The Great Ape Project and disability rights: Ominous undercurrents of eugenics in action

The Great Ape Project is an international animal rights movement with the g oal of extending rights to nonhuman primates. While the authors of this ess ay are sympathetic with scholars who seek to ensure humane treatment for th ese species, they are concerned with the growing tendency by those in the p roject to draw analogies between nonhuman primates and humans with disabili ties. 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, re ly 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 w ant to make comparisons between humans and apes, it should be with all huma ns. They feel it is both unfortunate and scientifically inaccurate for thos e in the Great Ape Project to blur the boundary between apes and people by dehumanizing individuals with disabilities, individuals for whom human righ ts are often the most precarious.