Three more departments in Ukraine are switching to humane teaching

In December 2012 and January 2013, the association Doctors Against Animal Experiments supplied three more departments in L’viv, Donetsk and Vinnitsa with animal-free teaching materials. In return they will stop all animal experimentation in their students’ training. More than 5,700 animals, mainly frogs and rats will be spared an agonizing death each year.

L’viv Polytechnical University

Doctors Against Animal Experiments had already successfully cooperated with the L’viv National Polytechnical University in the Western part of Ukraine years ago. Thanks to their commitment it has been possible to study there completely without animal experimentation since 2009. However, now the Ukrainian Ministry of Education presented a new curriculum that requested the establishment of a new practical course on immunology. That course was to include numerous animal experiments. The thymus glands, spleen and bone marrow were supposed to be removed from mice, and the reaction of antiserums tested on guinea pigs, mice and frogs.

The lecturer, Veronika Chervetsova, with whom they had made a contract in the past, called the Ukrainian project partner of the association, Dimitrij Leporskij (InterNICHE Ukraine) for help. She wanted to prevent her colleagues of the Institute of Technology, Biologically Active Substances, Pharmacy and Biotechnology to introduce new animal experiments. A pharmaceutical company had given to the department a brand new auditorium, but the technical equipment was lacking. In January 2013 the association signed a contract with the head of the institute and donated a notebook, and a number of computer simulations, so that the animal experiments on 220 mice, 13 frogs and 5 guinea pigs as required by the ministry will never start at all.