Biomedical education and research practices under pressure: Learning from changes in the Brazilian regulatory regime on animal experimentation

The development of novel biomedical technologies, such as vaccines and drugs for tropical diseases, still depend upon animal testing. The argument that research on animals provides necessary information to predict how a new drug or procedure will affect a human plays an important role in the design and organization of regulatory regimes on the use of animals in biomedical research. We are conducting a case study that investigates the changes and trends in the Brazilian Tropical Medicine research unfolded in the last two decades by the new forms of regulating scientific knowledge production. Historically, biomedical studies on tropical diseases are trans-epistemic, integrating or complementing knowledge produced by disciplines such as zoology and entomology. Scientific research practices on tropical diseases are dependent upon animal experiments: laboratory-based research and field studies. In Brazil, the contemporary debate on animal research experimentation has been present for almost two decades. Only recently a Federal Bill (Law 11.794/2008) has been sanctioned by the President. Our investigation analysis the implications of regulatory processes upon learning and research practices on tropical diseases, geographically situated in a centenarian biomedical research institution in Brazil, Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ/Health Minister). Adopting a socio-anthropological approach, we are studying the relationships among recent chance in the guidelines, legislations and regulations on the use of animals in research and the scientific practices held on three Fiocruz tropical diseases research laboratories. We are investigating how the ethical principles embedded in the Federal Law are locally introduced, adopted and become integrated in the tropical diseases researchers' practices and in the laboratories routines. Furthermore, we investigate how alternative testing methods such as computer models, cell cultures, and a number of research methods that complement animal studies are changing the processes and instruments of biomedical scientific practices as well as the researchers and technicians professional profiles.