All bacon jokes aside and as serious as one can be when talking about pigs, considering the recent Swine Flu pandemic, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA as they’re called by those who know and love them, are working on a procedure to place pigs in a state of suspended animation. If you think the term is familiar, that’s because you may have heard it mentioned on some sci-fi movie where space travelers are released from a state of suspended animation after floating around for days or years in coffin-like water cabinets and fed militaristically though tubes. DARPA’s concept for the same has been tested previously on worms and rats and now Pigs as their cardiovascular system closely resembles that of humans. The process would involve hydrogen sulfide being injected into the subject’s bloodstream to stop the flow of oxygen.

Since it’s a project for the Defense industry the idea is to incorporate this type of medical technology for the battle-field. Since suspended animation implies blocking of the body's access to oxygen which would stop blood flow and heartbeat placing the patient into a coma of sorts, the injured could then be rushed, with a larger amount of safety, to an area where proper treatment could be administered. From the Hollywood perspective, we could be seeing Pigs in space next.

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