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The Great Ape Project and Disability Rights: Ominous Undercurrents of Eugenics in Action
Author(s) -
Groce Nora Ellen,
Marks Jonathan
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.2000.102.4.818
Subject(s) - eugenics , dehumanization , sociocultural evolution , action (physics) , human rights , disability studies , environmental ethics , sociology , animal rights , psychology , law , gender studies , political science , anthropology , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics
The Great Ape Project is an international animal rights movement with the goal of extending rights to nonhuman primates. While the authors of this essay are sympathetic with scholars who seek to ensure humane treatment for these species, they are concerned with the growing tendency by those in the project to draw analogies between nonhuman primates and humans with disabilities. It is felt that scholars in the Great Ape Project, ignoring findings from anthropologists who have begun to study the significant sociocultural matrix that has defined and often limited individuals with disabilities, rely on assumptions about disability that can be traced back to the eugenics movement. The authors of this essay argue that if scholars in the Great Ape Project want to make comparisons between humans and apes, it should be with all humans. They feel it is both unfortunate and scientifically inaccurate for those in the Great Ape Project to blur the boundary between apes and people by dehumanizing individuals with disabilities, individuals for whom human rights are often the most precarious, [great apes, Great Ape Project, disability, eugenics, human rights]