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Transportation Medicine Science

Volkswagen Admits To Testing Diesel Fumes On Monkeys (cnet.com) 151

Posted by BeauHD from the poor-business-decisions dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: In what seems like a John Henry versus the steam shovel-style competition to dig diesel's grave, Volkswagen has admitted to funding (and subsequently cheating on) animal testing to prove the relative safety of diesel exhaust fumes, according to findings by the New York Times. The tests, which were undertaken at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute in Albuquerque in 2014, involved as many as 10 monkeys and had them sitting in airtight containers as they breathed exhaust fumes from a diesel-powered Volkswagen Beetle while they watched cartoons for entertainment. The tests went on for 4 hours. "We apologize for the misconduct and the lack of judgment of individuals," said a Volkswagen representative in a statement. "We're convinced the scientific methods chosen then were wrong. It would have been better to do without such a study in the first place." The Volkswagen Beetle used in the test was equipped with the same compromised emissions software that could detect when the car was being tested in a lab environment so it was running as cleanly as it could, which I guess proves that Volkswagen will waste no opportunity to be hoisted by its own oil-burning petard.
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Volkswagen Admits To Testing Diesel Fumes On Monkeys More

Volkswagen Admits To Testing Diesel Fumes On Monkeys

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  • OK...and... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:33PM (#56030061)
    I fail to see what the problem is. Would it have been better to test it on humans in some third-world shithole?

    • Re: OK...and... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:42PM (#56030103)
      They did. It wasn't until they were done with LA that they moved on to monkeys.

    • Re:OK...and... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mspohr ( 589790 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:42PM (#56030105)

      The have undertaken a large scale test of diesel fumes on humans. Their "clean diesel" cars were designed to emit large amounts of NOx. Major cities around the world have been subject to these tests and are showing a predictable rise in deaths.

      • The have undertaken a large scale test of diesel fumes on humans. Their "clean diesel" cars were designed to emit large amounts of NOx. Major cities around the world have been subject to these tests and are showing a predictable rise in deaths.

        Citation please.

        I see a well-publicized paper making long-term projections, but I can't find anything with observed higher death rates.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Their "clean diesel" cars were designed to emit large amounts of NOx.

        Don't be fucking stupid. No, VW did not design their cars to emit NOx.

        Failing to mitigate a side effect does not mean you've designed it in.

        • No, VW did not design their cars to emit NOx.

          Of course they did: they put combustion engines in them!

        • No, VW did not design their cars to emit NOx.

          Of course they did. High NOx emissions are a well know effect of pushing a diesel engine to combust more efficiently which is precisely what VW have been pushing for many years.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Cederic ( 9623 )

            You missed the part where I suggested not being fucking stupid.

            High NOx emissions are a well know effect of pushing a diesel engine to combust more efficiently

            Oddly enough the design criteria is "efficient combustion" not "high NOx".

            Fucking amazing that. Who would've thought you'd be stupid enough to contradict yourself.

            • Oddly enough the design criteria is "efficient combustion" not "high NOx".

              Yep because engineers target one thing and don't know how combustion works. People have known the relationship between thermal combustion and NOx since the 40s. By raising efficiency they were directly and knowingly raising NOx. By not putting a constraint on NOx they effectively were designing cars with this in mind.

              Fucking amazing that. Who would've thought you'd be stupid enough to contradict yourself.

              You're a special kind of idiot.

        • They designed the cars for high efficiency and they knew their design increased NOx so they designed the emissions control system to hide that fact from regulators. The high NOx was their design.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Cederic ( 9623 )

            Invent a high efficiency diesel engine that has zero NOx emissions and VW will fucking licence it from you. They don't want the high NOx emissions, and didn't fucking design it in.

            How fucking dense are you all?

            High NOx emissions are not a design parameter. Minimising NOx emissions is a design parameter that takes lower priority than fuel efficiency. Since both can't be achieved the higher priority one took precedence.

            Give VW shit for the shit they've done but stop making new shit up because you're the cunt

    • Re:OK...and... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:45PM (#56030131)

      They did [bbc.com]. I don't know why that's not the news here.

    • They did test it on humans (Score:5, Informative)

      by klingens ( 147173 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:51PM (#56030157)

      They did test it on 25 humans in university clinic of Aachen https://www.theguardian.com/bu... [theguardian.com]

      Also the usual /. headline is as usual: crap. EUGT did all this, which is a lobby organisation by BMW, Mercedes and VW. They all are responsible, not just VW alone.

    • Re:OK...and... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:53PM (#56030167)

      I fail to see what the problem is. Would it have been better to test it on humans in some third-world shithole?

      I have no issue with animal testing.

      But the question here is what scientific value was gained from the experiments.

      Now, if you've already tested on lower forms, like rats, and established that there is no harm, I'm personally fine with testing on primates to be doubly sure (though I'm not sure if that's the official standard). But I find it hard to believe that breathing emissions for 4 hours qualifies as no harm.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I fail to see what the problem is. Would it have been better to test it on humans in some third-world shithole?

      They actually wanted to use Humans riding exercise bikes for this, until there genral council objected. Its documented in the show Dirty Money.

    • I guess they were out of baby seals.

    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      optics could not be worse for a german automaker.

      • Chilling thing about that article was that, given both the Nazis and the Communists used gas vans to exterminate groups of people, at some point in the 1930s when it was clear either the Nazis or the Commies would win the use of gas vans in Germany was inevitable.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Powercntrl ( 458442 )

      I fail to see what the problem is. Would it have been better to test it on humans...

      The problem is this gives the PETA crowd more ammunition for their "animal testing = BAD!" agenda. There is little scientific knowledge to be gained by slightly poisoning a few monkeys, and it sounds disturbingly close [ushmm.org] to what Germany was doing to Jews during the Holocaust.

      Thing is, there are legitimate reasons to test things on animals. You want to be pretty damn sure your experimental drug isn't going to kill anyone when you start human trials. But good luck trying to convince a bunch of emotion-driven

      • Re:OK...and... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @08:24PM (#56030319)
        Disturbingly close my ass. Jews are people and monkeys aren't. That, and only that, is why gassing Jews, Gypsies, and gays was Wrong with a capital W.

        Gassing people because you want to and testing on monkeys because you need to don't live on the same planet.

    • Re:OK...and... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @09:26PM (#56030575) Homepage

      The problem was that they trained the monkeys to recognize when they were being tested and, under those specific circumstances, pretend that they like it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Would it have been better to test it on humans in some third-world shithole?

      No that's racist. Instead they tested on humans in New Mexico. [theguardian.com] Interesting that the CNET article left out this minor detail.

    • I fail to see what the problem is. Would it have been better to test it on humans in some third-world shithole?

      No, it would have been better to not test it on living beings at all. We already know which components of various vehicle exhausts are damaging to us, and we have a fairly good idea of how damaging they are. And we already know that we need to stop burning fossil fuels anyway if we want our species to have a future on this rock. But hey, let's gas some innocent monkeys anyway, so we can arrive at a half-assed determination of just how badly we're fucking over our fellow humans in the name of profit. If you

  • Must REALLY hate monkeys.

  • LRRI/ITRI (Score:3)

    by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @07:41PM (#56030093)
    While LRRI is in Albuquerque, the tests themselves were likely conducted a few miles south, out on Kirtland/SNL (at the AF's "Inhalation Toxicology Research Institute"). Surreal place.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sloth jr ( 88200 )
      They are now one and the same. https://goo.gl/maps/Vc6vk9F7BWm

      I used to eat my lunch just outside the ITL (as it was formerly known), under the two water towers. It's at the very edge of Kirtland AFB. Pretty quiet, no one really goes out there... knew some folks who worked there who said it was a soul crushing place, as you might imagine. My sister once interviewed for a position that would've required her to take care of the dog and cat subjects.
      • Was it called ITRI or ITL?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sloth jr ( 88200 )
          It was formerly known as as the ITL - Inhalation Toxicology Laboratory. https://www.lm.doe.gov/ITL/ITL_factsheet.pdf

          It developed a reputation as a horrible workplace (not just the usual killing-a-bunch-of-strays stuff), so I'm sure they decided they needed to rebrand themselves away from that.
  • That way the monkeys got a much smaller does of carbon monoxide, as in much less than us human's got from the thousands of VW cars on the road.

  • People are going to be really hacked off when they find out the rest of the industry has been testing their fumes on great apes worldwide!

  • An unanswered question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @08:02PM (#56030221) Homepage
    Nothing in TFS or TFA tells us who authorized the experiment, or how high up that person was. It also doesn't tell us what happened to whoever it was, or what upper management's reaction was when the fact of the experiment was discovered. Let's not start blaming everybody in the company before we find out just who's responsible for this.

    • Nothing in TFS or TFA tells us who authorized the experiment, or how high up that person was. It also doesn't tell us what happened to whoever it was, or what upper management's reaction was when the fact of the experiment was discovered. Let's not start blaming everybody in the company before we find out just who's responsible for this.

      So when do you think a good time would be to pass judgement? The Volkswagen representative already admitted what they did. Or are you calling fake news because it was the NYT, and you don't believe this happened at all, ever. Sorry, muchacho, they cheated on the emission systems, and performed pointless experiments. You can wait until the legal system plays out completely, but I have enough to go on that Volkswagen isn't on top of the ethics list. And I'll use that admitted info to pass judgement.

      • So when do you think a good time would be to pass judgement? The Volkswagen representative already admitted what they did.

        Yes, but who authorized the experiment? Was it somebody in middle management, somebody in upper management, the Board of Directors; we don't know. There's no question that this was wrong, that it never should have happened and that whoever's responsible deserves punishment, but TFA doesn't say who that was, and I, for one, want to see the right people prosecuted, not some underling
    • Netflix just released a series called Dirty Money that has an episode on the VW scandal. I just wanted to bury my face in my hands. It's obvious exactly what went on and that senior executives knew. It's a very interesting, but depressing documentary.

    • It was an industry group, not one manufacturer specifically. VW just admitted to being part of the group.

  • I mean, this is like an onion article.

  • My interest is not in the fact that they tested on monkeys but rather why were they testing on animals in the first place? They had their emissions targets, so if they are testing on animals I can only conclude that the test was to see if they could get away with cheating those emissions targets without bringing attention to themselves.

  • The most shocking part isn't that they tested it on monkeys, its that they originally wanted to run the test on humans. They did still go ahead and do a test where they exposed humans to Nitrogen Dioxide though. The optics of a German company wanting to do gas chamber tests on humans is hilariously bad and one of the top people involved even admitted to it on video.

    • sure, sure, if anyone else gasses people it's just war or terrorism, but if a kraut does it it's nazism

  • Yep we used test monkeys at a couple of places where I worked on games. Both cafeteria looked like the bar scene from Star Wars. Oh wait, Disney did buy Lucus, didn't they. Never mind.
    What, not *that* type of test monkeys, never, never mind.

  • On the upside (Score:4, Informative)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Monday January 29, 2018 @08:53PM (#56030443)

    The monkeys wrote three new Avengers movies while they were in the chamber, and Michael Bay just hired them to write a new Transformers sequel.

  • Volkswagen has admitted to funding (and subsequently cheating on) animal testing to prove the relative safety of diesel exhaust fumes...

    emphasis added by me. We're all talking about the poor monkeys and I haven't seen one headline with "Volkswagen cheated on diesel safety tests". Seriously, Monkeys are cute and all, but shouldn't the bigger story be that they falsified research showing diesel fumes were safe?

  • have the fumes skip testing on a close human model and just kill or harm millions of humans and monkeys out in the wild?

  • ....I have zee SIGNED AUTHORIZATION for zis testing.

    Vhat?

    Sure - see? Signed in ink. Dated 5/13/44.

  • ...but this is sorta sickening. In the market for a new (to me) car, atm. VW's out.

  • Why is this a bigger deal (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    than what American manufacturers do? Did you know American automanufacturers performed crash-tests with live animals for over 5 decades into the 90's? Why aren't we talking about this?

  • Old News is New News (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm sitting here wondering why the New York Times didn't state that they lifted the entire article from the Netflix documentary series "Dirty Money", which has an entire episode dedicated to "Dieselgate"...

  • das Tortur.

    Also, das Lügen.

    I know it's highly unlikely, but I hope their utter bankruptcy in the moral sense translates into financial bankruptcy because of their wilful cruelty, lying, and cheating. At times like this I wish I subscribed to some form of magic sky-daddyism so I could comfort myself with thoughts of those bastards rotting in hell for all eternity.

  • Marketing Director: We've got to stop testing our products on animals. It is bad for PR.
    CEO: Other companies test their products on animals, why shouldn't we?
    Marketing Director: Because we make hammers.

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