In 2019, Yale School of Medicine researchers brought thirty-two ostensibly dead pig brains to the brink of consciousness. The pigs, slaughtered four hours earlier, were part of an experiment that sought to determine whether brains could be resurrected. Although the pigs ultimately did not exhibit consciousness, the BrainEx study nonetheless felt ethically dubious to many observers. How could researchers legally bring pigs—animals with brains remarkably like our own—back from the dead?

The paltry regulatory scheme that authorized the BrainEx study, as well as other similarly high-risk neuroscience research on pigs, is the subject of this Note. In recent years, the number of studies conducted on pigs has proliferated, but the Animal Welfare Act—the sole piece of federal legislation regulating animal research in the United States—has failed to keep pace. Under the current regime, researchers were, for ex-ample, permitted to detonate C4 explosives within four yards of living, breathing pigs without providing follow-up pain relief. While many authors have documented the Animal Welfare Act’s disappointing protections of lab animals, this Note identifies neuroscience research in pigs as an emerging animal welfare problem and articulates specific reforms to protect highly intelligent non-primates.

Part I provides a brief overview of current issues in neuroscience re-search and explains why nonhuman primates are decreasingly utilized in laboratories. Part II, in turn, describes why pigs are increasingly desirable subjects for neuroscience research and documents the various invasive experimental procedures used in pigs to study brain disease and develop neurotechnology. Part III examines the historical evolution and present version of the Animal Welfare Act. Although the Act has grown in regulatory force since its enactment in 1966, this Part argues that the Act carries with it a legacy of protecting conventionally high moral status animals (such as dogs and nonhuman primates), along with a general hesitance to intrude upon laboratory research. Finally, Part IV proposes comprehensive amendments to the Animal Welfare Act to afford pigs greater protection. Reform, in broad strokes, requires expanding the animals covered under the Act, improving the administrative apparatus undergirding enforcement, and implementing more rigorous standards for research protocols that create a presumption against invasive neuroscience research.