Dnipro State Medical Academy
Faculty of Medicine II, Department of Physiology
The former head of the Department of Physiology at the Dnipro Medical Faculty, Professor Pyotr Nerush, had heard about the positive experiences of a colleague from the University of Kharkiv with humane education at a congress. He reported that there used to be a lot more animal experiments in Soviet times, which had to be carried out according to a predetermined plan. Many dogs were also used back then. In addition, every single student was given a frog for each experiment.
He thought it was terrible even back then and drastically reduced the experiments by only showing the frog experiments as a demonstration. He has not carried out dog experiments for a long time now. Nevertheless, an alarming number of animals were killed at the Dnipro Medical University: 1,120 frogs, 680 rats and 40 mice, totalling 1,840 animals per year. The high number of animals is due to the large number of students: 600 students of human medicine, dentistry and pharmacy are enrolled on the physiology course.
We signed an agreement in September 2009. The department received two notebooks and a number of computer programmes and films from us and undertook to cease all animal experiments and killing of animals in higher education by June 2010.
Alexander Mozgunov, Deputy Head of the Department of Physiology at Dnipro Medical University, and Dr Corina Gericke signing the agreement in September 2009.
Two young lecturers, Alexandr Trushenko and Tatiana Mashko, pictured here with Prof Pjotr Nerush (right), are also fighting against cruel and pointless animal experiments in research and for doctoral theses. Tatiana Mashko, who had just taken up a position at the Department of Physiology, had turned to the Russian animal rights organisation VITA for help, which had passed her on to Dimitrij Leporskij. She was delighted to learn that all animal experiments at her Department were to be replaced, at least in her studies.
Control visit
Dr Corina Gericke and Dimitrij Leporskij handed over further programmes and films during their control visit in March 2010. The university lecturers were enthusiastic about the animal-free teaching materials already in use. These could not only be used to replace conventional animal experiments, but also to teach many other subjects. They had already replaced all animal experiments, although the agreement only stipulated June 2010 as the date for the end of all animal experiments. It was also pleasing that the university lecturers independently had looked for further alternatives, including several Soviet educational films and some BBC films.
Another control visit took place January 2011 by Dimitrij Leporskij. Also at this visit everything proved to our complete satisfaction.