teste

Rio tem surto de infecção hospitalar

Educação a distância ganha regras

Avaliação da modalidade pelo governo federal será ampliada e pólos presenciais ganharão mais importância

Renata Cafardo

O ensino superior a distância no País terá uma avaliação própria que vai determinar a autorização de universidades e reconhecimento dos cursos. Os novos critérios elaborados pelo Ministério da Educação (MEC) foram aprovados nesta semana no Conselho Nacional de Educação (CNE) e devem ser homologados pelos ministro Fernando Haddad ainda neste mês. O Brasil tem hoje 205 cursos de graduação ou tecnológicos e 575,7 mil alunos no ensino superior a distância.

Uma das novidades é a avaliação também dos chamados pólos presenciais, algo que surgiu apenas com a educação a distância. Eles funcionam como extensões da universidade. São instalados em vários municípios e servem como referência mais próxima para os alunos. Esses lugares, segundo o MEC, deverão oferecer recursos como acesso à internet para todos os alunos, laboratórios, bibliotecas e professores. “A idéia é que o ensino seja classificado mais como semipresencial, por causa dessa importância dos pólos”, diz o diretor de Avaliação do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas e Estudos Educacionais (Inep), do MEC, Dilvo Ristoff.

São três os documentos elaborados pelo governo: um para avaliar instituições, outro para cursos e outro para pólos. Eles estão sendo incluídos no Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Superior (Sinaes), que já é aplicado aos cursos presenciais atualmente. A educação a distância vai também receber conceitos de 1 a 5. Até hoje, não havia critérios específicos para essa modalidade.

“É um marco na educação a distância no Brasil e um esforço para que haja qualidade nos cursos oferecidos”, diz o secretário de Educação a Distância do MEC, Carlos Bielschowsky. Será exigido, por exemplo, que os cursos tenham materiais didáticos para uso na internet que estimulem a autonomia de estudo, além de guias que direcionem o aluno para estudar a distância. “Produzir material de qualidade é uma das chaves desses cursos”, diz. Pelas novas regras, as provas presenciais devem ter peso maior que as realizadas a distância.

As instituições terão de comprovar experiência anterior na área para pedir o credenciamento de seus cursos a distância. Para receber a nota máxima na avaliação, a universidade já deverá ter pelo menos três com 20% da carga horária a distância antes de iniciar graduação não presencial. Será preciso comprovar também a experiência anterior dos professores que atuarão na modalidade.

FIM DOS PRESENCIAIS

O diretor da Associação Brasileira de Educação a Distância (Abed), José Roberto Moreira, faz elogios à iniciativa, mas diz que espera que a nova avaliação deixe mais claros os critérios para credenciamento de novos cursos. Segundo ele, o governo hoje é mais rígido com instituições particulares do que com as públicas que pretendem oferecer educação a distância. “Dentro de cinco anos não haverá mais cursos inteiramente presenciais, todos terão elementos a distância.”

A iniciativa de maior sucesso no País é o Centro de Educação Superior a Distância do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (Cederj), um consórcio que reúne seis universidades públicas para oferecer esse tipo de graduação. Os pólos estão espalhados pelo Estado e dão sustentação para sete cursos e 17 mil alunos.

O setor cresce também em outras regiões do País. São Paulo anunciou recentemente que pretende iniciar uma experiência inspirada na do Rio. O governo federal também lançou o Universidade Aberta, com participação das federais, nos mesmos moldes.

“Até agora, as avaliações do setor eram híbridas”, diz a presidente do Cederj, Massako Masuda. Segunda ela, há questões específicas, como a gestão dos cursos, que precisam ser avaliadas na educação a distância. “É necessário saber o que faz o tutor, se ele acompanha os alunos.” Os tutores são professores que interagem com os estudantes para facilitar a aprendizagem a distância. A avaliação do MEC exige que haja capacitação especial para esses profissionais e que, preferencialmente, eles sejam mestres ou doutores.

“Tem gente que acha que me formei por correspondência. O preconceito ainda existe”, diz Dayselane Pimenta, de 30 anos, formada a distância em Licenciatura pela Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF). Para ela, a nova avaliação pode ajudar a dar mais credibilidade aos cursos.

Estudos do Inep mostram que, em 7 das 13 áreas avaliadas no Exame Nacional de Desempenho de Estudantes (Enade), os alunos que cursaram educação a distância se saíram melhor que os de cursos presenciais.

Doença rara dá pistas sobre fertilidade

Mulher que parou de menstruar aos 27 anos é caso único relatado de síndrome hormonal, afirmam médicos de Brasília

Hipogonadismo faz criança pular a puberdade; variação agora descoberta pode estar sendo confundida com outros males em mulheres

GIOVANA GIRARDI
COLABORAÇÃO PARA A FOLHA

Uma mulher de 29 anos que não menstruava mais levou cientistas brasileiros a identificarem um caso inédito de uma doença já pouco comum que afeta o desenvolvimento sexual do paciente. A descoberta traz pistas sobre o funcionamento dos processos reprodutivos.
Conhecida como hipogonadismo, a doença, em seu modelo clássico, é caracterizada por uma falha no desenvolvimento das gônadas -testículos e ovários- por causa da ausência dos hormônios LH (luteinizante) e FSH (foliculoestimulante). A paciente avaliada, no entanto, só não produz o LH.
Sem esses hormônios, pessoas com a forma tradicional da doença não passam pela puberdade e não desenvolvem características sexuais. Meninos viram homens, crescem e atingem um corpo adulto, mas não engrossam a voz, não adquirem barba nem pêlos e ficam com uma genitália infantil. Meninas não desenvolvem completamente as mamas e não menstruam. Ambos ficam inférteis.
O diferencial do caso estudado por médicos e geneticistas da UnB (Universidade de Brasília) é que a mulher até passou pela puberdade, apresentava um corpo normal, mas já na fase adulta ela simplesmente parou de menstruar. Chegou a ser diagnosticada como tendo ovário policístico (cheio de pequenas bolsas de líquido, condição que pode levar à infertilidade). Seu problema, na verdade, era hipogonadismo, mas numa forma nunca vista em mulheres.
A equipe descobriu que a deficiência isolada na produção do LH ocorre por uma mutação genética. O trabalho, liderado pela endocrinologista Adriana Lofrano-Porto, do Hospital Universitário de Brasília, foi publicado na revista médica "New England Journal of Medicine" (www.nejm.org).

Em família
Esse tipo de hipogonadismo resultante da falha apenas no LH havia sido descrito até então somente em dois homens. A novidade praticamente caiu no colo de Lofrano quando ela atendia no ambulatório de endocrinologia do hospital.
Um dia ela recebeu um paciente de 38 anos com sinais da doença: voz juvenil, desenvolvimento de mamas, pouco pêlo nas axilas, ausência de barba e pênis de 4,5 cm. "Chamou a atenção, no entanto, que o volume dos testículos era um pouco maior que o esperado. Nos exames notamos que seu nível de LH era indetectável, enquanto o de FSH era alto."
Para surpresa de Lofrano, não bastasse ela já ter em mãos um caso raro da doença, dias depois ela atendeu um outro adulto, de 30 anos, com as mesmas características. "Os dois são irmãos, mas um chegou lá sem saber que o outro já estava se tratando", conta.
A médica então questionou se havia outras pessoas assim na família. Descobriu que os pais eram primos e encontrou uma irmã com o problema. O fato de os pais serem consangüíneos aumenta o risco. Ambos têm uma cópia cada um do gene defeituoso do LH. Os três filhos herdaram as duas cópias.
Só que, ao contrário dos irmãos, a mulher passou normalmente pela puberdade. Desenvolveu seios, seus ovários amadureceram e ela menstruou aos 13 anos. No entanto seu ciclo sempre foi instável -ela ficava três ou quatro meses sem menstruar-, até que parou completamente aos 27 anos.
A descoberta sugere que a doença seja subnotificada, mas rara ainda assim -no Brasil há só 80 pessoas com hipogonadismo clássico. Pode haver mais casos, uma vez que seus sintomas são parecidos com os do ovário policístico.

Não viu e não gostou

Para o paciente, a questão de quem gerencia o hospital é secundária. O que realmente importa é ser bem atendido

O DEBATE em torno da proposta do governo federal de gestão de hospitais públicos por fundações estatais de direito privado, com orçamentos preestabelecidos, contrato de metas e funcionários admitidos sob o regime da CLT, deve ser conduzido, obrigatoriamente, sob a ótica da melhoria da qualidade da prestação de serviços aos usuários do SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde).
Quando o cidadão adoece, é fundamental que lhe seja garantido atendimento ágil, prestado por profissionais capacitados, em unidades de saúde bem equipadas. Para o paciente, a questão de quem gerencia o hospital é secundária. O que realmente importa é ser bem atendido e, se possível, ter seu problema de saúde rapidamente solucionado.
Em São Paulo e no país, há mais de uma década hospitais são apoiados por fundações privadas que os auxiliam a melhorar a gestão dos serviços públicos de saúde oferecidos à população. São exemplos dessas parcerias o Hospital das Clínicas de São Paulo, o InCor, o Dante Pazzanese, o HC de Ribeirão Preto e o Instituto Nacional de Câncer, entre outros.
Pesquisa Datafolha realizada com médicos e divulgada recentemente apontou o HC de São Paulo entre os quatro melhores hospitais da capital paulista, ao lado de Albert Einstein, Sírio Libanês e Oswaldo Cruz, todos particulares. O Dante Pazzanese e o InCor também ficaram bem posicionados no atendimento de cardiologia -o que comprova, mais uma vez, a qualidade dessas instituições e a importância das fundações de apoio.
A mudança proposta pelo Ministério da Saúde procura modernizar arcaicas e impróprias regras da gestão pública que acabam permitindo a preservação de privilégios, direitos adquiridos e controle de meios em detrimento, muitas vezes, dos objetivos finais das unidades de saúde, ou seja, a garantia do atendimento de qualidade aos usuários.
No Estado de São Paulo, há nove anos se adotou um novo modelo de gerenciamento de hospitais públicos baseado em contratos de gestão entre o governo e entidades filantrópicas para administração de unidades de saúde com metas de qualidade, quantidade e rapidez nos atendimentos.
Os resultados são extremamente positivos. Atualmente, 19 hospitais são gerenciados pelas chamadas OSs (Organizações Sociais).
Em 2006, esses hospitais estaduais internaram cerca de 90 mil pacientes a mais do que essas mesmas unidades atenderiam se estivessem sob administração direta -e com gasto R$ 240 milhões menor. Isto é, atenderam mais gastando menos.
Nessas unidades, o índice de satisfação dos usuários chega a 95%. O Banco Mundial apontou o modelo como exemplo viável e extremamente positivo para a gestão de hospitais públicos na América Latina.
Certamente, como afirmou o presidente do Conselho Nacional de Saúde nesta Folha ("Tendências/Debates", 27/8), se a administração pública estatal não vai bem, é preciso melhorá-la. Mas a área da saúde precisa de soluções urgentes e ousadas. Não se trata de burlar leis, mas de , modificando e modernizando a legislação existente, criar novas formas de bem atender ao cidadão. Atendimento público e gratuito, mas não necessariamente estatal.
É evidente que é preciso criar novos mecanismos de fiscalização e controle para garantir a transparência da gestão do dinheiro público. Já alertamos sobre a necessidade de que os critérios estabelecidos para a nomeação dos dirigentes e as avaliações dos serviços prestados pelas novas fundações sejam absolutamente técnicos. Evitar ingerências de natureza político-partidária e garantir a gerência profissional das novas fundações são elementos essenciais ao sucesso da proposta federal.
No sistema de Organizações Sociais, a lei paulista prevê que uma entidade só poderá ser qualificada para administrar um hospital do governo se tiver, no mínimo, cinco anos de experiência na prestação de serviços de saúde. A prestação de contas das OSs é encaminhada ao Tribunal de Contas do Estado, à Assembléia Legislativa e a uma comissão composta por membros do Conselho Estadual de Saúde e da sociedade civil. Ou seja, existe total transparência e controle dos gastos públicos realizados.
Há bons motivos para acreditar que o projeto de fundações estatais do ministro da Saúde, José Gomes Temporão, pode dar certo.
Tudo dependerá, evidentemente, da maneira como esse processo for conduzido. Não há dúvida, entretanto, de que é preciso inovar. Afirmar que um projeto inspirado em modelos que já deram certo não será bem-sucedido, além de precipitado, é coisa de quem "não viu e não gostou".

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LUIZ ROBERTO BARRADAS BARATA, 54, médico sanitarista, é secretário da Saúde do Estado de São Paulo.

Hunt for Dengue Vaccine Heats Up as the Disease Burden Grows

As the number of cases reaches an all-time high, new techniques and an influx of research funds could mean this long-neglected disease will finally have a vaccine

For decades, Duane Gubler and other arbovirus experts have been warning about a looming dengue crisis. But dengue fever, transmitted most often by the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti mosquito, was often seen as an obscure, only occasionally fatal disease of tropical countries, and progress toward a vaccine and drugs to treat it has been slow.

Now, with cases exploding across Southeast Asia and the disease apparently becoming more virulent and spreading into new geographic areas, vaccine research is taking on a new urgency. "For 30 years, we've been saying a dengue vaccine might be available in the next 10 years," says Gubler, a dengue expert at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, in Honolulu. "And now, finally, it seems we may be right about that." Some long-running research is finally bearing fruit, says Gubler, and as dengue captures global attention, the pharmaceutical industry is boosting investment in both traditional and novel vaccine technologies. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, has chipped in a $55 million, 5-year grant to set the stage for phase III trials, which will help speed candidate vaccines to market.

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Tropical Disease Follows Mosquitoes to Europe

For years, medical entomologists have worried that the astonishing ascent of the Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus) might bring not only nasty bites but also new public health surprises. After all, the mosquito is a known vector for more than 20 viral diseases.

They were right. This summer, the mosquito, which has become firmly established in southern Europe, has infected almost 200 people in Italy with chikungunya, a painful viral disease. It's the first known example of chikungunya transmission outside the tropics--and it's making scientists wonder whether A. albopictus has the potential to touch off much larger outbreaks in Europe and the United States.

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Scientists Say Ebola Has Pushed Western Gorillas to the Brink

he combined threat of the Ebola virus and poaching have pushed western gorillas into the "critically endangered" category in the latest international ranking of species threatened with extinction. Although estimates suggest that tens of thousands of the animals still live in west-central Africa, the new Red List from the World Conservation Union (IUCN) moves the species into its highest alert category, in large part because of fears that continuing Ebola outbreaks could swiftly wipe out still-significant gorilla populations. The list, released on 12 September, highlights the western gorilla as well as dozens of other species for which new data indicate an increased risk of extinction. The "critically endangered" category is usually applied when just a few hundred individuals survive in the wild. But researchers say that western gorillas, despite their relatively large numbers, are in serious trouble. An ongoing series of Ebola outbreaks has killed up to 90% of the animals in some regions (Science, 8 December 2006, p. 1522), and the use of vaccines to stem the disease faces daunting challenges. Adding to the pressure, the rapid development of logging roads has opened up vast new regions to poaching and the bush-meat trade

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GENOMICS: A Little Gene Xeroxing Goes a Long Way

Researchers studying the evolution of starch digestion have uncovered evidence of a surprising adaptation: Rather than relying on mutations in a particular gene to help us digest roots and tubers better, the human genome simply made more copies of the gene in question. The finding is one of the strongest examples yet of evolution affecting gene copy number in humans and sheds light on how our diet split us apart from other primates.

An enzyme called salivary amylase--encoded by the AMY1 gene--helps humans digest starchy food. In a typical evolutionary scenario, natural selection would favor random mutations in AMY1 that caused it to churn out more of the enzyme or a more effective version of it in people who ate a high-starch diet.

But a study published online 9 September in Nature Genetics contends that something else happened. Nathaniel Dominy, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and George Perry at Arizona State University in Tempe analyzed AMY1 in high-starch eaters such as Americans of European descent, Japanese, and Hadza from Tanzania, hunter-gatherers who eat many roots and tubers, as well as groups that eat little starch, such as the Biaka of the Central African Republic and the Mbuti from Congo, both rainforest hunter-gatherers, and Tanzania's Datog and Siberia's Yakut pastoralists. In all, the researchers studied samples from more than 200 people.

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Putting Typhoid Vaccination on the Global Health Agenda

Although typhoid fever, caused by infection with Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi (often called S. typhi), long ago ceased to be a public health problem in industrialized countries, it is still a substantial cause of illness and death in many developing countries. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are 16 million to 33 million cases and 500,000 to 600,000 deaths from typhoid fever annually,¹ though one study conservatively estimated that 22 million cases and 216,000 related deaths occurred in 2000.² This death rate is not much lower than the estimated 270,000 annual deaths from cervical cancer, caused largely by the human papillomavirus (HPV), and is considerably greater than mortality from meningococcal meningitis and Japanese encephalitis.³ But whereas there has been considerable international momentum behind introducing vaccines against HPV and meningococcus, vaccination against typhoid fever has largely fallen off the international radar screen.

Among the major reasons for this apparent neglect is a sense of complacency inspired by the introduction, beginning several decades ago, of relatively inexpensive antibiotics that initially reduced the rate of typhoid-related deaths substantially; unfortunately, these drugs have progressively become ineffective, since the bacterium has developed resistance to them. Another key factor is that the burden of typhoid fever is unknown and is probably underestimated in most developing countries, owing to the difficulty of differentiating the disease from other febrile illnesses, the infrequency of appropriate confirmatory laboratory testing, the reliance in many countries on private health care providers or on self-treatment with antibiotics, and the generally poor disease-reporting systems in developing countries. And unlike dengue fever and meningococcal meningitis, which occur in epidemics that command the attention of the media and political leaders, typhoid fever is largely an endemic illness. Finally, whereas policymakers have prioritized vaccines that reduce the rates of illness and death among children under 5 years of age, typhoid fever has long been considered a disease of school-aged children.

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Noroviruses — Challenges to Control

Acute infectious gastroenteritis is an extremely common illness, second in frequency only to acute respiratory illness among North American families. Although it had long been suspected that such illnesses were caused by viruses, it was only after clinical and laboratory studies were carried out over the past three decades that causative viruses were identified.1,2 Among the most prominent are a novel group of viruses originally referred to as Norwalk-like agents — named after Norwalk, Ohio, where an outbreak of illness was caused by the prototype agent — and now called noroviruses.

Noroviruses are small (26 to 35 nm), single-stranded RNA viruses that are nonenveloped and have icosahedral symmetry (see image).2 They are classified as a new genus in the Caliciviridae family, which also contains the genus sapovirus, another cause of gastroenteritis.3 There is no satisfactory animal model for norovirus disease, though infection of gnotobiotic piglets and nonhuman primates has been accomplished. Human noroviruses have not been cultured in vitro, although transfection with viral RNA in human embryonic kidney cells and infection of human intestinal organoid cultures have been reported. Thus, the characteristics and pathogenesis of noroviruses have been elucidated largely through studies of disease in humans and molecular analyses of virus from human stool samples.4

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Inovação

Caro Nassif,
Por um breve instante lendo o título deste seu post achei que você fosse discutir uma assunto que há muito gostaria de ver em seu blog: O mito da inovação.
A moda no momento é inovação. Se você pesquisa e não gera patentes não vale nada. O importante é patentear para melhorar a classificação do Brasil no cenário mundial, com a justificativa de que quanto mais patente um país tem mais desenvolvido ele é.
Pergunto a você: qual é a correlação real de patente com desenvolvimento sócio-econômico? qual é a qualidade das patentes registradas? A China é a China e a Coréia é a Coréia porque produzem patentes ou a produção de patentes é consequência?
A meu ver, um país como o nosso deveria estar mais preocupado com a racionalização na incorporação de inovação do que com a produção de inovação. Na área de saúde, na qual trabalho, o que mais vejo no dia a dia é o uso perdulário destas inovações tecnológicas, na maioria importadas, que só aumentam os custos do setor saúde sem realmente trazer benefícios aos pacientes - quando não trazem malefícios.
Logo, está na hora de começarmos a questionar os líderes das instituições de fomento (CNPq, CAPES, FAPESP e FINEP) quanto este paradigma centrado prioritariamente em inovação.

Nassif
Uma das boas discussões de hoje de manhã foi sobre a importância (ou não) da patente. Minha opinião pessoal é que o sistema de patentes só beneficia países com capacidade de fiscalizar mundialmente as patentes e desenvolver mais rapidamente processos.

The road to recovery

Despite Brazil's strength in basic scientific and medical research, a large proportion of the population still suffers from ill health. Diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy are highly prevalent in poor populations, and about 46,000 people die each year from infectious diseases. What is going wrong?

As a 'middle-income' country, Brazil needs to cope with diseases and health problems that are prevalent worldwide, such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity. In addition, it has to deal with neglected diseases, such as malaria and leprosy, and some of the world's 'most-neglected' diseases, such as dengue fever, leishmaniasis and Chagas' disease. But few of the scientific discoveries made in Brazil lead to new drugs for these infectious diseases. This is driving the government into the red, with imported medical products costing billions of dollars each year. Moreover, any successes in health-related biotechnology1, 2, 3 are undermined by the poor delivery of health-care services across the country4 and by the consistently ineffective implementation of education and industrial policies.

Certainly, there has been no shortage of effort by Brazilian researchers. Since 1990, the number of articles published by researchers from Brazilian institutes has steadily increased (see graphic, below). Similarly, the number of Brazilian patent applications at the US Patent and Trademark Office has also increased during this period. But the ratio of patent applications to research papers is low, suggesting that not enough research is being translated into real products5.

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Neglected Diseases: Lost in translation

The culture of academia needs to change if scientists are to bridge the gap between research and the development of drugs and vaccines for neglected diseases in the developing world, says Declan Butler.

Read any scientific paper or grant proposal on basic research into neglected diseases and you inevitably find a claim that the work could lead to new therapies for diseases that affect millions of people in the developing world. Few, in fact, ever do, and scientists, universities and research funders are waking up to the fact that part of the blame lies with them and their perpetuation of a reward culture that focuses excessively on papers and patents, and not on whether the research actually benefits society.

In disease research, academia has traditionally restricted its role to basic research. Subsequent development is then left to the pharmaceutical industry. But when it comes to neglected diseases — those that disproportionally affect poor and marginalized populations — the drugs and vaccines have low returns, so commercial firms cannot fork out for the expensive development. As a result, there is a 'translational gap' in which promising research leads sit on the shelf, and potential drugs and vaccines go undeveloped.

The academic reward culture means that researchers have little incentive to do the 'grunt work' needed to close this gap because it does not generate papers in top journals, says Mel Spigelman, director of research and development at the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development in New York. The competitive nature of academic research and of the publication reward system can also lead to unnecessary duplication of work, and hinders the sharing of data, he adds.

The time has never been riper for greater engagement of academics in the development of new drugs. Over the past decade, the translational gap has started to close for neglected diseases, thanks to the emergence of a series of public–private partnerships between charities, large pharmaceutical companies and small biotech firms. These partnerships are run like businesses, but not for profit, and include the Malaria Vaccine Initiative in Bethesda, Maryland; the Medicines for Malaria Venture in Geneva, Switzerland; the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development; and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi) in Geneva, Switzerland, which is seeking cures for the 'most neglected' diseases, such as sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis), Chagas' disease and leishmaniasis.

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Epigenetics: Perceptive enzymes

Adding methyl groups to DNA is a way of regulating some genes and genomic sequences. Structural analysis reveals that the enzyme complex that mediates this process shows unexpected sequence specificity.

Imprinted genes are a small but developmentally important set of genes whose expression depends on the parent from which they are inherited. So, for some of these genes only the maternally inherited copy is expressed, and for others only the copy inherited from the father is expressed. Such selective gene expression is regulated by selective addition of methyl groups to the two equivalent parental chromosomes during the development of gametes (eggs and sperm); these chemical marks are then propagated in the resulting offspring1. In vertebrates, methylation of DNA, which is usually associated with the shut-down of local gene expression, is mediated by DNA methyltransferase enzymes. A question that has puzzled researchers is how these enzymes discriminate between different sequences within the genome. On page 248 of this issue, Jia et al.2 provide some clues, reporting that DNA methyltransferases show remarkable sequence specificity.

Universities and the money fix

Funding woes plague US biomedical researchers. But calls for more funding ignore the structural problems that push universities to produce too many scientists, argues Brian C. Martinson.

Federal funding for biomedical research is a substantial investment in the US science community. Earlier this year, representatives of several major research universities testified before Congress and issued a report arguing that the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, is insufficient to sustain "a strong and vibrant program of basic research"1. They pointed to stifling of innovation and damage to the career prospects of young scientists, ultimately warning that there could be a threat to US pre-eminence in biomedical research if Congress does not increase levels of funding for the NIH. Yet, what is it that poses the most potent threat to the future of biomedical research — a lack of resources, or our failure to manage the level of competition for available resources? The answer to this question is vital if society is to gain maximum benefit from the public money invested in biomedical research.

There is undeniably excessive competition for NIH grants, and we should all be concerned about the negative effects this may have on the robustness of the research engine; by damping scientists' willingness to pursue high-risk projects; by causing them to spend excessive time in pursuit of funding; or by causing talented individuals to shun research careers. Yet, largely because of the structure of the funding flows between the NIH and the universities, there are few checks in the system to keep competition for grant funding at a healthy level. Thus, calls for further increases in the NIH budget may only make matters worse. In my view, it is time to ask the biggest beneficiaries of NIH largesse — the universities and academic health centres — to find ways to balance supply and demand that better reflect their obligations to researchers and society.

University leaders know that when the money gets tight, it's junior faculty members who feel the pinch. They are less established in their careers, more peripheral to their professions and institutions, and often most dependent on obtaining NIH funding as an implicit or explicit condition of their continued employment. As NIH funding becomes harder for junior researchers to obtain, we might expect them to experience the elevated levels of depression, anxiety and job dissatisfaction documented in a survey2 of medical faculty members in 2006. We might also expect the greatest effects to be felt by female scientists and those from minority groups, for younger researchers to leave science, and to see somewhat less ethical behaviour among those who stay. The robustness of the research engine must be judged on more than the level of funding or the number of scientists.

The doubling of the NIH budget between 1998 and 2003 was intended to increase success rates in obtaining NIH grants3, which have been declining since the mid-1970s. Yet, the budget rise did not have its intended effect, and by 2003, grant-application success rates were slightly worse than before. What happened? The budgetary increases were swamped by an equally large escalation in the number of NIH applicants and applications (see graph, below)4. In 1998, there were about 19,000 scientists applying for competing awards; in 2006 there were approximately 34,000.

Since the 1970s academic researchers in biomedicine and the institutions that employ them have become increasingly dependent on NIH dollars5. The financial reasons for this are simple. The 'direct costs' of NIH grants cover the fixed costs of faculty salaries, whereas 'indirect cost recovery', pays for operational overheads, capital equipment and other expenses. Federal training grants also provide revenue streams for doctoral and postdoctoral training, directly stimulating workforce growth. Even before the doubling in funding, the Bayh–Dole act of 1980 created incentives for universities to grow their NIH workforce by permitting employers to own the inventions their employees created with federal funding.
Ageing cash cows

As dependence on NIH grants has grown, they have also become harder to obtain, especially for junior scientists. The average age at which PhD scientists earn their first independent support from the NIH has increased steadily6, from 34 in 1970 to 42 in 2006. The situation has certainly been made worse by the flat NIH budget (declining after taking inflation into account) since the end of the doubling initiative. Yet, the excessive demand for NIH funds predates the recently flat budget (see graph, below). Since the early 1980s new investigators have been entering NIH funding at a more rapid rate than experienced investigators have been exiting4, leading to a population increase.
With academic faculty members seen as revenue generators, they are encouraged in subtle and not-so-subtle ways to expend greater effort on lucrative activities: this has made research a preferred activity over teaching or patient care. It also means they must spend a substantial amount of time writing grants. This arrangement generally works in the universities' favour, but the downsides of the dependence on NIH funding are becoming harder to ignore.

For too long now, financial incentives to the universities have been aligned to promote unlimited growth in the number of biomedical researchers seeking funding from the federal government, despite the realities of finite resources. Some have suggested that a solution lies in biomedical researchers and universities becoming less dependent on NIH money by finding commercial funding sources and philanthropies7, but this approach is not without its own risks, and it avoids dealing with the structural arrangements that keep us from applying sound principles of supply and demand to the scientific workforce.

We need to look at both the supply and the demand sides of the NIH funding equation. Most who worry about these issues have focused on the size or distribution of the pool of NIH dollars. Far fewer have given consideration to the size or dynamics of the population of biomedical researchers living on NIH funding. Few have overtly asked the question — are there too many biomedical scientists?

There are insufficient 'feedback loops' linking the production of biomedical researchers to the availability of resources to support them. Instead, the educational system is replete with incentives to generate ever more PhDs and medical doctors. In the short term these arrangements may benefit universities, but in the longer term, such extreme levels of competition for funding are unsustainable. And they may already be doing harm. Difficult funding decisions are increasing ill will, perceptions of injustice, and eroding the bases of ethical behaviour among academics. Some of my own work leads me to believe that the current situation may be adversely affecting the integrity of research8.
The needle and the damage done

The imbalance between the supply of NIH funding and the potentially unlimited demand for grants threatens the future of US biomedical science. I have argued that because of structural incentives, demand for NIH grants is largely a function of the size of the biomedical workforce. Recent NIH initiatives to increase funding of junior researchers are welcome, and have the best chance of maintaining a pool of new research talent. But without some counterbalance, these initiatives may escalate competition for grants.

Calls for further increases to the NIH budget are a facile response from institutions overly dependent on NIH dollars. But they are an incomplete, and potentially dangerous, answer to the problems of excessive competition. And although short-term NIH budget increases to make up for inflation-related declines since 2003 seem reasonable, further increases risk fuelling, rather than reducing, demand. For now, budgetary increases that simply keep pace with inflation would seem prudent, so as not to reactivate the growth impulse. Regrettably, the current imbalance may be addressed only through a reduction in the biomedical workforce; something that already seems to be happening.
There are two main routes to contraction of the academic workforce today — through tenure failures, and with younger investigators shifting from academia into industry research8. This is worrisome for university research in particular because history suggests that the most dramatic innovations come from the young. So is the only solution to force long-time NIH grant getters into retirement? Perhaps not. Universities have benefited handsomely from the efforts of senior faculty members in securing NIH grants during their careers, perhaps those same universities could now return the favour by taking full responsibility for paying these faculty salaries in their later years. This would serve the dual purpose of getting them off the NIH dole, and encouraging them to share their knowledge with their younger colleagues through more teaching.

This won't be easy. Given the levels of dependency on NIH money, it is akin to asking an addict to give up an easy fix. And not all universities will be in financial positions to employ this strategy, but it's difficult to imagine that richer institutions — some of whom acknowledge that their success lies in capturing an increasing share of the NIH pie9 — could not lead the way in this. Prospective students and their parents may also look favourably on senior faculty members spending more time teaching.

What is needed is not necessarily more people, but more time, space and freedom.

An implicit assumption underpinning the current system of funding is that having more biomedical scientists automatically leads to greater innovation and more breakthroughs. Yet what is needed is not necessarily more people, but more time, space and freedom for existing researchers to ask questions in new ways, to be willing and able to take risks, and to innovate rather than simply writing safe, incremental grants. The excessive competition for NIH funds discourages this kind of risk-taking, and ultimately reduces opportunities for the sort of creative thinking that leads to major scientific breakthroughs.

Russian scientists see red over clampdown

Microbiologist taking samples to France is accused of smuggling bioweapons.

A young Russian biologist who was taking samples to a collaborative institute in France has been accused of attempting to smuggle bioweapons by Russia's federal security service, the FSB. He has been interrogated repeatedly by FSB agents and prevented from leaving the country. His job also now looks uncertain. But experts say that the accusations are absurd.

Oleg Mediannikov's Kafkaesque nightmare began on 12 December 2006 at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, as he was about to board a plane to Marseilles. Customs officials confiscated 20 phials containing non-pathogenic strains of a typhus vaccine approved by the Russian health ministry for export to France, along with Mediannikov's computer and USB memory sticks. Mediannikov initially thought there was a minor problem with the paperwork. But more than eight months on, the interrogations continue.
Russian scientists see red over clampdown

Mediannikov, who works at the Gamelaya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, studies Rickettsia prowazekii, the bacterium spread by lice that causes epidemic typhus. The institute's laboratory of rickettsial ecology, headed by Irina Tarasevich, has a long-established collaboration with the Rickettsial Unit of the University of the Mediterranean in Marseilles, led by Didier Raoult. The two institutes are World Health Organization Collaborating Centres for Rickettsial Reference and Research.

Raoult planned to compare the protein spectrum of two strains of R. prowazekii — Madrid E and EVir — produced more than 20 years ago in chicken embryos in Russia and since held at the Gamelaya Institute, with similar strains produced more recently in France from mammalian cell cultures. Both strains are not considered to be virulent and are used in vaccinations against typhus. The work is part of a larger research project on the pathogenesis of R. prowazekii, led by Raoult and funded by France's basic-research agency, the CNRS.

If things get worse, we will demand that the FSB interrogates the deputy health minister, who approved the export of the material.

Mediannikov was allowed to continue his trip to Marseilles without the samples. On his return to Moscow in January, he was told that the confiscated material had been sent to a secret laboratory — code-named the 47th military research institute — for an 'expert assessment'. Three weeks later he was told that an additional assessment — the first allegedly concluded the materials were benign — was necessary before the materials could be returned. This second assessment is still pending.

But the situation is causing other problems for Mediannikov. On 13 February, he intended to go on a tourist trip to Cameroon, only to learn at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that there was an official order preventing him from leaving the country. When he demanded an explanation, a customs official said the order "must not be discussed". His passport was confiscated and returned two months later by regular post.

All his efforts to clarify the situation have proved fruitless. In early June, customs informed him that the FSB — successor to the Soviet KGB — insisted on initiating criminal proceedings. To avert prosecution, he gave them the valid export permission signed by the deputy health minister. In addition, he presented letters from Tarasevich and Raoult attesting to the harmlessness of the strains and their sole use for scientific purposes.

Nonetheless, criminal proceedings were initiated on 26 June — and the accusations are severe. The indictment, of which Nature has obtained a copy, cites Article 188/2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on smuggling materials that might be used for preparing weapons of mass destruction. People guilty of illicit trafficking of weapons-delivery systems can be sentenced to up to seven years in prison.
Russian scientists see red over clampdown

Russia's FSB (above) has detained several scientists for 'smuggling' scientific samples such as Rickettsia prowazekii (right) out of the country.

Raoult says that he is stunned. "Something like this has never happened in 20 years of our centres' collaboration," he says. "Oleg spent two years working in my lab. He is a very good, dynamic and responsible scientist." His work has been instrumental in helping fight typhus in Russia, he adds. Typhus bacteria are not considered potential bioterrorism agents by other governments. "It is a terrible disease, but the agent is so difficult to grow that it doesn't make any sense to use it for bioweapons," says Raoult.

This week, Mediannikov told Nature that the deputy director of his institute had been approached by the FSB and that Mediannikov has now been told to resign or face the sack.
On the up

Mediannikov's case illustrates a worrying resurgence in Russian scientists being accused of wrong-doing. In 2000, for example, thermo-physicist Valentin Danilov of Krasnoyarsk State Technical University was arrested for allegedly passing classified information to China. He was acquitted in 2003, but taken into custody again after the Russian Supreme Court overturned the acquittal in 2004. And in 2004, Igor Sutyagin, a social scientist formerly with the US and Canada Institute in Moscow, was sentenced to 15 years in a labour camp for allegedly passing classified data on nuclear submarines and missile-warning systems to a British company.

The FSB also suspected chemist Oleg Korobeinichev, head of the laboratory of chemical kinetics and combustion in Novosibirsk, of having divulged state secrets to the United States. But the charges were dropped in June 2006, and Korobeinichev received a public apology from local legal authorities. On 27 August, the FSB finally withdrew the charges against physicists Oleg and Igor Minin, who had been accused of revealing state secrets.

"There have been worse times in this country," says a Russian expert on non-proliferation on condition of anonymity. "But Vladimir Putin has untied the hands of the FSB, and we do see a trend here towards strengthening state control over all spheres of life, including science."

In May, the FSB warned in a secret report to President Putin that biological samples taken from Russians could be used abroad to produce 'genetic weapons'. Consequently, the export of human specimens was temporarily banned. The order was reversed two weeks later after an outcry in the media and the scientific community.

"Publicity does help in such cases," says Konstantin Severinov, a biochemist who has a joint affiliation at the Institute of Molecular Genetics in Moscow and at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Severinov was himself 'interviewed' by an FSB official in June. "I told the guy straight away that the whole genetic-weapon craze is nothing but lunacy and paranoia," he says.

Over the past couple of months, Mediannikov has been summoned six times to the FSB interrogation department in Moscow. Interviews — about his biography, scientific advisers, collaborators, research, and so on — lasted for up to four hours, but took place in a "quite pleasant" atmosphere, he says. Mediannikov is now waiting for the result of the second expert assessment. "If there's anything in it that might back the charge we will insist on a third, independent assessment," he says. "If things get worse, we will also demand that the FSB interrogates the deputy health minister, who approved the export of the material." He points out that scientists from the Gamelaya Institute have previously taken similar samples to France without any problems.

One customs officer, Mediannikov says, hinted to him that customs were "ordered" by the FSB to take action against him. And Severinov says that Mediannikov might have been shopped to the FSB by an over-zealous member of his institute's 'first department'. These notorious 'security' departments are obligatory at Russian research institutes — a relic of Soviet times — and they maintain close connections with the FSB.

Mediannikov's situation is serious, as is always the case when FSB investigators are involved, say legal experts. But if convicted only of 'ordinary' smuggling, he may yet get away with a modest penalty fee, they say. A date for the trial has not been set. He is not in custody, but experts doubt that he would be allowed to leave Russia as long as the investigation continues.

Interferon discovery and ferret flu

Jean Lindenmann, who discovered how inactivated viruses help to protect cells, talks to Alison Abbott about his career.

Fifty years ago virologists were struggling to understand why an inactivated virus reduced the ability of a normal virus to infect cells — a process called interference. Jean Lindenmann and Alick Isaacs at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) at Mill Hill, London, found the answer in less than a year of intensive and inspired research^{1, 2}. The inactivated virus triggered the infected cells to produce a protein that suppressed replication of the live virus. The protein, called interferon, turned out to be a useful therapy for hepatitis C and many cancers. Jean Lindenmann, now 83, talks to Nature.

How did you come up with the name interferon?

I started out studying physics at the University of Zurich, but 18 months into my course the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. This so disenchanted me that I switched to medicine. I guess I was still jealous of all those elementary particles the physicists had to play with — baryons, neutrons and so on — so I created an '–on' suffix for the viral 'interfering' substance we were looking for, and made interferon. At first it was a bit of a joke name, a sort of slang in the lab, but then it stuck.

How was working at the NIMR in 1956?

It was informal and very intellectual. Isaacs would whistle arias and we'd all have to guess from which opera they came. There was lots of political discussion. It was the time of the Hungarian uprising and the Suez crisis. A petition was circulated to protest the British invasion of Egypt that had nationalized the Suez Canal. But I felt that I shouldn't sign it because Switzerland was a neutral country.

How did you and Isaacs develop your key experiments?

We adapted a standard experimental model for infection studies that uses the chorioallantoic membrane — the membrane surrounding the growing embryo — in fertilized chicken eggs. The amount of virus generated by infected membranes after each experiment was measured by a bioassay based on the ability of viruses to cause clumping of red blood cells. We used the influenza A virus. Instead of infecting the membrane by injecting the virus into the cavity between the membrane that lines the shell and the embryo — as others did — we peeled the membrane away and cut it into six or eight pieces. We placed each piece in a test tube with nutrient medium. This gave us more experimental values per egg and more experimental flexibility. For instance, we could wash the fragments after each exposure and re-expose them to inactivated or live virus at different times, in different conditions.

Is that why you succeeded where others failed?

The director of NIMR at the time, Christopher H. Andrewes, had considered the possibility that interference worked by inducing infected cells to produce an antiviral molecule back in 1942, but he was unable to see it in his tissue-culture experiments. Back then, tissue culture was tricky — after two or three days everything would be contaminated with bacteria. It was easier for us to see the phenomenon in tissue culture in the 1950s because we had access to antibiotics such as penicillin and streptomycin. I often reflect that if the Asian flu pandemic had happened in 1956 instead of 1957, we would not have been able to do this work. NIMR virologists would have been completely occupied with public-health-related work.

Was biosecurity strict in the NIMR then?

Even with freshly isolated strains we took only the ordinary precautions. The first isolation of an influenza virus by Andrewes and Wilson Smith, done by infecting ferrets intranasally, resulted in a lab infection: Andrewes had fallen ill with naturally acquired influenza. Using his nasal washings, they inoculated ferrets. The fever that the animals developed could be passed on to other ferrets. In the course of such a passage, a ferret sneezed into the face of Smith, who fell ill with influenza; from this lab infection the virus strain now known as WS was established. Andrewes jokingly mentioned that actually this strain ought to be called CHA.

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Are you disappointed that interferon never became the panacea it was tipped to be?

Interferon was hyped shamelessly at some phases of scientific research. Of course it never became a miracle cure for cancer and viral infections. Scientists were not innocent in this hyping — it was a way of getting research money. Back in 1957 we were, of course, already thinking about applications, and we patented it. Isaacs enrolled a biochemist to purify and chemically characterize our interferon, expecting it to take six months. In the event it took more than 20 years.

Study Finds Evidence of Genetic Response to Diet

Nicholas Wade

Could people one day evolve to eat rich food while remaining perfectly slim and svelte?

This may not be so wild a fantasy. It is becoming clear that the human genome does respond to changes in diet, even though it takes many generations to do so.

Researchers studying the enzyme that converts starch to simple sugars like glucose have found that people living in countries with a high-starch diet produce considerably more of the enzyme than people who eat a low-starch diet.

The reason is an evolutionary one. People in high-starch countries have many extra copies of the amylase gene which makes the starch-converting enzyme, a group led by George H. Perry of Arizona State University and Nathaniel J. Dominy of the University of California, Santa Cruz, reported yesterday in the journal Nature Genetics.

The production of the extra copies seems to have been favored by natural selection, according to a genetic test, the authors say. If so, the selective pressure could have occurred when people first started to grow cereals like wheat and barley at the beginning of the Neolithic revolution some 10,000 years ago, or even much earlier.

Paleoanthropologists have long wondered what change in the usual primate diet of fruit and nuts enabled the emerging human lineage to support a brain that eventually swelled to three times the size of chimpanzees’.

Neural tissue requires large amounts of energy, and the usual assumption is that humans began to eat meat some 2.5 million years ago when brain volume started to expand. But another possibility is that the extra nutrients came from starch.

As soon as the human lineage split from the chimp’s about five million years ago and started to live in open woodland, its diet may have expanded to include tubers, corms and the other underground structures in which plants store starch. In support of this idea, Dr. Dominy, a paleoanthropologist, said that the teeth of early humans “are not well suited for eating meat.”

Chimpanzees, whose fruit-based diet does not include much starch, have a single amylase gene. Dr. Dominy, Dr. Perry and their colleagues believe that the number of amylase genes in the human genome had started to expand by at least 200,000 years ago and perhaps much earlier, but the exact date cannot yet be determined.

Richard Wrangham, a primatologist at Harvard and an advocate of the tuber-eating thesis, said the amylase finding was a convincing insight into the different digestive physiology of people and chimps, but that the date of 200,000 years ago, derived from limited genetic information, was not old enough to give direct support to his ideas.

The amylase enzyme studied by Dr. Perry’s team exists in the saliva, where it predigests starch and lets glucose get absorbed from the mouth into bloodstream. The evolutionary advantage of this strange arrangement is not clear, but it could provide the body with energy during episodes of diarrhea, or might protect against diarrhea. Or it could just make the digestion of starch more efficient.

Whatever the exact mechanism, the extra copies of the amylase gene seem to have arisen through positive selection, the researchers said. Their conclusion is based on comparing the genomes of the Japanese and the Yakut, a Siberian people who eat mostly reindeer. Dr. Perry, a geneticist, said he could not tell whether the Japanese, who have a high-starch diet, including rice, had gained the extra copies of the gene or whether the Yakut had lost theirs.

Geneticists realized only in 2004 that having extra copies of genes was a widespread form of variation in the human genome. Many of the extra copies seem to have arisen through mistakes in the duplication process that doubles the number of chromosomes in dividing cells. The effect of these extra copies is largely unknown and the story of the amylase gene is one of the first to be understood, at least to some degree.

Dr. Perry and his team started their research by having undergraduates at Arizona State University give samples of saliva, which were analyzed for amylase. The researchers found the amount of amylase a person produced was correlated with the number of copies they possessed of the amyloid gene, which ranged from 2 to 15. The copies are arranged in the genome like a string of beads, with each gene being about 120,000 units of DNA in length.

Wondering whether the copy number varied with diet, the researchers then collected saliva and blood samples from the Yakut and other low-starch eating populations, showing that this was indeed the case.

Dos consensos limitados

Participei hoje da reunião do Conselho de Economia da FIESP (Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo). É um conselhão, enorme, com representantes de todos os setores. Discutiram-se câmbio, reformas e aumento de impostos.

Apesar da mediação competente do ex-Ministro Delfim Netto, há um problema no Conselho que, em escala menor, é similar ao que paralisa sucessivos governos nacionais e, em última instância, reflexo da perda de rumo do país.

Nas reuniões da Cosec, a (velha) discussão é sobre câmbio e juros. Hoje foi particularmente interessante, com os mercadistas apresentando os grandes valores agregados para defender o nível atual do câmbio. Depois, dois presidentes de empresas industriais mostrando como passaram a fabricar na China por falta de condições internas e... de câmbio.

Como não há consenso sobre juros e câmbio, existe uma espécie de pacto tácito contra os impostos – a campanha contra a CPMF é o exemplo – e contra os gastos do governo. Obtém-se um quase consenso no Conselho. Mas e fora? É essa a dificuldade maior.

É evidente que há despesas e despesas de governo. Falta dinheiro para a saúde, há contingenciamento de toda sorte de despesas, de aplicações dos fundos setoriais, um mundo de carências sociais a serem atacadas. Ao mesmo tempo, há desperdício, inoperância, ineficiência.

Mas como jogar todos os gastos do mesmo balaio? Sem modelos adequados de gestão, entre o dinheiro que fica na máquina e o que vai para o cidadão, não se tenha dúvida de que o corte recairá sobre o segundo grupo.

E aí, como analisar isoladamente os gastos com a Previdência, Bolsa Família, saúde, sem levar em conta as chamadas externalidades positivas? É evidente que os custos trabalhistas tiram competitividade das empresas. Mas os gastos com a Previdência e programas assistenciais têm impacto positivo na redução da marginalidade, no aumento das matrículas escolares, na redução dos gastos com segurança.

Nenhum dos dois aspectos pode ser ignorado. Aumento de encargos tira, efetivamente, a competitividade e a capacidade de geração de empregos das empresas. Mas corte na Previdência e nas políticas sociais colide com a própria função do Estado, que é prover o bem estar dos brasileiros. Sem levar em conta todos esses ângulos, jamais se chegará a projeto de país algum.

Coloquei na reunião uma obviedade. Me dê qualquer tema em economia: câmbio baixo ou câmbio alto; juros baixos ou juros altos; gastos da Previdência; gastos com saúde; encargos. Para qualquer tema desses, posso listar uma dezena de argumentos a favor, e uma dezena contra. O grande desafio de um projeto nacional é saber equilibrar as prioridades, dosar. E se sairá do impasse apenas com pactos em que as partes admitam perder um tanto em benefício de um interesse maior – representado pelo aumento do desenvolvimento com justiça social.

O único ponto de consenso – que raramente é colocado na mesa – é a eliminação do desperdício, dos gastos indevidos. O que se consegue apenas quando o tema gestão pública se tornar prioridade nacional.

No entanto, montam-se ilhas de interesse em vários centros – o pessoal da produção, o pessoal do mercado, o pessoal da saúde, o pessoal das políticas sociais --, e fica cada qual para um lado, administrando seus próprios consensos internos, mas sem entender o todo.

Impasses dessa ordem costumam ser resolvidos por Estadistas. Mas pode-se começar a discussão parando de demonizar gastos sociais e parando de considerar toda despesa pública virtuosa por princípio.

Luis Nassif

Países com melhores notas usam sistema de ciclos no ensino

Chamado de progressão continuada, modelo é criticado no Brasil sob o argumento de aprovar aluno que não aprende

Simone Iwasso

Enquanto o modelo norte-americano em relação a políticas educacionais pode dar sinais para o Brasil, a observação do desempenho de outros países pode ajudar a desmistificar a progressão continuada - duramente criticada por alguns setores que a enxergam como aprovação automática de alunos sem conhecimento, e fortemente defendida por outros, que o encaram como uma pedagogia moderna e que não empurra o aluno para fora da escola.

Análise feita por pesquisador do Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada (Ipea) nos resultados de duas avaliações internacionais de desempenho mostrou que os países com melhores notas adotam o sistema de ciclos, e não a repetência por séries. Nesse contexto, a diferença chega a ser de até 20 pontos a mais entre os que adotam a progressão e os que usam a repetência.

“A idéia do estudo foi mostrar que a progressão continuada é um modelo adotado internacionalmente e que não há nenhuma contradição com bons resultados em termos de aprendizado”, explica o autor, Sergei Suarez Dillon Soares. Ele escolheu os testes Trends in International Mathematics and Sciency Study (Timms), que analisam matemática e ciência, e Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls), voltado para leitura.

O Brasil não participa de nenhum dos dois testes. “É claro que há muitos fatores envolvidos nisso, mas os dados mostram que a progressão continuada não exerce nenhum efeito negativo na aprendizagem dos alunos”, diz o pesquisador.

Os primeiros países no ranking, como Japão, Coréia, Suécia e Noruega, praticam progressão continuada em todo o ensino fundamental e proíbem a reprovação de um aluno em qualquer série desse ciclo - isso pode ocorrer apenas por faltas. Chile, Cingapura e Hong Kong, numa faixa intermediária, adotam o sistema de ciclos, parecido com o de Estados brasileiros, como São Paulo e Minas. Ou seja, pode-se reprovar no fim desses períodos, a cada quatro anos.

A repetência seriada é adotada nos países de menor desenvolvimento e com piores desempenhos, como Arábia Saudita, Indonésia, Líbano e Filipinas. A exceção é a Bélgica, uma das melhores no ranking, que se recusou a aplicar a progressão após um grande debate na sociedade. “É preciso desatar a idéia de que o ensino é ruim por causa da progressão. O resultado é ruim porque a gente não oferece condições pedagógicas para o aluno aprender”, afirma o professor da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) José Francisco Soares, especialista em avaliações. “Repetir não pode ser o único instrumento pedagógico do professor.”


O ENSINO PÚBLICO

30 milhões
de alunos estão matriculados no fundamental

7,9 milhões
de estudantes cursam o ensino médio na rede

55% dos alunos
da 4.ª série conseguiam apenas ler frases simples, segundo avaliação de 2003