Crash Test

Recently, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has drawn attention to a 2018 "crash test" study¹ at Wayne State University funded by the Ford Motor Company, in which twenty-seven living pigs were strung up by wires run through the adipose tissue near their spinal column, and rammed with a high-impact lateral pendulum.

The study appears to reverse an organizational policy set by Ford in 2009 to refrain from using live animals in collision testing.

Given the difference in organ size and growth rates between human and pigs, the research is of limited scientific value, as the paper resulting from the study notes on pg. 374. In the next breath, they congratulate themselves on their "powerful research."

As it stands, the report is a masterpiece of dissociative thinking, covering over the brute fact of being with the graphs and figures at the clinicians' disposal.

Footnotes

¹: Yaek, et al. "Side Impact Assessment and Comparison of Appropriate Size and Age Equivalent Porcine Surrogates to Scaled Human Side Impact Response Biofidelity Corridors"