In the wake of the chimpanzee genome publication, Pascal Gagneux, James J. Moore and Ajit Varki consider the ethical and scientific challenges for scientists who work on captive great apes.
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Notes
*‘Great apes’ is used here in its colloquial sense. In the commonly used classification, these species are grouped alongside humans in the family Hominidae, and humans belong to the tribe Hominini, along with chimpanzees and bonobos.
References
Human Genome Project Information (2004).
The National Academies Press (1997).
Olson, M. & Varki A. Nature Rev. Genet. 4, 20–28 (2003).
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the following readers for very helpful comments and suggestions: A. Zihlman, C. Tutin, D. Povinelli, D. Rumbaugh, F. B. M. de Waal, J. Goodall, J. Allman, K. Semendeferi, K. Benirschke, M. Goodman, O. Ryder, R. Wrangham, S. Boysen, S. Blaffer Hrdy, S. Savage-Rumbaugh, T. Matsuzawa, T. Murray, and W. McGrew. We also gratefully acknowledge the support of the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Charitable Foundation.
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Gagneux, P., Moore, J. & Varki, A. The ethics of research on great apes. Nature 437, 27–29 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/437027a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/437027a
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