I love the show Mythbusters on Discovery. But I do have an issue. I am not a vegetarian by any means. But I try to eat more plant-based than anything. Having said that, I don’t make a religion of it. I just have a major problem with the show.
What bothers me is that they use pigs when they want to simulate humans. I don’t have a real big issue with people eating pigs (and I’m a Jew.) What I DO have a problem with is wasting a pig to, for example, show that people don’t fly backwards when shot with a bullet.
This sounds stupid, I know, but it doesn’t matter to me what animal is used. If you’re going to use the animal for meat, that’s mostly ok with me (I have issues with factory farms, but that’s another post), but if you’re going to kill what was a living being to show how people might react to a bullet, that’s disgusting to me – especially for entertainment. What a fucking waste. It pisses me off.
[/ soapbox]
LiberalTarian
Eh, I don’t like Mythbusters at all. The whole program is kind of a “pig shooting for sport” experience for me.
Rudi
Years ago at university in Detroit used to use cadavers in crash sled tests. These stopped because of complaints. They also used pigs in barbaric tests to simulate head injuries, the pigs weren’t dead. I had no problem with the cadavers, but the live pig tests were ghoulish.
Ted
Agreed, about the animal carcasses used. They need to stop. But the show is overrated anyway. I used to think more highly of it, but a worthwhile segment to watch on it is now rare.
And to think it’s still legal to use live chimpanzees for medical research in some circumstances. We should be ashamed of ourselves. I see little difference between that and using mentally retarded people for the same purpose.
myiq2xu
I’m a liberal but killing cops is wrong!
So is calling them pigs.
LiberalTarian
You’re my favorite.
RSA
I feel similarly about hunting shows, with hunters looking to get trophies rather than something to eat. “What a fucking waste.”
Jay
I like the show and using dead critters that were bred for human consumption for experiments such as decomposing stages is very beneficial. Of course Mythbusters could’ve just explained Newton’s Third Law of Motion and pointed out that if firing the shot didn’t knock the shooter on his ass then the person shot would not be either. But what fun would that be?
God, I hate cops!!! I know that they would never show it, but I always root for the perps on “Cops”. I’m not saying they should be hung up and shot like a pig on Mythbusters, but I love hearing about one taking an ass-whipping once in awhile. Bastards.
Michael D.
I hate shows where they catch & release fish. I keep thinking: You can catch, keep and eat, which I don’t have a problem with. But when you catch and release, I think: I caught a fish and skewered it. Let it go and suffer!
I hate that.
Jeff Hebert
But the pigs were already dead, killed for slaughter and sale at the butcher’s shop. The show just went in and bought them. They didn’t call a pig farmer up and say “Hey pal, mind shooting a couple pigs for us to use for entertainment?”
Would it make you feel better if, after using them as human analogs, the Mythbusters then had a barbecue and ate them? I don’t know if it would make YOU feel any better, but I am relatively certain it wouldn’t matter to the pigs.
Personally, I have to say it would disturb me less for my cadaver to be used to advance science (albeit in the context of an entertaining television show) than it would be to fill out the menu at the local diner. That you balk at the former but not the latter for our porcine friends is a bit odd.
And for the record, I love me some Mythbusters.
canuckistani
The free market has determined that those pigs are more valuable as props for entertainment than food. Got a problem with that?
On the other hand, I suspect they are using pigs that were not rated fit for human consumption, as they would be cheaper and just as useful for demonstration purposes. I’m also willing to give a pass to a show that I view as educational, in an Xtreme Bill Nye kind of way.
LiberalTarian
Eh, you like some shows and you don’t like others. Not a big deal.
After reading Mary Roach’s “Stiff: The Secret Life of Cadavers,” I would feel great about someone using my corpse for crash experiments or any other experiment. They learn a tremendous amount of stuff that improves the quality of life for real, still-living people. But, I have to say, after reading her book, I am REALLY glad I didn’t live and die during the early years of physiology research. Giving your body to someone is one thing, having it stolen out of your grave is another. EW.
Rex
Mythbusters has been mailing it in for a long time.
Give me some Dirty Jobs with Mike what’s-his-face or Man versus the fucking planet with Bear Grylls any day.
Evilbeard
Do you even know what they do with them afterwards? I don’t and I doubt you do either so give the holier-than-thou bit a rest please.
LiberalTarian
The whiskers said, using the holier-than-thou voice.
Jake
What’s that? Are you suggesting he should watch the show before commenting on it? Typical liberal fascist!
For the record I liked Mythbusters a lot when it was just A & J, could do without their team of elves and now have high hopes for Smash Lab.
nerf
the first Smash Lab was terrible. What a bunch of idiots. For Mythbusters, I do prefer when they get bones and make an analog, but for any kind of realistic representation, a real body is what works best. If they ate it afterwards would you feel better? Granted, it is wasteful, but if that bothers you, NEVER look at what your average restaurant throws away every day…
myiq2xu
Mike would really freak if he knew how the military decided upon the Colt .45 as the sidearm for troops.
The tested various weapons on cadavers. Lots of weapons, lots of cadavers.
They also test airplane windsheilds with a specially made cannon that fires chickens.
Now that would be a cool job.
Funkula
Not as cool as Chicken Cannon Engineer though. Using them is cool, but figuring out how to make them is 10x cooler.
Nicholas Weaver
a: Man vs Wild sucks. The whole camera crew thing blows it. Go watch Survivorman instead.
b: A pig is widely regarded as the best human analog for a lot of things, its a similar mass, similar internal structure, etc.
They do use synthetic analog targets a lot of the time (ballistics gel + ribcages, Buster), but when you want to do something that involves striking flesh and bone, a pig is still the best analog, as ballistics media doesn’t get the layering effects you do with flesh, so you can’t really say “This is a flesh would, this is fatal” nearly as easily.
Jeff Hebert
Agreed that the first Smash Labs was pretty lame. There were so many other factors to consider to make either approach even remotely credible for one thing, and then they just pulled the percentage mixes for the air concrete pretty much out of their butts. It also bothered me that they didn’t establish a control by running a car into a plain concrete barrier.
Mythbusters is still the gold standard for pop-entertainment science shows. Smash Labs hopefully will get better, but so far, I am not impressed. Now if they had dead pigs driving the test vehicles, THAT would have been something! (that was just a joke, people)
Chris Johnson
Uh, dude, this is a political blog.
Can’t they use less useful animals, like politicians? :D
Conservatively Liberal
Politicians as dummies on Mythbusters? Where can George and Dick sign up?!
Sorry, but I have to disagree about this. I don’t think they do it gratuitously (the pigs) as they use analogs like ballistics gel and Buster quite often.
I like the show, and I think some of the ideas they come up with are pretty good. They have a website/forum where people toss in all kinds of ideas. Some of them are pretty outrageous and I can see why they would pass on them.
Chicken Cannon Engineer sounds like a sweet job! What I would like to see is a Cow Cannon. Now that would be impressive. Pig Cannon would be my next choice.
The first episode of Smash Lab just sucked. Hope they get better with practice. The commercials looks like a blow up fest, and I like that Mythbusters is not like that. They try stuff from the tame and lame to the deadly and violent. I like variety. ;)
I saw this one show where this english dude has his own collection of trebuchets. He tosses things like flaming cars, flaming pianos and so on. Now that is fun!
Krista
Poor Buster. That bugger takes a lot of abuse.
I don’t watch Mythbusters as much anymore, but it’s my 10-year-old nephew’s favourite show. I can definitely see the value of it for people who are just developing an interest in science, as it demonstrates how very cool science can be.
Robert
At least in the earlier shows, they would always say that the pigs died of natural causes. Perhaps in the later years, they’ve begun to leave that statement off.
Jon H
Maybe they use pigs that for whatever reason can’t be sold for food?
calipygian
Dont watch Atomic Cafe or look on the internet for “nuclear testing pigs”.
Much of what we know about nuclear weapons effects comes from observations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors and chaining pigs at various ranges from ground zero of nuclear explosions.
Watching researchers unchain still living pigs from stakes with third degree burns over 80 percent of their bodies is a bit disturbing.
calipygian
On second thought, don’t look at what happens to an animal in the step between the pen and the meat section of the supermarket either.
Chris Hallquist
This struck me as unnecessary at first, but then I realized I’m not an idiot. There are some people who won’t find basic scientific principles persuasive when they conflict with what they’ve seen in an action movie. They need to see it live. With a dead pig.
myiq2xu
I hear that some labs are using politicians instead of rats for experiments. They do this for three reasons:
1) Politicians reproduce faster
2) Lab assistants don’t grow as attached to politicians
3) There are some things a rat won’t do
Conservatively Liberal
Atomic bacon! Sounds like something that would have sold well in the 50’s.
“Well, first we chain the pigs down and then we pile wood all around them. Once the government sets off the warhead, we go back in and pick up the smoked ham and bacon.”
I recently heard that the Japanese created a pig that glows green. How about green glowing ham, ribs, chops and bacon?! You will actually be able to see things in your freezer, albeit in a rather unappealing green hue.
Chuck Butcher
hmm, I’ve taken animals from the living stage to the dinner table stage, so? I dislike skinning more than any of the rest, mostly because it’s tedious and a slippery wrestling match that includes holding a sharp knfe. Yes, several hundred pounds of dead animal is a wrestling match.
Frank Wilhoit
What on Earth makes you think the pigs don’t get eaten after Adam and Jamie are throught with them? At least the unsinged bits.
LiberalTarian
My folks raised pigs. Barbie (short for BBQ, you know, farm humor) was cool, she was nice, friendly, had a lot of babies. Lizzy? Mean mean mean. We all gave her a wide berth.
We also had banty chickens. It was a bad idea for the mama hen to take the chicks through the pig pen–if 7 went in, 3 came out.
maxbaer (not the original)
Mythbusters was pretty good early on, before the interns. There was another show, Junkyard Wars, I used to watch that was great as well. Got rid of the TV a few years back, tho, and don’t really miss it.
Seanly
I still like Mythbusters. They don’t use the pigs all that much though there are probably a few times when they could’ve used ballistic gel & went with the pigs. My biggest bust on Mythbusters is that they never do scaling in a proper manner. The episode about marching a bridge was a prime example of that.
Smash Labs was stupid. Highway shoulders made of crushable concrete? 4′ thick barriers of crushable concrete? The designer & scientist formed the ugliest slab I’ve ever seen ~ it looked like a lava flow. The whole show was answering a question no one was asking because it was actually a dumb question. Promos for future episodes look even less promising. Putting bullet-proof material on a building to protect it from bombs? It may protect the building from debris, but it won’t protect it from kinetic energy.
Rudi
The university I mentioned earlier is Wayne State. They did alot of crash test for the auto industry. Until the PETA crowd stopped them, live pigs were used to study head injuries. A weighted pendulum on a pigs head…
ascap_scab
I agree. Stop wasting useful foodstuffs. I nominate Baby Harp Seals as a substitute. Nobody likes them anyway!!
frankdawg81
Yeah, I enjoy Mythbusters a lot. But wasting food – and I have to assume that pig was food since they got it from a butcher – always bothers me.
Maybe it was drilled into me from an early age, it is a sin to waste food in a world with people who don’t have enough to eat. Yet lots of shows waste lots of food to make ‘interesting’ TV.
Now I don’t view sin the same but I really wish they wouldn’t waste food.
IvyMike
Robert has already mentioned it, but in the “stinky corvette” episode, the Mythbusters documented the difficulties in finding two pigs that had died of natural causes and were not considered edible.
Bob In Pacifica
I remember one episode where they used a pig stomach to see whether or not Mentos and Coca Cola would explode a human stomach. Pig stomachs are similar to human stomachs (as are the appetites). That pig stomach could have been ground up and put in sausage. Not that it’s a major misuse of our planet’s resources that couldn’t be countered by making your kids eat everything on their plates.
I don’t know how offended I am by their use of dead pig flesh without conflating it with my distaste for dead flesh generally, unless it is properly prepared for the table.
I can’t say that their scientific discoveries are going to advance civilization. The question for me is, “What else is on the other 999 channels?”
Bob In Pacifica
Bear Grylls? That hoaxter?
It’s been revealed now that all of his exploits are setups. Remember him stumbling across a dead sheep or cow in Scotland and cutting it open and showing how you could sleep in it to protect yourself from the cold? They hauled that carcass to the site. You know how Grylls protects himself from the cold? He checks into the nearest bed and breakfast, has a nice meal, and then sits by the fireplace with a snifter of brandy. That’s how.
The Canadian guy is more honest about his survival adventures.
Thursday
Sorry, mate – you lose. The pig carcass is the closest analogue for humans for all sorts of experiments, not just in decomposition. We mass similarly, have near-identical skin (well, without the sweat glands), and physically react in much the same way to stimulus.
Another farm kid here – no problem with meat. I know where my food somes from and know what the trade-offs are. I trust you have no problem with animal bones if you eat white sugar…?
Been watching mythbusters since season one, so call me a fan. Huge respect for those guys for avoiding the urban legend idiocy and finding out about actual questions. Adam’s reaction to the “pyramid power” nonsense was priceless.
They do point out the laws of physics regularly – particularly in the gunshot episode – but without a visual, the folks who didn’t understand it in class aren’t going to understand it from the television.
Besides, Kari is the hottest nerd in the world. If she only wore glasses… *le sigh*
MNPundit
QFT
Besides animals are meant to be eaten (by us mostly) that’s how nature works, we’re at the top of the damn food chain. It’s not like they’re killing the pigs specifically because of the show. If MB stopped using pigs at all (and they use that ballistics gel a lot too) the rate of pig slaughter would not alter one bit.
Ryan
The educational and entertainment value of mangling deceased pigs far outweighs overblown ethical concerns regarding fair and proper use of said dead tissue, including non-consumption. Even though bacon and pork chops are delicious.
Mythbusters had an episode demonstrating the capability of thick wires to cut through a body by using a pig carcass. That was a good show too. Made for a much better demonstration than if they’d used ballistics gel.
Hillary Rettig / The Lifelong Activist
Michael,
Thank you for posting that. Your gleeful commenters should know that no philosophical argument for exploiting animals stands up under rigorous scrutiny. Pigs are more intelligent than dogs, and if they are analogs to us physically, they are also analogs in the sense that they are social, maternal, etc.
What a tragedy to kill them – after torturing them first in factory farms. Oh, and it’s not just the pigs who suffer, but the environment, the local communities (some of whom are toxic from the manure lakes), and you the “consumer” who eats unhealthy, chemically tainted food.
On MLK’s birthday, if no other day of the year, let’s dispense with the cynicism.
Hillary
Aaron
Yes the needless demise of perfectly good bacon is tragic!
In the name of god, save the bacon!!
Oh the humanity!!! Oh the Bacanity!!!!
Don
As someone said earlier, back when I used to watch Mythbusters they always commented that they’d acquired pigs that had died of natural causes. My understanding is that also means they can’t be used for meat, so they’re also not wasting otherwise edible food.
Even if none of that was true I think there’s a billion things higher up on the indignation meter for me. They use one pig carcass and create entertainment that has some educational value and potentially garners a new audience for science learnin’. It’s a non-repeating event that creates something – a video – that can be consumed over and over again.
Daven
The pigs were dead. Leave the Mythbusters alone to do their job. They used two pigs and you say that it is wastful. Imagine all the food and junk that you throw out. Shut up and leave those men alone. They can do whatever they want to. They make more money than you.
Just mind your own buisness and watch the damn show. If it bothered you that much, just don’t watch it anymore.