Chimpanzee Voices: A Stranger In A Culture of Chimpanzees

A decade of experience with apes in captivity at a Primate Research Center led to this remarkable book, which is equally memoir, analysis and critique of our dealings with others - human and not. Dr. Struthers’ fictional work is based in science, but her book is equally a meditation on the ethics of biomedical research and a moving account of some of the subjects of that research. She confronts not only the rationale for subjecting our very near relatives to terrible diseases and lives in prison, but her own relationship with those processes. Many authors have addressed the ethics of using chimpanzees in research but few have provided an insider perspective of what the ethical complexities of such research might embody on a daily basis. This work offers a rare glimpse into the actual personhood of individual chimpanzees and their relationships with their human captors. This is a startlingly honest and deeply moving book. One reviewer writes; "As a lifelong English professor, I’ve not read a great deal of science. When I read this book, that mattered not at all. It made me laugh, made me cry, and not only made me think about questions I hadn’t considered, it helped me think about them clearly."