Researchers in New Zealand Shot Live Pigs in the Head to Study Blood Spatter

Theblaze.com reports:

To better understand what happens to humans when they’re shot in the head, researchers from New Zealand completed a study in which they shot live pigs.

On Wednesday, an animal rights group contended that these researchers, which secured live pigs to a surgical table and shot them in the head with a pistol to study blood-spatter patterns, acted cruelly and urged them to end such experiments... The study, published in July in the International Journal of Legal Medicine, involved researchers from the institute as well as two public New Zealand universities. It describes how five pigs were shot from close range with a Glock semi-automatic handgun to record the back-spatter of blood, bone and brain material. The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said the experiment was unnecessary because pigs are fundamentally different from humans and better results could be achieved using mannequins or computer modeling. “These incredibly violent experiments are entirely indefensible, given their cruelty, inapplicability to humans and the superior non-animal research methods that are available,” said Justin Goodman, the animal rights group’s U.S. director of laboratory investigations. The group has sent letters to the institute as well as the University of Otago, where the study was conducted, and the University of Auckland, which contributed research, urging them to stop such experiments. Goodman said using live animals for forensic science experiments is not as common as it used to be...