Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
Am J Primatol. 2010 Sep;72(9):779-84. doi: 10.1002/ajp.20840.
Our primate kin are routinely displaced from their habitats, hunted for meat, captured for trade, housed in zoos, made to perform for our entertainment, and used as subjects in biomedical testing. They are also the subjects of research inquiries by field primatologists. In this article, we place primate field studies on a continuum of human and alloprimate relationships as a heuristic device to explore the unifying ethical implications of such inter-relationships, as well as address specific ethical challenges arising from common research protocols "in the field" (e.g. risks associated with habituation, disease transmission, invasive collection of biological samples, etc.). Additionally, we question the widespread deployment of conservation- and/or local economic development-based justifications for field-based primatological pursuits. Informed by decades of combined fieldwork experience in Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we demonstrate the process by which the adherence to a particular ethical calculus can lead to unregulated and ethically problematic research agendas. In conclusion, we offer several suggestions to consider in the establishment of a formalized code of ethics for field primatology.
我们的灵长类近亲经常被迫离开栖息地，被猎杀取肉，被捕猎用于交易，被关在动物园里，被迫为我们的娱乐表演，被用作生物医学测试的对象。它们也是野外灵长类动物学家研究调查的对象。在本文中，我们将灵长类野外研究置于人类和其他灵长类动物关系的连续体上，作为一种启发式工具，以探索这种相互关系的统一伦理含义，并解决常见的野外研究方案中出现的具体伦理挑战（例如，习惯化、疾病传播、侵入性生物样本采集等相关风险）。此外，我们质疑广泛采用基于保护和/或当地经济发展的理由来为基于野外的灵长类研究辩护。我们结合在印度尼西亚和刚果民主共和国几十年的联合野外工作经验，展示了坚持特定伦理计算方法可能导致无管制和存在伦理问题的研究议程的过程。总之，我们提出了一些建议，以供考虑为野外灵长类学制定正式的道德规范。
