It's a page one story in Germany which you read over and just shake your head.
So, basically....the German car-makers knew that their diesel cars were putting out a fair amount of deadly fumes. The extent or amount? Unknown. So they went and hired a US lab company to go and test the German-made diesel cars in a sealed room with monkeys present, and get a dose of four hours of fumes.
Ten monkeys were said to be in the test.....all said to still be living today.
This came out via court and government documents this week.
All of this led back to the idea suggested at the time that it would prove that modern advancements in technology were a good thing and helping the general public against toxic diesel fumes.
Who funded this? Oddly, it comes from EUGT (European Research Association for Environment and Health in the Transport Sector)....who serves as a lobby group for Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW.
Did the car-makers really know about or understand the test being conducted? This is something that is not clear from news media. I think it's possible that they were simply told that tests would be conducted and weren't aware that monkeys were involved.
All of this brings up the hyped-up commentary by various pro-animal groups as sounding.....well.....Nazi-like in experimentation. But if the statement that the monkeys are still alive today....four years later, then it means that the filter system mostly worked and maybe the serious nature of diesel business is not so bad.
For the car-makers, this story comes out pretty negative and kinda suggests that they were already worried about the direction of the new diesel technology and that it wasn't meeting the goals. The odd thing here is that they didn't do the experimentation in Europe....they did this in a US lab. One might wonder why it had to be done in the US but that's probably another entire story attached.
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