Human cadavers were used in automobile crash tests conducted in the last year by General Motors, the US-based parent company of Swedish car manufacturer Saab.
Claes Tingvall, a car safety specialist with the Swedish Road Administration (Vägverket), told the newspaper Expressen that GM recently finished a multi-year research project in which dead human bodies were used.

“For certain things, it’s important to use cadavers. [The tests] involved people who had donated their own bodies,” Tingvall told Expressen.

He explained that the bodies were used in experiments meant to aid further development of crash test dummies and investigate the injuries sustained by human bodies in car accidents.

According to Tingvall, a total of ten cadavers were used in the GM project, and that Saab automobiles were likely involved an account of the brand’s association with safety.

“It’s a part of the [GM] family where everyone partakes in the research results,” he told the newspaper.

Neither GM or Saab acknowledged any tests involved dead human bodies.

“We are with GM through thick and thin. We conduct our own research and try to find other methods to achieve our results, with the help of computers, for example,” said Saab spokesperson Christer Nilsson to Expressen.

Source: The Local