touch and demand to see any prosthetic part of the body.

Bossy’s story may be unique for its specifics, but it is hardly the first story to stoke online anger over today’s procedures. The new and aggressive TSA techniques – which millions of Americans will encounter for the first time this week, during their Thanksgiving travel – have been a point of controversy for more than a week now, from last weeks’ Congressional hearings to the man who recorded his screening with his iPhone, threatening a screener with arrest if he touched the man’s “junk.”

Sadly, NewsFeed is betting that this will not be the final horror story to take to the web.

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