After protests by animal rights activists, scientists temporarily stopped an experiment on Thursday that involved burying pigs in snow and monitoring their deaths. The two-week experiment was intended to determine which factors make it possible for people to survive an avalanche in an air pocket without suffering brain damage. Hermann Brugger, co-director of the experiment led by the Institute of Mountain Emergency Medicine in Italy and the Medical University of Innsbruck, said the pigs did not suffer because they were sedated and given an anesthetic. Animal rights activists called it cruel and pointless.