Like Dracula it can’t really die, as it is culturally needed.* So it just keeps rising from the grave. Evidence is irrelevant.
In the context of giving apes human rights instead of protection, we read:
We share about 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees and it has been argued this makes ape experimenters 99% as bad as the Nazis. It has also been argued that the medical benefits obtained from experiments on chimpanzees have been minimal. The chances are that the advancement of medical research would suffer little if the apes were given new rights that protected them from these experimental procedures.
Most funding for chimp lab research in the United States was to end immediately in 2011, and the biggest problem is what to do with the chimps. The net effect, if not the intention, of giving apes rights they don’t understand and cannot use on their own will be to degrade civil liberties for humans. Just what civil liberties mean will be confused and confusing.
The above link from the The Telegraph is a remarkably stupid article, in a field with many close contenders.
For example, author Desmond Morris, who worked with a chimp, recounts:
When he was with us, the complexity of his brain never ceased to amaze me. There was one occasion when he caught a cold and could not appear on television. There were so many complaints from his fans that we obtained another small chimp to act as a stand-in. When Congo had recovered from his cold we decided to have both of them together on the next show. My assistant was standing by, holding one in each arm. Congo had been very friendly towards the new chimp, and we anticipated no trouble. Indeed, when I announced that Congo was about to appear, he leaned over towards the other little ape to kiss him. The newcomer protruded his lips for a friendly contact, whereupon Congo bit him hard and drew blood. The injured chimp started screaming and had to be rushed out of the room, leaving Congo as the sole star of the show. What is extraordinary about this incident is the timing of it. Congo waited until the crucial moment to dispose of his rival.
Aw, Morris, get out more.
I (O’Leary for News) have seen domestic kitties do exactly the same thing, and no one makes great claims for their intelligence, just their cunning in expressing spite.
(Yes, I have read Morris’s book about cats and found it superficial. Its redeeming feature is that they are, after all, only cats. His books on more intelligent creatures are more superficial.)
* Here is another dramatic example of the social use of off base 99% claims to facilitate nonsense. (Actual similarity figures are, obviously, much lower. See, for example, Genomics scientist Jeffrey Tompkins takes issue with BioLogos’ we are 98% chimpanzee claim, and Epigenetic differences between humans and chimps (vs. 98% similarity claims))
See also: Barry Arrington asks, “Here’s an interesting question. Would that same liberal judge extend habeas corpus rights to an eight pound human baby about to be chopped into pieces by an abortionist for the crime of not yet being born?” My answer is, of course, not:
Any horror or injustice that can legally be perpetrated on any human being advances progressive causes. So it is an advantage to the progressive that unborn children can legally be killed by dismemberment, or if born alive by some other method, left to die in the soiled utility closet. Just as it is an advantage if the law equates chimps and humans.
Does anyone remember Baby Doe of Bloomington, Indiana, legally starved to death in a hospital at the behest of his parents, because he had Down syndrome? (No, I thought not.)
In the progressive’s ideal world, the chimp is has civil rights and the human doesn’t. And that, folks, is the general direction, fast forward.
Wasn’t the current U.S. president the only legislator in the Illinois senate who the refused to endorse protection for children born alive from abortions.** Yet he was wildly popular (including among Christians who stressed that they were “really” pro life anyway). And Americans elected him twice as their head of state.
But civil liberties would appear to be a dying concept anyway. And if they are understood as being shared with non-rational beings, the concept will die faster.
** The situation is worse in Canada.
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