Unicamp is proposing, together with the Brazilian Association of Medical Education (Abem), a major survey of the use of alternative methods to the use of animals in teaching medicine at universities across the country. The objective is to create cooperation between all institutions to prepare a document to be delivered to the Legislative Assembly of the State of São Paulo (Alesp). A Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPI), chaired by deputy Feliciano Filho, is currently underway in the house, which is investigating the practice of animal abuse. The document could serve to support discussions between deputies.
Summoned to testify last Wednesday (13), Unicamp sent as its representative the president of the Ethics Committee on the Use of Animals (Ceua), Wagner José Fávaro, who explained to the deputies about the use of some animals, pigs and rabbits, in teaching surgery at the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM). Animals are only used in the fourth and sixth years of the course, together with the medical residency in surgery. In addition to Unicamp, USP and Unesp were also called and sent their technical representatives.
Unicamp committed to visiting institutions that presented alternative methods with the appointment of a commission made up of members of Ceua, veterinarians and surgeons. Visits will be made to two universities to verify the possibility of adopting new techniques and even establishing partnerships with the aim of improving methods.
“Unicamp has a serious commitment to the demands of society. We all love animals and have the greatest care for them, but as a teaching and research institution we are attentive to the issue of ethics combined with good training of the best professionals”, says the Vice-Rector of Research, Munir Skaf. “We would like to take advantage of this moment of interest on the part of several deputies in the assembly, which has a very broad voter base, to count on deputies to bring resources to the university and who knows, in the future, we can completely replace the use of animals in teaching”, he adds.
According to Skaf, Unicamp has been a pioneer in the responsible use of animals since the 1990s, with the creation of the first Ceua in the country. The university also provided academic and technical support for the creation of the Arouca Law (Law 11.794/2008), which is the current federal law regulating the use of animals in teaching and research.
At Alesp, Professor Wagner Fávaro argued about the criteria adopted by Unicamp for the restricted use of animals. According to Fávaro, since 2008, with the Arouca Law, Unicamp has reduced by half and restricted the use of animals only for teaching emergency surgeries, which imply an imminent risk of death to the person.
“The law must follow three basic pillars: reducing the use of animals, refining and replacing procedures when studies of alternative methods advance. The protocols must be in line with all scientific methodology approved in the world. We follow the standards of Brazilian and international schools that provide for good research and teaching practices, the law is part of this code of good practices”, he explains.
According to Fávaro, the procedures follow the protocols approved by Ceua, which in turn is faithful to federal law. The professor highlighted that the university already uses various procedures in teaching on mannequins and virtual environments, stressing that, for the protocols maintained, there are still no alternative methods validated by the National Network of Alternative Methods (Renama).
“A procedure is validated after a series of repetitions that meet the surgeon’s needs. Unicamp will check these methods and they may be fully or partially adopted. Or we can improve them or create new models”, he adds.
Alternative methods must be rigorously evaluated by the National Animal Experimentation Control Council (Concea). Also according to Fávaro, Unicamp is also concerned about the legal implications that the adoption of non-validated methods can generate. “If we don’t validate alternative methods for the surgeon or future doctor, what will be the implications in the future? We may be questioned about a lack of skill that the professional may have.”
Trauma
The coordinator of the Trauma Surgery discipline, at FCM Unicamp, Gustavo Pereira Fraga points out that doctors generally graduate and soon after start working, most likely in the emergency area. “The procedures that we simulate in animals are these, in the emergency area, with life-threatening situations in which the doctor needs to be able to perform such as, for example, quick access through the neck to the trachea. The animal has a bleeding vein, an artery, and is under general anesthesia, does not suffer anything. Everything is very well discussed and supported.”
Other situations that Fraga describes are simulations of bleeding that need to be controlled or even the suturing of a beating heart. “How will the resident learn to suture a beating heart? He needs to have ways of training that are not in the hospital itself with the human being”, she observes.
Fraga emphasizes that there has always been respect and ethics in the use of animals at the university. The Trauma Surgery discipline was created in 1987 and only exists in around twenty percent of medical courses in the country. The coordinator highlights the decrease in the number of individuals used, animals that are acquired by the university and that were bred for this purpose. In the medical residency area, students undergo this training for a week, in the experimental surgery center and with four professors per period. “From the moment the student is on the verge of becoming a doctor, and a good doctor, he needs to experience a real situation that he will face”.
According to the professor, alternative methods that can replace the use of animals have been adopted at Unicamp at least since 2001 with the curricular reform of the medicine course. “It may be that in the future we will not use animals at all as long as we have models that faithfully reproduce what the undergraduate student or even the resident in the area of surgery or more specific areas of trauma surgery or transplantation will encounter in their day. a day.”
FCM has a place called the skills laboratory where there is a training center for motor and other activities. Students perform realistic simulation on mannequins that are very advanced. Just like the medicine course and the Trauma Surgery discipline, the laboratory is a reference in the country. Still, according to Fraga, for some procedures, there are still no dummies that faithfully reproduce what a good doctor needs to learn.
The animals used in teaching are monitored at Unicamp by biologists and veterinarians. The university has 48 vivariums, places where animals are housed, registered with Concea, linked to the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications (MCTIC).
