education
SWIMSA ADVOCATING FOR HUMAN AND ANIMAL TRIALS Text:
Marc Reynaud-de la Jara | Liaison Officer to the VSS/UNES (LO-VSS/UNES)
In March 2022, Switzerland rejected an initiative aiming to forbid animal and human trials. swimsa was pleased with the result as it had officially positioned itself against the initiative. The text would have introduced a complete ban on the use of animals for research purposes. Just as worrying for swimsa: no so called “human testing” would be allowed either, a deadly hit for clinical research. No new therapies could be developed using these methods, and all new drugs imported would be required to respect these same development standards. It was immediately clear to universities and research centres that the initiative would be a disaster for research, but swimsa also identified specific concerns for medical students in the initiative. The effective ban on clinical research meant that Swiss university hospitals would lose their global status, earnt at least partly through the quality of their research. These world-leading institutions hugely benefit Swiss medical students, keeping us close to the latest medical care and research, and even allowing many to take part during our master thesis. In addition, the ban on virtually all new drugs meant we, right at the start of our medical careers, would witness decades of gradually worsening therapy availability for Swiss patients in international comparison. We couldn’t see ourselves denying our future patients life-saving drugs available just across the border.
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swimsa
It was important for swimsa to bring our perspective of medical students in the campaign against the initiative. The issue of the initiative was first discussed in early autumn 2021 at the Swiss Student’s Union (VSS in German or UNES in French), the umbrella organisation for most Swiss student associations, who did not finally issue an official position on the initiative. This meant that swimsa couldn’t rely on the political expertise of the VSS board to defend students on this matter and had to take it on its own hands. Not yet entirely sure about the best course of action, swimsa internals began drawing up a statement on the initiative. The priority at that stage was making sure the statement represented as many medical students as possible. This entailed multiple consultations, modifications, translations, an approval vote from our Executive Board and finally a two week long referendum among our members, the final stage of validation. Before we finished our statement, we learnt through the VSS that swissuniversities wanted a student organisation to support them in the campaign against the initiative. Since the VSS couldn’t fulfil that role, swimsa was the logical partner. It became an additional motivation to finalise the statement before the campaign started.
