pigsUS military scientists blew up live pigs to test the effectiveness of body armour in bomb blasts in a study that has enraged animal rights campaigners.

Pigs were dressed in body armour and strapped into Humvee simulators which were then blasted to pieces with explosives in experiments conducted by the Pentagon-funded Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), USA Today reports.

The study was intended to address concerns that body armour could actually worsen brain injury among soldiers caught in roadside bomb attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq by deflecting the blast towards the head.

Pigs without body armour died as a result of the blasts, while those dressed in body armour were able to survive considerably larger blasts.

“If use of animal subjects in testing results in our ability to save lives or prevent injury to our troops, we’re confident this is the right thing to do,” DARPA spokeswoman Jan Walker told USA Today.

Geoffrey Ling, who led the study, said pigs were good subjects because their brains, hearts and lungs are similar to human organs. The Pentagon said that a minimal number of animals had been used and all had been treated humanely. Further tests are planned for later this year.

But Martin Stephens, an animal research spokesman at the Humane Society of the United States, said the experiments raised “red flags” and called for the research to be abandoned.

“This is a worthy goal, trying to prevent soldiers from being injured by roadside bombs,” Stephens said. “I think the relevance of this is highly questionable. People are not pigs.”

Last year animal rights campaigners PETA also called on the military to stop using animals in experiments following reports that researchers planned to shoot pigs with M4 carbines and M16 rifles to allow medical personnel to practice treating gunshot wounds.

PETA claims that up to 320,000 primates, dogs, pigs, goats, sheep, rabbits, cats, and other animals are hurt and killed in U.S. Department of Defense experiments each year.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 3:55 pm and is filed under Farms, Mammals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.