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The Great Ape Project (GAP), founded in 1993, is an international organization of primatologists, anthropologists, ethicists, and others who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. The rights suggested are the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. The organization also monitors individual great ape activity in the United States through a census program. Once rights are established, GAP would demand the release of great apes from captivity; currently 3,100 are held in the U.S., including 1,280 in biomedical research facilities. ==''The Great Ape Project'' (book)== The book of the same name, edited by philosophers Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, features contributions from thirty-four authors, including Jane Goodall and Richard Dawkins, who have submitted articles voicing their support for the project. The authors write that human beings are intelligent animals with a varied social, emotional, and cognitive life. If great apes also display such attributes, the authors argue, they deserve the same consideration humans extend to members of their own species. The book highlights findings that support the capacity of great apes to possess rationality and self-consciousness, and the ability to be aware of themselves as distinct entities with a past and future. Documented conversations (in sign languages) with individual great apes are the basis for these findings. Other subjects addressed within the book include the division placed between humans and great apes, great apes as persons, progress in gaining rights for the severely intellectually disabled (once an overlooked minority), and the situation of great apes in the world today. Their biological similarity with humans is also key to the traits for which they are valuable as research subjects. For example, testing of monoclonal antibody treatments cannot be done in species less similar to humans than chimpanzees. Because the antibodies do not elicit immune responses in chimpanzees, they persist in the blood as they do in humans, and their effects can be evaluated. In monkeys and other non-apes, the antibodies are rapidly cleared from the bloodstream. Monoclonal antibody treatments are being developed for cancer; autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and Crohn's disease; and asthma. Chimpanzees also possess unique advantages in evaluating new Hepatitis B and C vaccines, and treatments for malaria, again because of the similarity in their response to these antigens to humans.〔A unique biomedical resource at risk. ''Nature (journal)'' 437, 30-32 (1 September 2005) | ;〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Great Ape Project」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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