In the majority of Vet Schools in the world, the theme “great primates” is limited to a few hours of study during a semester. If we ask any veterinarian, in any place, if he feels capable of doing any operation in a chimpanzee, the answer is going to be negative. He did not study a chimpanzee body enough to conduct a surgery. A human physician dedicates years of his life to study only one species – the Homo Sapiens – considering its complexity. Great primates are practically humans, are anthropoids, their anatomy and physiology 99% similar to humans. Therefore, any human physician can treat their health, just like they were treating their equal human.

This debate must be done openly, since we consider that is part of the basic rights of great primates in our society to have the right for health care, with all its breakthroughs and knowledge. In fact, at GAP Sanctuary in Sorocaba we have two vets (because we host other animals) and a net of human physicians, who are called when it is necessary to go deeper in the knowledge about diseases and procedures, since the vets did not have access to this kind of information.

Veterinarian Medicine in extremely complex, much more than Human Medicine, because the vet has to work with thousands of species that have different biology, anatomy and physiology. It is impossible to dominate all of them and as result there is a tendency of specialization in the area.

It is time to face once for all this problem and provide an adequate solution. First of all, an integrated work of vets and physicians is necessary, the way we and zoos and sanctuaries in other countries already practice. So, in the future, human physicians could fully assume the treatment of all anthropoids.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International