Odessa National Medical University
Department of Physiology
Prof Alexiy Shandra from the Department of Physiology at the Medical University had heard about our project at the Faculty of Biology at the University of Odessa and contacted us. He is very interested in humane education and had already taken part in the InterNICHE congress in Brussels in 2001. In Soviet times, no changes were allowed to be made to the curriculum. However, since this has been possible, he has replaced many experiments with films and simulations. Originally there were experiments on around 3,300 animals per year, but he has already reduced this to ‘only’ 1,000 animals (frogs, rats, mice, rabbits). Thanks to our project, these will now be reduced to zero.
The agreement we signed in March 2010 lists all the experiments, including those that have already been discontinued. These included the classic Pavlovian experiments on dogs, in which a fistula is surgically inserted into the animal's mouth to collect the saliva. If a dog is conditioned to associate food with an acoustic signal, saliva flows when the sound is heard, even if there is no food in sight. This experiment by the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov on classical conditioning has been reproduced thousands of times in Ukraine, as if the history of physiology could not be read in a textbook.
Prof Alexiy Shandra of the Department of Physiology at the Medical University with the donated materials: a projector, a laptop and various computer programs and films.
Dimitrij Leporskij (right) demonstrated some of the computer programmes.
The films we dubbed into Russian were met with particular enthusiasm. The high quality was repeatedly praised.
Control visit
A control visit to check the animal-free teaching materials in use took place in January 2011.
Students with the donated laptop.