Update: No Personhood for Chimps Yet

sciencehabit writes: In a decision that effectively recognizes chimpanzees as legal persons for the first time, a New York judge [Monday] granted a pair of Stony Brook University lab animals the right to have their day in court. The ruling marks the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been covered by a writ of habeus corpus, which typically allows human prisoners to challenge their detention. The judicial action could force the university, which is believed to be holding the chimps, to release the primates, and could sway additional judges to do the same with other research animals. Update: 04/21 21:39 GMT by S : Science has updated their article with news that the court has released an amended order (PDF) with the words "writ of habeas corpus" removed, no longer implying that chimps have legal personhood. The order still allows the litigation to go forward, but we'll have to wait for resolution.

Comments

Habeus Corpus

[Drethon]

"The ruling marks the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been covered by a writ of habeus corpus, which typically allows human prisoners to challenge their detention." While I question some of the treatment of research animals, what exactly did the chimps ask of the court?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Ol Olsoc]

While I question some of the treatment of research animals, what exactly did the chimps ask of the court?

They want people to stop saying we are related to them.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Their representatives made any requests, obviously. The chimps are detained and so couldn't make it to court.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Drethon]

Fine, what did the chimps ask their representatives?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm certain there is plenty of legal precedent regarding the right to sue on behalf of others who are unable to speak for themselves. In fact, sometimes there are multiple cases trying to figure out exactly what the individual would want.

WWTSW (What Would Terri Schiavo Want)

Re: Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the same thing as the mentally retarded human who ended up in court did. But I think both ended up in cages with drugs in their blood.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

While I question some of the treatment of research animals, what exactly did the chimps ask of the court?

They want people to stop saying we are related to them.

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle.... Really? That's it?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Richard_at_work]

The Judge did nothing of the sort, the chimps were the ones named in the case by the animal rights activists, the Judge had to direct any motion at the chimps for the owners of the chimps to respond - and thats what he did here. He asked the owners to respond, via the Habeus Corpus motion - he had no other recourse.

The activists are claiming something that didn't happen.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Drethon]

Agreed but even with humans when we have a better understand of what they would want, we still end up with situations where a person's last request conflict with what the legal guardian demands. Sounds even more convoluted when we try to figure out what chimps want.

I'm not saying they don't deserve representation but that representation is a very confusing situation.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, OK. For a moment there I was thinking this was an excerpt from Jerry was a man by Heinlein. Next thing was the chimp was going to say "cigret?"

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah no fucking kidding. Anyone who is unwilling or unable to speak should automatically be denied consideration.

Re: Habeus Corpus

[jythie]

*nod* that is the legal strategy they are following, treating chimps as 'people' but not people with the ability to exersize their legal rights, so like children or mentally impaired individuals.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[AmiMoJo]

Actually it's the headline that makes that claim, not the activists. They are being quite careful to clearly state the legal position and their reasons for doing it.

The problem is US law is pretty weak on animal rights in general, and doesn't have clear mechanisms for dealing with situations like this. So, they tried something unorthodox, and it has at least got them a hearing.

That's why it is important, even if you don't agree with their position that the university should not keep the chimps captive in the way it does. It is creating a legal framework for deciding these things, because the law currently lacks one.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no expert, but I'm guessing they have legal representation rather than going it pro se.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Texmaize]

I am so tired of the knee jerk leftish bias that has infected the slashdot community moding up the most trivial of comments ---because it espouses some ill-defended agenda.

The status of the prisoners at Guantanamo bay IS a matter for serious debate. They are not being held for tax evasion, parking violations, or theft. So, please have the intellectual honesty to stop treating them in the same category as those in the local penitentiary. Being irregular troops (not using uniform or operating under the flag of a nation) , they are not strictly covered under the Geneva conventions. The honest truth is that they sit somewhere in-between.

Troops that are captured on the battle field do not receive a trial. They never have. It is part of war. Are these POWs? They problem then becomes, how do you release them if the war never ends? Historically, most wars do end, so the problem takes care of itself. This is an area of law and philosophy that needs to be worked out. This is done best not by twisting existing laws to comport to your own (often arbitrary) personal beliefs. It is done through a society large discussion about values and beliefs and logistics. None of that is going on in the above post.

Furthermore, the gaping whole in the "logic" of the original post needs to be pointed out. By most standards, the conditions in Guantanamo are far from horrible. I know the average brain-addles leftist has some perverse fantasy of a stark Gulag where prisoners are routinely shot for looking the wrong way. Reality is far from it. Most reports indicate that conditions are better than most federal prisons. There is ample opportunity for communal activity and even access to the internet. There is a soccer pitch where games are often held. Gulag my ass.Don't believe me, challenge yourself with a quick google search, and you find articles such as this.

In fact, the most serious human rights abused, from Amnesty International stem from the fact that prisoners are being held in the first place (silly), or more seriously, from the fact that there status is not well worked out, as discussed above. While I would certainly agree with most of slashdot that the current status is unacceptable and not a terribly good solution. I wish the Bush era drama-queens could come down to earth and help solve the problem in a sane, realistic manner, instead of just bashing authority figures for the sake of looking cool.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

That's attorney-client privilege. Are you suggesting that there should be a test of legal personhood that includes the ability to make cogent communication with the court or legal representative? How would you apply this to people in comas, infants, or children with developmental disabilities?

Re: Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, don't bring my ex-wife into this when she can't defend herself!

Re:Habeus Corpus

[dreamchaser]

Fine, what did the chimps ask their representatives?

"I can haz bannanaz plz?"

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Drethon]

And we've made certain the representatives are experts on what makes chimps happy?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Gitmo is in Cuba. Habeas corpus rights are well-respected WITHIN the 50 United States.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[David_Hart]

The Judge did nothing of the sort, the chimps were the ones named in the case by the animal rights activists, the Judge had to direct any motion at the chimps for the owners of the chimps to respond - and thats what he did here. He asked the owners to respond, via the Habeus Corpus motion - he had no other recourse.

The activists are claiming something that didn't happen.

Exactly. My understanding is that all the Judge did was allow a hearing to get more information from both sides. It confers no legal standing.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't even have this right for humans (sitting in Gitmo ) in this country...

The humans sitting in Gitmo aren't in this country. That's kind of the point of Gitmo.

Re: Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Or corporations? So things that aren't people can be people, but not, like, really PEOPLE, people.

Except corporations. That's just insane.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

In Spain they gave citizenship to all great apes, or so I have heard.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[tlambert]

We don't even have this right for humans (sitting in Gitmo ) in this country, but they considering to grant monkeys this right? Unbelievable.

Gitmo is not *in this country*.

The entire *point* of Gitmo (Guantanamo Bay detention camp) is its extraterritoriality, and the fact that non-U.S. citizen detainees there are thus not afforded constitutional protections. That's *precisely* why Gitmo exists, and it's *precisely* why no president has, or will, honor their campaign promises to close the thing. It's too damn useful. Obama could close it tomorrow, if he wanted to, by fiat, by issuing an executive order. He is commander in chief of the armed forces, which is who runs the place. He won't: it's too damn useful.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[sycodon]

The right to fling poo, no doubt.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Terri Schiavo wouldn't want anything, because all she had left was a thin rind of brain. She was as human as a placenta.

Re: Habeus Corpus

[jythie]

Corporations is another interesting example. Before the recent '1st amendment' expansion the personhood was a fairly reasonable limited designation. Corporations could hold property, have contracts signed in their name, etc. Kinda weird inverse of what is going on here.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

They want people to stop saying we are related to them.

I don't blame them. We're like the violent, scheming drug addict that hangs out in the family tree. Chimps have their violent tendencies, but they haven't been known for the level of collateral damage we inflict.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Gitmo! Yes, that is the proper comparison! Because I was thinking that Congress and the courts had eliminated the great writ for all human prisoners and made sure that corporations could not go to prison.

Re: Habeus Corpus

[Sarius64]

Hmm, what other segment of humanity that is incapable of communicating are treated as though they are not human?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[painandgreed]

"The ruling marks the first time in U.S. history that an animal has been covered by a writ of habeus corpus, which typically allows human prisoners to challenge their detention." While I question some of the treatment of research animals, what exactly did the chimps ask of the court?

Careful what you ask for. I knew some of the people involved with an old program at OU teaching chimps sign language. They eventually had the vocabularies of human 3 year olds. The program was eventually cancelled and the chimps split up to other research facilities. I've heard the stories from the grad students involved about how they would go visit those chimps, and they would sign "I'm in pain. I want to go home." while in the cages.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Sarius64]

So, one good hit with the back in your mouth and your fingers and you have no legal rights.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[meerling]

Only because they don't know how to build nuclear weapons.
Yet... ;)

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Sarius64]

If your body is your own in this society, why can we not take the intoxicants we wish without consequence? Or doctors requiring men getting vasectomies to acquire their wife's consent? Or until your need soldiers? Or until you need taxpayers?

Re: Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

You married a child? You sick bastard!

Re:Habeus Corpus

[davester666]

You really should have a long discussion with your sibling about "inappropriate touching"

Re: Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Brain damaged people aren't people. Same with spazzes and mongoloids and window lickers and other retard shit. Just off them already and be done with it. Fuck, did you know how those pieces of shit piss themselves every given 10 minutes?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually a writ of Habeas Corpus is / was generally intended to be filed by someone other than the prisoner / defendant, such as family and friends. It was originally meant to stop the government from "disappearing" people. Literally meaning "show us the body", it means what it says, and is an order to produce the person whether alive or dead.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[iris-n]

It is creating a legal framework for deciding these things, because the law currently lacks one.

And why is that a good thing? More lawyers, regulations, court cases? I don't think creating rules is something good in itself, on the contrary.

But anyway, don't you think parliament is the proper place to debate such a deep question? I feel that a judge really shouldn't have the power to decide whether chimps deserve to be treated as humans.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[david_thornley]

Animals don't have responsibilities, so why should they have rights? We do have laws against mistreating animals. These aren't perfect or perfectly enforced, but what would be changed by "animal rights" laws?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[david_thornley]

AFAICT, that argument is nonsense. The US Federal government gets its power from the Constitution. If the Constitution does not apply to a situation, the Feds can't do anything about it. (I admit that there have been some pretty awful stretches of Constitutional language.) If the US Constitution doesn't apply in Gitmo, the US cannot operate it.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[tlambert]

Incorrect.

Military bases are not subject to normal law, they are operated under the UCMJ. The detention camp is a military prison located on the grounds of a U.S. Naval base, which was established as a coaling and naval station under the Cuban-American treaty of 1903. The U.S. leases it from Cuba for $4,085/year, and has since 1934 (prior to that, back to 1903, it was $2,000/year).

In this case, the Federal government derives its authority from treaty, not from the Constitution.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

A quick search resulted in an NPR story about Nim Chimpsky who spent some time at OU (Oklahoma) but although he mimicked some signs it is not believed he really learned the language.

They did say that after he was moved from his surrogate human family and joined other chimps that he understood humans much better than his fellow chimps but I didn't see anything about him saying he was in pain or wanted to go home.

Are you thinking of another chimp experiment at OU? Nim was sold to another research lab in 1981 when funding ran out for him at OU.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

I want monkeys who can't even spell habeas corpus to be recognized as chimps.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[painandgreed]

It was 20+ years ago, but there were other chimps including Washoe, or at least I remember hearing the name. Not sure if it was Fouts I listened to, but here's his web page,Washoe's move to OK. There were more chimps involved and more grad students. I forget which one I heard stories from but he ran a shop on campus corner which had a picture of a bird drawn by one of the chimps.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[painandgreed]

Nim was one of the chimps I heard about, I think. I specifically remember a story about smoking marijuana. The actual phrase was "stone smoke". The story went that guy telling the story was working on a grad paper on w weekend the chimp was living with him, and the chimp came in and was signing something like "make stone smoke" but he had to finish the paper so he kept telling him later. After a while he realized he hadn't see the chimp in a bit so he went looking and found the chimp who had not only found his stash, but was about halfway through rolling a decent looking joint.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a source for this?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[david_thornley]

Military bases are under the UCMJ on US soil, also. If a soldier does something illegal, the Army doesn't call in the local police force.

All Federal authority derives from the Constitution. The existence of that particular military base is due to treaty.

Re: Habeus Corpus

[timesuredoesfly]

Wouldn't it be easier to go backwards to primates and get all primates a "special consideration" for simply being so closely related to us other then grant a non-human personhood?

Re:Habeus Corpus

[denzacar]

Animals don't have responsibilities, so why should they have rights?

Close.
Animals are incapable of being held responsible.

Much like children or mentally challenged (i.e. retarded) humans who are not in control of their faculties or incapable of understanding or holding on to agreements, rules and contracts, including but not limited to social contracts.

A human child is literally millions of years ahead of a chimp in mental development, but no one with any sense would dream of treating a child as an adult, capable of agreeing to or signing contracts.
Including those that the society one is born into has established for that child centuries and millennia ago.
Do not steal, do not kill, do not attack other people, don't light fires on the carpet...

Accepting those preestablished societal RULES (i.e. responsibilities) is the basis of having RIGHTS - or the society puts you in a cage.
Or, if you are REALLY incapable of following rules, keep hurting others and live in a place which practices a death penalty - society kills you to protect others from you.

And while you CAN explain such abstract concepts as good and bad to children or retarded adults, and have them obey the rules based on those concepts, you can't do that with animals.

You start treating animals like humans, you better plan for mass killing of said animals.
Cause that's where it ends at, very quickly - as they CAN'T FOLLOW HUMAN RULES AND REGULATIONS.
They will continue to break the rules they can't even understand, you will continue to punish them for that, until you either end up killing them or you get them to try to kill you.
At which point someone will HAVE TO kill them.

Re:Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you. Animal research is vital, and every institution that wants to get published has to have guidelines on what is and isn't acceptable research. Unnecessary pain is always avoided, and nobody does vivisection any more - the fact that people used to is bad, certainly, but we have gotten a lot better since then. Nobody who enjoys torturing animals lasts long in science.

Ah, these activist judges!

[rmdingler]

Despite making poor judicial precedent, I see a great Disney movie blossoming out of this.

What's next? A judgement against the internet on behalf of cats everywhere?

Re:Ah, these activist judges!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ceiling cat is exercising his religious freedoms in refusing to make a wedding cake for two dogs. It was Adam and Fluffy, not Adam and Buffy!

Re:Ah, these activist judges!

[kaizendojo]

Despite making poor judicial precedent, I see a great Disney movie blossoming out of this.

What's next? A judgement against the internet on behalf of cats everywhere?

I can haz a cut of da profits?

Re:Ah, these activist judges!

[RivenAleem]

Just what are you going to do with the profits? Buy a boat?

Re:Ah, these activist judges!

[Drethon]

In cheezburgers?

... my apologies, I don't know what came over me.

Re:Ah, these activist judges!

[Qzukk]

Kitty!

Re:Ah, these activist judges!

[Anonymous Coward]

A Movie about Bees suing for stolen Honey.

Re:Ah, these activist judges!

[sycodon]

The Democrats will want to grant them suffrage.

Re:Ah, these activist judges!

[Eunuchswear]

Why not? Clowns like you get to vote.

Genius!

[Mashiki]

In other news, medical research slowly comes to a crashing halt in test phases. Millions of people die due to reactions which were not seen in simulations. Environmental moonbats everywhere cheer.

Re:Genius!

[sandytaru]

This only applies to chimps and doesn't affect the real workhorses of the lab, like rats and rhesus monkeys.

Re:Genius!

[Triklyn]

yet

Re:Genius!

[cdrudge]

Chimps today...rats and rhesus monkeys tomorrow!

Re:Genius!

[Kierthos]

Nonsense. We can always test new drugs on creatures that absolutely no one cares about.

Lawyers.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Millions of people die due to reactions which were not seen in simulations.

While I'm of course worried about the implications for our species (I've got kids), for me it is undeniable that such experiences brings a lot of moral discomfort (and obviously a lot of suffering to the lab animals).

If you consider yourself above the animals or think man can dispose of them as desired, well, I suspect anyone is entitled to his/her own opinions. That doesn't change my moral footing, of course. Even if you're angry now that I'm mentioning the issue of morality -- that too does not change my stance. I even do not recognize it as a legitimate anger. Sorry for that.

I think it is too much recognizing them as persons; but if that's the only way to recognize their right to some dignity, I guess it'll do for now. BTW, we're going for synthetic meat in some time. I guess this will raise mankind to a whole new level.

Re: Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

All the medical research will just move to China.

Re:Genius!

[jythie]

Nah, no worries there. Research will just shift to using a greater number of poor people in the 3rd world. Benefits are best when you can offload the costs onto populations of people elsewhere.

Re:Genius!

[AmiMoJo]

If millions of people die because of inadequate testing then that's the fault of the people who tested the drug. There are plenty of humans who would volunteer for tests with full knowledge and understanding of the risks. There are plenty of animals that don't suffer the same was a chimps to, such as mice, that can be used for a lot of the tests.

The argument is that while chimps are convenient test subjects, there are alternatives. More expensive alternatives, but we should at least think about what price we are willing to put on the suffering of highly developed animals.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the politicians.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the contrary is far more common, we have different metabolism than that of animals (remarkably, we are very diferent from rats and mice). Animal testing is a tradition and a profitable industry, not a necessity for medical research.

Re:Genius!

[HornWumpus]

Animal rights activists.

Re:Genius!

[HornWumpus]

True; they should do their testing in jurisdictions with sane laws. Sounds like NY state is out.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of people die due to reactions which were not seen in simulations.

From stats I've read in articles this is already happening. Once a person is on 5 medications at once the medical industry cannot accurately predict side effects. I've also read that the primary reason for animal studies are for legal liability. You can't directly extrapolate the results of testing on rats or rabbits to human beings.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

So for Republicans: poor people

and for Democrats: Republicans.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know anything about apes? Their capabilities, their psychological states, their emotional states? Their cognitive or linguistics processes? Just because you, in your deep ignorance, think humans are super duper special and one-of-a-kind, doesn't mean that you have the slightest clue what you're talking about.

All of that is ignoring what others have said, that your doomy scenario isn't even realistic because of viable alternatives

Re:Genius!

[StikyPad]

we should at least think about what price we are willing to put on the suffering of highly developed animals.

We did. "Good drugs" seems to be the consensus.

Not every condition is life threatening, where humans would be willing to risk unknown side effects. And even if humans are willing to take that risk, there are bigger ethical concerns, like the potential for vulnerable people to be coerced into trials.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, medical research slowly comes to a crashing halt in test phases. Millions of people die due to reactions which were not seen in simulations. Environmental moonbats everywhere cheer.

New York didn't exactly specialize in healthcare research anyway - their specialty is more in the realm of usury and generalized liberal corruption.

Re:Genius!

[DerekLyons]

If millions of people die because of inadequate testing then that's the fault of the people who tested the drug. There are plenty of humans who would volunteer for tests with full knowledge and understanding of the risks.

On your planet maybe. But here on Earth we don't allow human testing in the early phases of drug development. And even if they did allow human testing, the volunteers can't possibly have full knowledge and understanding of the risks - because at that stage of the game, that knowledge doesn't exist. That's why we test on animals in the first place.
 

There are plenty of animals that don't suffer the same was a chimps to, such as mice, that can be used for a lot of the tests.

Where they can be, they already are. Primates are among the expensive and difficult lab animals to maintain, and thus are only used where no other reasonable alternative exists. (Or, again, the world you describe is a very different one from Earth.)

Re:Genius!

[Anubis IV]

While I may not count myself on your side in this debate, I do think that your side has a number of decent arguments going for it. It's a shame that you've failed to provide any of them here.

A) You've lumped everyone who disagrees with you into the "we're superior creatures and can dispose of animals as we desire" crowd. That's a gross oversimplification of the alternative views to your own.

B) Claiming you have a moral footing is very different from actually having one. There are an abundance of well-established moral foundations on which you might have established your footing, but you didn't mention a single one. Instead, what you did provide was simply, "I'll believe what I want to believe and you can't convince me otherwise". Moreover, the moral discomfort you claim is undeniable would be denied by many here.

C) You're suggesting, without providing a basis for your assertion, that we're not treating the animals with enough dignity already, despite the fact that we have ethics boards in place to review research and ensure that animals are not being harmed unnecessarily, abused, or mistreated. Researchers are held to the highest standards and don't undertake their actions lightly. The only assumption we can make from what you've said is that you believe their use in research to be contrary to maintaining their dignity, suggesting that they are due a level of dignity that is typically reserved for persons.

D) Despite that, you acknowledge that they are not entitled to personhood. If non-persons are entitled to the dignity of personhood, then where do we stop? Are rhesus monkeys due the dignity of personhood? Rats? Leeches? Plants? Tree bark? Dirt? Water? Not only have you failed to establish a moral footing for your beliefs, you've actually established your beliefs on the side of a slippery slope.

Again, I do think that there's a case to be made for why we shouldn't use animals in lab tests, but saying that we're entitled to our opinions and that it won't change your unexplained "moral footing" is not the way to go about making your case.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now consider that your same argument could be used to complain about the tragedy that is the halting of nazi experimentation on humans. Just saying... the only difference is that our species-ism claims that a human life is worth more than that of another animal. The end doesn't always justify the means.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. So you actually believe that animal experiments predict human outcomes? Citation, please?

Which animal do you take as the model for humans with which drug? How is it that it's only AFTER doing the human experiments - sorry - 'clinical trials' - that we discover which species of animal was the most similar to humans - for that specific drug?

You test drug X on rats and it kills them instantly.
You test drug X on mice and it has no effect.
You test drug X on rabbits and it cures them of the disease.

What do you do? Which species of animal represents the human outcome?

You don't know until AFTER you have done EXPERIMENTS on humans (AKA 'clinical trials'), thus the animal experiments were completely useless.

That wasn't difficult, was it?

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, medical research slowly comes to a crashing halt in test phases. Millions of people die due to reactions which were not seen in simulations. Environmental moonbats everywhere cheer.

Chimps aren't used much in medical research. Mice are used far more often, especially for pharmaceuticals. I know. I worked for a drug discovery startup for five years. Clinical trials go from lab, to mice, to humans, typically over a period of years. There are a ridiculously few situations where a chimp would be needed, and those get less likely every year. Now, the cosmetics and personal hygiene industry, that's another story and is much more unpalatable when it comes to the use of chimps.

Re:Genius!

[ckatko]

Well, stop being such a dick then and volunteer your body for research.

Re:Genius!

[meerling]

Sure you could, but as their biology has a greater dissimilarity to human those results are fairly worthless for many things. So why do you want to do that again?

Re:Genius!

[CrimsonAvenger]

There are plenty of humans who would volunteer for tests with full knowledge and understanding of the risks.

Should I take it that YOU are part of that "plenty of humans who would volunteer"?

And if not, why not?

Re:Genius!

[Rich0]

There are plenty of animals that don't suffer the same was a chimps to, such as mice, that can be used for a lot of the tests.

The only reason you'd test in a chimp in the first place is because other animals are inadequate. They're expensive, and far more heavily regulated.

Suppose you're testing a medication that could cause cognitive impairment, or which otherwise targets the brain. Just what animal are you going to test it on? The only animals that have brains remotely similar to humans are all animals that have the same ethical issues as chimps, because they ARE so similar to humans.

Drugs aren't tested on higher primates until they're as sure as they can be that they're safe. At that point, it is either test on non-human primates, or just skip that and go straight to humans. How is the latter more ethical than the former?

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, medical research in the United States slowly comes to a crashing halt in test phases. Millions of people die due to reactions which were not seen in simulations. Environmental moonbats everywhere cheer.

FTFY.

Re:Genius!

[Rich0]

Not every condition is life threatening, where humans would be willing to risk unknown side effects. And even if humans are willing to take that risk, there are bigger ethical concerns, like the potential for vulnerable people to be coerced into trials.

The other risk is that nobody would be willing to volunteer for trials, and thus the drug doesn't get researched. That means that a potential treatment doesn't get developed. Even if all the treatment is supposed to do is cure a headache, at some point a certain number of headaches adds up to a single cancer treatment in the whole quality-adjusted years-of-life thing.

Re: Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

First they came for the chimpanzees, and I said nothing....

Lol. Really turns that meme on its head.

Re:Genius!

[hey!]

Except that begging the question, isn't it? If chimps should be considered persons, then we're no more entitled to use them as non-consenting research subjects than we're entitled to use humans that way. In fact why not use non-consenting humans? Surely it would benefit the human race as a whole to sacrifice individual humans as research subjects, especially in the kind of numbers we use chimps for. A few thousand human is not that many when weighed against the seven billion on the plant.

Most of us would agree that experimenting on humans without informed consent is wrong no matter what the collective benefit, so there must be something entailed in being a human which makes that unacceptable. And it's perfectly reasonable to ask whether some other animals have that very same thing. This is a philosophical question. If persons have rights, then (a) those rights have to be entailed in our definition of "person" and (b) the criteria for that definition have to be applied impartially, not according to our preconceptions. It shouldn't matter if the subject is a member of an "inferior race", an artificial intelligence, an extraterrestrial visitor, or a familiar animal we simply haven't considered fully yet.

This is a little bit like math. Most people take the statement "1 + 1 = 2" as self-evident; but to a mathematician it's anything but. In day to day life we take human rights as self-evident -- we in fact "hold these truths to be self evident". But to an ethicist what we call "human rights" have to come from something more fundamental. If an ethicist simply assumes that human beings have a right to life and liberty, then he has to accept that the contrary assumption is equally valid. If the contrary assumption is not equally valid, then there must be some more fundamental principles by which we're evaluating these propositions.

So to show that chimps do not have a right to life and liberty, we have to define a category of beings that have such rights in such a way that all humans are members of that category, but no chimps are. I must confess this is beyond me as a philosophical layman just as algebraic fields are to mathematical laymen. I just go through life taking "1 + 1 = 2" and "humans have rights" for granted, and it works for me. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be people out there studying abstract algebra or ethics, or that these fields have no important practical applications.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

> A) You've lumped everyone

Not, I said "If you consider yourself... (superior)"; that implies there are others who don't consider themselves as such. Hence, no generalization on my part.

> B) Claiming you have a moral footing is very different from actually having one.

I'm not saying I'm a person practicing high morals -- I might even be a crook. But I choose on what moral basis I will stand out of my free will. In the present case, I am merely profiting from the good winds of a good decision by a judge, I myself having contributed nothing to that. So, yes, if I claim a believe this is fair -- unless I have a hidden agenda -- that pretty much qualifies me for it -- for the the same reason one who believes to be superior is free to do so. That others feel no such discomfort was my assumption from the start, you're repeating what I've said; what I said is I don't care -- that means I hope these "superior" guys will one day be reduced to an insignificant theory as mankind evolves.

> C) You're suggesting, without providing a basis for your assertion, that we're not treating the animals with enough dignity already, despite the fact that we have ethics boards

Oh, come on. You can do better. A lot better. Just one thing: are there chimps on these Ethics boards? These animals are inept for decisions, so we need a lawyer to defend them. Preferably a vegetarian...

> "The only assumption we can make from what you've said is that you believe their use in research to be contrary to maintaining their dignity, suggesting that they are due a level of dignity that is typically reserved for persons."

Yep, when you consider persons as mere humans. But we have extra sources of dignity -- like contribution to society, acts of heroism, etc. -- that animals usually don't have. I say usually because I've seen earlier this month (through TV) a dog save the life of its owner. You can bet that animal has grown in dignity and esteem for its owner.

> D) Despite that, you acknowledge that they are not entitled to personhood. If non-persons are entitled to the dignity of personhood, then where do we stop? Are rhesus monkeys due the dignity of personhood? Rats? Leeches? Plants? Tree bark? Dirt? Water?

We should respect water. We do a lot of things to make sure it cannot be drank anymore if such things can bring money. That said, animals do have dignity; if we need to err, better by excess than by lack of respect.

> but saying that we're entitled to our opinions and that it won't change your unexplained "moral footing" is not the way to go about making your case.

My "case" is just starting. Just like evolution is unstoppable, so is the improvement of our relationship with Nature. We cannot keep doing what we do until we live in desert with rocks, sand and a couple of remaining species. Because we're smarter, we have responsibilities.

We actually should do the opposite and change Earth to restore the places we destroyed.

Re:Genius!

[IgnitusBoyone]

You forgot to sign this Summer Glau

https://xkcd.com/406/

Re:Genius!

[Wycliffe]

There are plenty of animals that don't suffer the same was a chimps to, such as mice, that can be used for a lot of the tests.

The argument is that while chimps are convenient test subjects, there are alternatives. More expensive alternatives, but we should at least think about what price we are willing to put on the suffering of highly developed animals.

My guess is that there are very few drugs tested on chimps that aren't first tested on mice. They aren't using chimps because it is cheaper.
Chimps are A LOT more expensive to do testing on than mice. Not to mention if there is a adverse reaction and the chimp dies then you have
the significant cost of both time and money getting a new chimp where mice cost next to nothing and are easy to obtain. I doubt you can
find me a single drug that was tested on chimps before it was tested on mice. Chimps are generally the last leg before it goes to human trial.
Yes, we might be able to skip that last leg but if the chimp is treated well, I think it's better to test on a chimp than on someone's 6 year old kid.
The other option of course is the prey on the poor and offer money for people to volunteer as test dummies. I think doing final testing on chimps
who are well cared for is the best option we have.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense. We can always test new drugs on creatures that absolutely no one cares about.

Lawyers.

I feel like this should have been flagged as Insightful...

Re:Genius!

[Livius]

Two little facts:

1. Other lawyers care about them. (Okay, not care, but recognize their self-interest.)

2. Judges are lawyers.

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, felt the same. The guy needs some tutoring regarding trolling people.

But replying anyway enabled me to strengthen "my case", whatever that may be. :-|

Re:Genius!

[Mashiki]

Since I'm already a organ and tissue donor on death, and have been in at count 20 different trial phases for migraine medications, I think I've got that covered already. How about you?

Re:Genius!

[goose-incarnated]

If millions of people die because of inadequate testing then that's the fault of the people who tested the drug. There are plenty of humans who would volunteer for tests with full knowledge and understanding of the risks.

That's a slippery slope indeed - you've repeatedly made the claim that a full 50%+ of the population is indoctrinated by society to view themselves as inferior in some respect. Why do you now think that a certain segment of the population *can't* be indoctrinated into self-sacrifice?

Re:Genius!

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of animal experiments do predict human outcomes. They're highly valuable for establishing what doses to use in clinical trials, for one. And if your drug kills rats instantly - and you weren't expecting that - then you damn well better understand why that is, otherwise you will not go to clinical trials. However, your scenario is really unlikely, and I'm not aware of any drug where that has happened.

And yes, clinical trials are experiments on humans. Experiments that are carefully controlled and monitored so that the likelihood of harm to people is minimized, and as much good data as possible are collected. If you think that animal experiments are completely useless, I'd have to say you really haven't thought this through, have little to no actual biological training, and think that you know better than literally everyone in the biomedical research field, which is pretty fucking arrogant of you.

Re:Genius!

[LordWabbit2]

Telemarketers.

If money can commit crimes

[Anonymous Coward]

Well is it anymore of a joke than when the FBI seizes money, in a case it files where the defendant is the money (cash)?
aka forced asset seizure.

So will the court now treat tigers as murderers when they kill and eat chickens?
What about when one monkey kills and eats a smaller monkey, will that then be murder?

Seems he wants to test this in court, but it should be kicked out.

Re:If money can commit crimes

[morgauxo]

I'm not sure how one monkey eating another might be affected by a ruling about chimps. It does beg the question about one chimp eating another though!

Re:If money can commit crimes

[Cpt_Kirks]

I'm not sure how one monkey eating another might be affected by a ruling about chimps. It does beg the question about one chimp eating another though!

Damn, but /. has become eat up with Parvorder Nazis.

Re:If money can commit crimes

[morgauxo]

Well.. I don't know about the rest of Slashdot but whenever I hear chimps being referred to as monkeys I picture some young earth creationist going around saying something like "my grandmother wasn't no damn monkey".

Do they have any real rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the magna carta apply to them? Or do they just have the right to be lab rats, so to speak?
 

Re:Do they have any real rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

New York isn't currently a part of Great Britain, so they are safe from the Magna Carta for now.

I am wondering what these people, that seem to want the power of attorney over all chimps and apes, will do with it. Do they want to release these animals from zoos? Are they going to go after other intelligent animals like dolphins? Will they try to go after creatures without a nervous system like butterflies, or is that beyond what they consider "person-hood"?

Have these animals pay taxes (at least sales tax) for the services that they are using, then they can have representation. Are they even able to philosophically understand the concept of the status they were granted? Intelligent they may be, but these are concepts that have been evolving for thousands of years.

-------------

Okay, legal issues aside, what is the end game? Do they want to just open the doors and have them roam free, put them on some reserve, or do they want to release them to where ever they would naturally be found (and likely be killed in short order from the native ones)? I couldn't imagine what sorts of diseases and conditions that they may have, so if they get person-hood, it would likely be best to just put them down.

For the record, as some one that has taken more care of monkeys and apes and other animals than most of the world, at my time working at a zoo, I hate monkeys. Nasty, shit throwing, vile creatures. Apes are pretty good. They keep their shit in a single place and aren't nearly as aggressive. I do certainly stand against capturing wild apes to use in experiments, unless there is a considerable need. Don't care about monkeys.

I do more than likely most, recognize the usefulness of these creatures as stand-ins for human testing. Even if you consider lesser animals like rats, a good enough stand-in for humans, medication that is tested on humans doesn't work well enough across genders, as it is usually only males tested, so the effects on women are not understood as well.

Re:Do they have any real rights?

[HornWumpus]

Dolphins are about as smart as pigs. The extra grey matter is sonar processing. Functional MRI has removed the mystery.

You'd think a place like /. would have put away this long dis-proven assertion. The guy that first asserted dolphins were as smart as people was on acid at the time and failed to teach them human language or to learn dolphin. Didn't matter how much acid he did, they still didn't talk.

Good gig if you're into that kind of thing.

Re:Do they have any real rights?

[tnk1]

Actually, Magna Carta has some authority in our precedent based system by outlining certain principles. Of course most of it is non-applicable, even in the UK, because it is outdated and mostly repealed. There are only three articles of MC still in force as law in the UK.

MC wasn't really a human rights document, it was more of a good governance and rule of law document. As such, it would have little application to chimps at this point.

Re:Do they have any real rights?

[Sarius64]

Citation? Disclosure: I work with dolphins and they certainly seem smarter and more pleasant than you.

Re:Do they have any real rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

The extra grey matter is sonar processing.

This.

And before somebody brings up bats, let me remind them that the complex shape of a bat's ears and nose (for many species of bat, particulary insectivores rather than fruit bats) does a fair bit of mechanical pre-processing of the audio signal so that the brain doesn't have to. Also that the speed of sound in air is only about 1/5 that of the speed of sound in water, which also reduces the processing power needed.

Re:Do they have any real rights?

[Anonymous Coward]

As the commenter you've responded to, what would be the strata for abstract thought for what we know?

Humans
Apes
?? (elephants?)
Pigs / Dolphins
Raccoons / Bears / Lemurs / whales
Horses / Deer
various birds ...
creatures without a nervous system
Monkeys, because I hate them.

Honestly, except for monkeys, the last few strata should likely be combined as animals that can't recognize themselves in a mirror. That maybe the only real simple test that can be done. I don't think I've seen a bird that will not attack their own image thinking it is another bird.

Using the mirror test, wouldn't certain individuals that have crippled mental capacity possibly fail it, and would they then lose person-hood, would is the right to be considered a person by genus instead of by individual?

Unintended consequences

[JosKarith]

Next up, the chimps will be chased down and deported by Immigration as having no SSN they must be illegals...

Seriously guys, you don't want human status. Have you seen how we treat each other?

Re:Unintended consequences

[Enry]

Take a look at how we treat those we consider lower than us. Even if they're human.

Re:Unintended consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, they're covered by the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act and must pay a penalty for not having health insurance.

Re:Unintended consequences

[jythie]

Yeah. Having less than ideal limits on how we can treat each other is a lot better than the the 'no legal protections' setups certain people have lived under in our past (and in many places in the world, present).

Next up...

[msauve]

...the right to vote and carry arms. I, for one, welcome our new Planet-of-the-Apes overlords.

Re:Next up...

[g0bshiTe]

Chimps were doctors and scientists, gorillas were the ones that carried guns.

Re:Next up...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only in the first movie. Caesar carried a gun both in the original series, and in the new movies.

Re:Next up...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they like to fling poo so I predict a bright political future for them...

Re:Next up...

[moeinvt]

".the right to ... carry arms."

Good thinking. The judge needs to declare them "mentally defective"(by human standards) so that they get added to the NICS database and will be denied firearms purchase.

Re:Next up...

[Mister Transistor]

I think you mean NCIC.

The NCIS Database is just full of old people who are still surprised by the plot-lines which are exactly the same for each episode.

Re:Next up...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that there was any discrimination or speciesism, of course.

Re:Next up...

[david_thornley]

And from here we get to the right to arm bears.

Intelligence

[JBMcB]

Comparatively, chimps are fairly intelligent animals. Of course, compared to worms, chickens are fairly intelligent animals, and chickens are incredibly dumb.

Re:Intelligence

[ckatko]

Yeah, but when an animal is fairly intelligent compared to humans we afford rights to--including intentional morons and genetically mentally handicapped ones, the line becomes much more blurry.

That's the problem. When my dog/chimp/robot is capable of doing more in society than your aunt with dementia, hard but important ethical questions must be addressed. And it should be fairly obvious that society has put off addressing those important questions.

Re:Intelligence

[jjn1056]

I actually own chickens and can verify that some are smarter than others. However they are all pretty brutal; pray you never fall to the mercy of chickens.

Where have I seen this before?

[Anonymous Coward]

[Heinlein]

Jerry Was A Man

[/Heinlein]

Chimp interview ...

[gstoddart]

At the time of publishing, the chimps were unavailable for comment, though they could be observed engaging in their habitual poo-flinging and screeching.

The judge has indicated that if the chimps cannot conduct themselves with decorum in the court he will summarily find against them.

Rights campaigners have suggested the lawyers representing the chimps could be used in place of the chimps, thought there was some debate as to if the lawyers were themselves considered legal persons, instead of merely being slime bags.

I'm sorry, but while I do acknowledge that primates aren't simply dumb animals, do in fact have feelings and experience pain ... I'm still having a hard time understanding how they can be "legal persons" in anything but a highly contrived scenario of faulty logic which only PETA would believe.

Can they vote? Enter into contracts? Do they require legal guardians?

This seems like it will start to get into a slippery slope where there isn't so much a legal definition of "legal person", as some hand-wavy definition which will make the crunchy granola animal rights people happy, but which otherwise will be almost useless in law.

What next? Dogs? Cats? Gerbils? Rats? Crows?

WTF is the definition of legal person at this point?

Re:Chimp interview ...

[Anonymous Coward]

What next? Dogs? Cats? Gerbils? Rats? Crows?

Yep. Wisdom, logic and reasoning are just no fun. Goooooooooooo team!

Re:Chimp interview ...

[g0bshiTe]

This is the US legal system what does, wisdom, logic and reasoning have to do with it?

Re:Chimp interview ...

[gstoddart]

Yep. Wisdom, logic and reasoning are just no fun. Goooooooooooo team!

So can chimps now be arrested? Sued? Hold a job? Pay taxes? Get married? (Would it be ok if the chimps didn't do same sex marriage?) Hell, if they're legal persons, what's the age of consent for a chimp?

Either you define the rights and obligations which come from being a "legal person", or you are just making shit up as you go, and then you have a legal system based on nothing which can be interpreted.

Unless you clarify and codify a LOT of things as a result of this, what you have is a stupid decision which exists in a vacuum.

So if dogs suddenly became legal persons, would it be illegal to put stray dogs in the pound without a court hearing? Because, that's where we get with a habeus corpus ruling which applies to animals.

This is the end game for entities like PETA, where animals are legally recognized as "people" .. but PETA is full of people who wouldn't understand logic if it bit them in the ass, and opens a whole slew of problems which nobody has answers for.

Your honor, I submit that this cow, hereafter referred to as Bessie has not consented to be in a feed lot and would prefer to live in her natural environment. What's that? A modern cow has no natural environment because it only exists because we keep them?

Sorry, but this judge has either decided to open up a can of worms he hasn't even begun to understand, or he's an idiot who has been hoodwinked by a grandiose legal argument.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[silentcoder]

>WTF is the definition of legal person at this point?

Considering that legal personhood is granted to corporations (literally a piece of paper with an official stamp on it - that's what a "corporation" in fact consists of), with no material existence, and "his" decisions made by a bunch of other people who all own a bit of "him", the word has been meaningless for decades.
I don't really see this as causing any major problems - at least, relatively speaking. If this is opening a can of worms, then granting personhood to corporations was a bucket of snakes, I think that remains a higher priority concern.

If a completely abstract entity with no mind at all can be a person, why not an actual living being with a mind that - in IQ tests have gotten scores comparable to young human children (which makes them rather smarter than the average CEO mind you) ?

In the end though - I see more interesting things from this, our days as the only truly sentient beings are numbered - sooner or later there will be others, whether it's highly advanced AI or extra-terestrial life, the day will come when we have to consider what does or does not get human rights like freedom of movement, what we can or cannot legally enslave.
We may as well get some prescedents set and test cases happening, it will be valuable in future.

While we're at it, maybe it's high time we challenge the assertion that a completely abstract legal fiction belongs on that list, or else take it to it's logical extreme. If corporations are persons - then share-holding is slavery and should be banned.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[jythie]

WTF is the definition of legal person at this point?

Well, this is something we are constantly reexamining. Over the last century and a half we moved women, blacks, and children from the 'not person' to 'person' category, with children still holding restricted rights. As we learn more and more about brains, as a society we have to ask some rather difficult questions. Originally black people were not considered 'people' due to the belief their brains were more 'animal than man', which turned out to be BS. Today we are, bit by bit, discovering that quite a few animals are closer to us in awareness than we used to believe, often with more awareness than individual humans that are protected. Over the next century, the definition will probably continue to shift, though the final push, like so many cases of rights, will probably come from economic forces rather than ethical ones. As long as there is so much profit to be made, they will continue to be animals. When that fades away, people will magically decide that they were people all along and how horrible we were in the past for thinking otherwise.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[jythie]

Yep. Wisdom, logic and reasoning are just no fun. Goooooooooooo team!

So can chimps now be arrested? Sued? Hold a job? Pay taxes? Get married? (Would it be ok if the chimps didn't do same sex marriage?) Hell, if they're legal persons, what's the age of consent for a chimp?

Either you define the rights and obligations which come from being a "legal person", or you are just making shit up as you go, and then you have a legal system based on nothing which can be interpreted.

This is not really the case though. Our legal system has quite a bit in place already for handling those who are 'people' but do not have full rights and obligations. The biggest group would be children, who have a reduced set of rights and responsibilities, but still have personhood when it comes to legal protections and processes. This is also true for people with significant mental handicaps and people unable to communicate (such as being in a coma).

So we already have ample precedent for this type of legal status, and it already extends to humans who are less aware and intelligent than some animals, who are simply grandfathered in due to their parents having such rights.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[the_B0fh]

And what's the legal age of consent for a corporation? Have you ever seen a corporation get arrested, go to jail or be given the death penalty?

Re:Chimp interview ...

[lgw]

Considering that legal personhood is granted to corporations

Don't believe every political rant you read. Corporations are restricted by the same laws that restrict people. Would you rather they weren't? A tightly-held corporation is treated the same way as a partnership: as a group of people owning a business together.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[UncleGizmo]

Actually, it's cases like this that help define what constitutes rights and obligations for the plaintiff. To your example, corporations weren't automatically assumed to be people, but in the late 1800s cases were raised as to the validity of contracts held by corporations. The contracts were deemed valid, since the court ruled that people should not be deprived of their constitutional rights when they act collectively - therefore granting equal "rights" to corporations similar to individuals, in that narrowly defined context.

Corporations don't have wholesale similar rights to people. Currently a corporation cannot claim Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination (that has been ruled upon).

However, in 2010 the Supreme Court upheld the rights of corporations to make political expenditures under the First Amendment. This was ruled upon by today's more conservative and pro-business Supreme Court, and many have said this is over-reaching. Which, if enough people and resources raise it as an issue, it may be overturned, or (more likely) specifically added as a constitutional amendment to abolish this rule.

This is why there is so much hand-wringing over new Supreme Court justices - they are 1/3 of the government's balance of power, and they serve a lifetime. If there is a president and majority party in Congress, they can influence the law of the land far beyond their tenure by appointing new judges that fit their political POV. ...but I digress...

Re:Chimp interview ...

[MiniMike]

At the time of publishing, the chimps were unavailable for comment, though they could be observed engaging in their habitual poo-flinging and screeching.

Please review TFA. It was not the chimps flinging and screeching, it was their lawyers.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[Sarten-X]

What you fail to understand about the legal system is that written law doesn't really matter. Precedent doesn't really matter, and your precious perfect logic doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is what a judge thinks (or can be assumed to think, without contest) about a particular situation at a particular time. Everything else serves only to influence how the judge decides. Legal precedent gives the judge a background of similar decisions to compare against, written laws provide a basis for how legislators (and by representation, the society at large) think the decision should go, and logic (as presented by the lawyers in the court) is simply a means to convince the judge which of the conflicting opinions really best fits the situation.

For this particular case, the judge has decided that it's reasonable to consider the chimpanzees to be legally-recognized entities, because that allows for the most reasonable context in which to consider the remainder of the case. Issues like marriage, taxation, and voting rights are all matters for another case, to be decided if or when such a dispute reaches a court. Having a legal decision "in a vacuum" is not actually a problem.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[lister king of smeg]

I think to be granted rights of a person you should;
A - Be able to ask un-coached to be considered a person. (to prevent some one from say training a chimp that sign language for "give me liberty" is rewarded with a banana and having no idea of what it is asking.
B- And pass a Turing test. (to prevent a simple script form filling out forms and DDoS the legal system with requests for person hood for computer viriuses.)

Re:Chimp interview ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great world we live in when people like Peter Singer would like to see chips made legal persons, while rejecting personhood for the unborn, disabled and elderly.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[SydShamino]

Don't believe every political rant you read. Corporations are restricted by the same laws that restrict people.

Ok, show me how a corporation is put in jail.

Re:Chimp interview ...

[david_thornley]

When have women and children been considered not persons? They have not necessarily had the same rights and responsibilities as adult men, but AFAIK they've always been persons. At which times were blacks not considered persons? Slaves had no rights in the US, and were not considered persons, but it was never the case that all blacks were slaves.

Re: Chimp interview ...

[silentcoder]

Or for that matter executed. If we kill hundreds of people, we are killed in turn. A corporation on the other hand gets a slap on telephone wrist settlement or at worst a fine which they recoup from wage cuts, lay offs and customers. So a whole lot of people are punished - oddly the list doesn't include any of the people who actually had the power to stop it (shareholders).

Re:Chimp interview ...

[lgw]

For normal crimes - people commit those crimes, not corporations, and people go to jail for them. For crimes that only a company can really commit (incorporated or otherwise), there is "gross negligence" in the civil system. When a company deliberately puts people at risk, there's no real limit on the damages that can be awarded, such as $60 MM (or whatever it was) for serving coffee too hot for safety, because McDs knowingly put customers at risk.

But all that is an aside: the canard that "corporations are people" is a propaganda tool, the truth is that "tightly held corporations are partnerships".

Re: Chimp interview ...

[lgw]

If a corporation can just increase profits from "age cuts, lay offs and customers" in response to a fine, without hurting the shareholders, the management must really be terrible not to do just that before there was any fine. Chances are the truth is more interesting, and less propaganda.

BTW, mangers can certainly go to jail for a wide variety of criminal actions - being an employee is no sort of shield for clearly criminal behavior, and may make it far worse with RICO laws. But you're probably talking about faulty products and the like, where IMO the goal in law should be "deterrence", by whatever system is likely to actually work to discourage such behavior. Putting a few employees in jail is a poor deterrent, as employees are disposable, but sufficiently large fines do punish the shareholders, and without the burden of evidence and intent needed for criminal prosecution.

Have we solved all human rights issues?

[sinij]

Have we solved all human rights issues so we now moved on to grant animals personhood?

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have we solved all human rights issues so we now moved on to grant animals personhood?

Just because you haven't solved all the problems in one area doesn't mean you shouldn't move on to the next.

See related;

Have we solved poverty in the USA? Then why are we sending overseas aid?
Have we solved all the murders? Then why are we bothering with Rape cases?

e.t.c.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[dave420]

The only way your question has any merit is if everyone, the world over, can only work on one problem at a time. Either you think that is true, or you should probably spend more time thinking before typing :)

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes, we have solved poverty in the USA; we have not solved governmental dependence. The two are very, very different. Go visit Africa and you'll come back realizing that there are no poor people in the US. No, our "poor" aren't as rich as the "poor" in other western countries, but they have the opportunity for all of their basic needs to be met.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

I never saw this as a problem.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[AmiMoJo]

Are you only capable of caring about one thing at a time, or considering one problem at a time? What if there, say, 7 billion of you, would they all need to concentrate on one thing at a time or could each one work on different things?

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[jythie]

Anyone who believes we do not have poor in the US has not done enough traveling. Go into some of the deep rural areas and you encounter standards of living quite similar to what you see in the news regarding Africa. It just doesn't get much press and since they are too poor to be online they do not have much of a voice themselves. But they are there.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Should we solve injustices in order?

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[HornWumpus]

Bullshit.

You NEED to travel more.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[j2.718ff]

Have we solved all human rights issues so we now moved on to grant animals personhood?

While I'm not disagreeing with you, I really dislike this question. Have we solved all problems on Earth that we should start exploring space? Have we solved all problems in America so we should start developing a foreign policy? Have we solved all problems in physics that we can now move on to chemistry?

Simply put, we don't have a clear queue of problems, and probably never will. And even if we did, not all problems can be solved faster by having more people work on them, so it will always make sense to be working on multiple problems at a time.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have taken the "this isn't even an issue" route - but to each their own.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't stop the corporations, so why not the chimps?

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[sinij]

We absolutely have to prioritize where our limited resources are going, or we will not get maximum possible benefit once they are spent.

We shouldn't care about granting chimps personhood, not when there are actual humans in our country, like incarcerated felons, that still lack dignified humane treatment. We shouldn't provide any foreign aid based on humanitarian grounds (ignoring influence-buying aspect for now) when we still have starving children in our country. We shouldn't engage in TSA-sponsored security theater when getting run over while riding your bicycle is 10^6 times more likely than getting killed by a hijacked plane. We also shouldn't care about 0.001% incidence of campus rape when young black male mortality from homicide is into 20% range.

Unfortunately, we do no live in a rational world.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[0xdeadbeef]

You're trolling, right? Because what you said is textbook stupid, an example that sounds contrived because it too perfectly illustrates the links below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/N...

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[sinij]

Should we solve injustices in order?

Should we abandon any prioritization and work on everything at once, in hopes to one day suddenly arrive at perfect utopia?

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[cbhacking]

Indeed. Leaving aside the fact that things Medicaid and food stamps and emergency rooms that are obliged to treat you mean that even the most destitute Americans are already better off than a lot of the world, I've yet to see an American community - population in the thousands - who live in the following conditions:
  * Rough shacks (a trailer home is a mansion by comparison; I've seen outhouses bigger than some of these shacks)
  * No electricity
  * No running water (the luckier ones don't have to carry water very far)
  * No water sanitation (it probably comes out of a stream or lake)
  * No sewers (hope you can draw your water upstream of most of the community...)
I'm talking about people who literally live on top of trash dumps, or in shantytowns outside of cities. In some ways, the arguably-even-poorer people who live in the middle of nowhere actually have it better; they may not even have the leavings of civilization (in the sense of "city dwellers") to live on, but their population is low enough to be supported by well water and to grow or gather plant crops and to not shit where they eat.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as you could spend more time making useful comments instead of trolling.

Re:Have we solved all human rights issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, there were over 200 people living like in the middle of San Jose in a single camp.

Your problem is that you have some kind of cognitive dissonance believing that such poverty can exist in America. Well, it can. Get it over it. Hell, when I was a kid I used to live in a trailer on a farm that lacked both plumbing and electricity for several weeks, until our landlord ran some PVC and extension cord. 30 years later I'm a rich white guy. Go figure. I knew kids who lived like that for quite a long time.

But that hardly means we're like Africa. If you stop trying to equivocate, your cognitive dissonance might disappear. For example, obviously there aren't as many people per capita living in such destitute poverty in America. Most Americans classified as poor obviously do have a pretty decent standard of living. OTOH, so do many poor Africans. A tribal community living without plumbing or electricity may not be poor at all, either subjectively or objectively.

Secondly, the reasons for our poverty are different. For example, in America a greater share of our extremely impoverished underclass have mental health issues. Although certainly not all--it just seems that way in urban areas.

Thirdly, eradicating poverty becomes asymptotically more difficult as you make progress. Just like eradicating unemployment is literally impossible simply because there will _always_ be some degree of structural unemployment--someone laid off might be unemployed for a few weeks or months before he starts his new job. Even if there are a crap ton of open positions, he might take his time choosing the job he prefers. Likewise, there are a ton of reasons people fall through the cracks of even the best social safety nets. And sometimes they live in those cracks for a ridiculously long time. The level of shit that people will put up with is incredible. Most people hate _change_. Ever wonder why so many people stick around during a genocide or intense famine, when they have every reason to move on and no reason to stay? A certain percentage of the population has a ridiculously high tolerance for living in squalor, even if they hate it and suffer incredibly. It's probably some kind of evolutionary thing for all I know.

Chimps

[Anonymous Coward]

Judge Recognizes Research Chimps As "Legal Persons"

We've been doing this for about 150 years already.

Hmm

[koan]

When it is possible to sit down with your lab "animal" and have a conversation in sign language...

Maybe they shouldn't be a lab animal.

Re:Hmm

[g0bshiTe]

I would agree with this however, "when you can sit down in the wild and have a conversation in sign language" they shouldn't be a lab animal.

We are talking a trained animal, does your dog still wish to run wild with other dogs? Does your cat wish to hunt in the wild? We aren't talking about something natural, while chimps do have the intelligence to learn sign language we aren't talking about something that is passed down from mother to offspring, it's something taught in a lab.

I do see your point and it is valid. I also agree to some extent.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe anyone sane is saying they should be sent back to the wild. Just that they are intelligent enough to not be experimenting on them. They should probably be sent to a preserve.

Re:Hmm

[jythie]

On the other hand, humans raised without being taught language are also incapable of it. But by virtue of being homo-sapien, they by default get personhood (though likely they become a ward, but still a person).

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Wild chimps are fully capable of communicating with each other in complex ways with speech and body language. They learn how from their parents and their clan. But the silly humans can't understand it. So the humans teach them human sign language. Chimps need human training to communicate in human languages, and humans need chimp training to communicate in chimp languages.

And also there actually are documented cases of trained chimps teaching human sign language to their untrained cage-mates.

Re:Hmm

[alvinrod]

It's a difficult subject, but even though chimps (and other primates) can be taught sign language, they're not on the same level. Most animals already use body language as a form of communication, so sign language isn't some higher sign of intelligence. Are dogs also legal persons because they can be taught to understand human spoken words?

Interestingly enough, despite many primates being taught sign language, none of them have ever used it to ask an existential question. Interestingly enough, the only animal ever recorded as having done this was a parrot that after being taught words for several colors asked what color it was.

This ruling is likely to be overturned on appeal. I'm all for ethical animal treatment, but let's not use faulty reasoning to justify it, especially when that same reasoning could be broadly applied in unintended ways.

Re:Hmm

[Dr. Evil]

"we aren't talking about something that is passed down from mother to offspring, it's something taught in a lab."

umm. They do teach eachother. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loulis_(chimpanzee)

It wasn't his mother who taught him, she was used for medical testing. And he learned from other chips in a sanctuary, not the wild.

Re:Hmm

[dinfinity]

Well, 'incapable of it' is sort of a stretch. See this documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (around ~7:00)
which is about this girl: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

There are some potential issues in this specific example, but I'd say it does show that even a severely abused/sortof feral human child is better capable of acquiring language (to some extent) than any individual of another primate species.

Don't forget that the examples of 'having a conversation in sign language [with primates (or birds)]' are highly disputed. Even with years and years of extensive training, the prime examples involve a lot of interpretation and often cherry picking by (probably enamored, but definitely invested) researchers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...

Re:Hmm

[HornWumpus]

WRONG.

During the middle ages humans were raised without being exposed to language (would be scientifically unacceptable today). You don't have to teach language, just expose the kids. The nuts in charge at the time expected them to spontaneously start speaking Hebrew. They spoke a primitive pidgin they invented.

Re:Hmm

[koan]

So they are intelligent, just not at the same level...

Feels like high school all over again.

Just out of curiosity if you could ask a chimp "Can I kill you in the name of science?" what do you think the answer would be?

Re:Hmm

[koan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Washoe learned approximately 350 words of ASL.[2] She also taught her adopted son Loulis some American Sign Language.[3][4][5]

Re:Hmm

[koan]

Yes, Washoe taught her adopted son Loulis to sign some words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

Re:Hmm

[alvinrod]

Probably "ook?", but that's just because the chimp cannot not even understand the question that you're asking. It's possible that there aren't any chimps in existence that could understand that question.

The point is that most animals are intelligent on some level. Look at all of the experiments involving rats and measuring their ability to learn and solve problems. Do rats get to receive legal personhood as well? If the answer is no, then what makes chimps worthy of being set apart?

If there are concerns about the way that these animals are being treated, those can be addressed through various laws.

Re:Hmm

[koan]

Making assumptions... of course you would have asked in ASL (or GSL depending on critter) but you just "assumed" I meant otherwise.

In December of that same year, All Ball escaped from Koko's cage and was hit and killed by a car. Later, Patterson said that when she signed to Koko that All Ball had been killed, Koko signed "Bad, sad, bad" and "Frown, cry, frown, sad". Patterson also reported later hearing Koko making a sound similar to human weeping.[32]

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it your contention that humans arent trained to use language? Do you not understand what the first 10-15 years of a human life are about?

Fun fact, humans dont just pop out of their mothers equipped with language, that behavior has to be trained over the next 3-5 years before they even begin to make sense, much longer to get any real nuance and progress out of it.

Re:Hmm

[Dr. Evil]

+1, ... much more of a story than I remember.

It's blindingly obvious to me that animals are intelligent and should be treated with respect.

Re:Hmm

[Sarius64]

and....you're wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Habeus Corpus

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't even have this right for humans (sitting in Gitmo ) in this country, but they considering to grant monkeys this right? Unbelievable.

How long...

[gti_guy]

... before someone tries to marry a chimp?

Re:How long...

[Anonymous Coward]

Opposite-Sex or Same-Sex Chimp?

Re:How long...

[Translation Error]

Or a child! Or someone in a coma, or a corporation... Just because an entity is recognized to have some of the rights or protections of a person, it doesn't make them an actual person equal to a competent adult in the eyes of the law.

Re:How long...

[Anonymous Coward]

... before someone tries to marry a chimp?

Too late; Palin's already married.

Re:How long...

[AmiMoJo]

Wouldn't work because a chimp could never give informed consent to marry. Just saying "I do" isn't enough in the eyes of the law in most places; both parties have to be aware of what they are getting in to. That's why there are minimum age limits and forced marriage laws.

Re:How long...

[operagost]

It'll be fine just as long as they marry only one chimp at a time.

Re:How long...

[davidwr]

Or a child!

Too late. Throughout much of history including in parts of the United States up through the 20th century, it was legal for young teens or even pre-teens to marry. Of course, back then if you went to school beyond 8th grade you were considered fortunate, especially if you were a girl.

In some historical cultures it was legal to marry kids to each other or even to adults, with the understanding that the things that sex would wait until pregnancy was possible.

I for one am glad that the days where daughters (and to a lesser extent, sons) were treated as pawns by parents for political/economic purposes when it comes to marriage are for the most part over with, at least in the United States.

Re:How long...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The best argument against "marrying" an animal we now have is "Because the animal might not want to."? Holy crap, we live in a screwed up society.

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why stop at granting them "personhood". Let's give them right to vote as well. While we're at it, how about let them run for political office and appoint them as judges. They can't do any worse that what we have today

Re:Why not...

[g0bshiTe]

535 members in Congress, replaced with chimps, I should expect with that many chimps we'd get Shakespeare or the very least laws and solutions to social problems that make sense and are sustainable.

Re:Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Chimps are greedy too. I doubt the outcome would differ much, though there would perhaps be less poo flinging in congress.

Literate chimps

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of these chimps can sign up to several hundred words. I can just "hear" the testimony now...

The food they give us sucks! Our cages are dirty! We don't get Netflix! They keep poking us with sharp thingies!

Necessary step

[Somebody Is Using My]

I think this is a necessary step and better done today than tomorrow.

Not that I think the chimps themselves right now are deserving of the same rights of personhood as human beings. But as our science advances, the question of what a "person" is will extend past our common genetics: we may soon have gengineered humans, uplifted animals, cybernetic entities (AI) and, unlikely as it may be, perhaps even non-terrestrial intelligences. After all, its taken centuries for many HUMANS to be recognized as fully protected legal entities by other humans. It is better if we have legal precedents set ahead of time so that the rights of these non-human intelligences are protected from the start.

Re:Necessary step

[g0bshiTe]

What we've learned from our history is the stronger power typically enslaves the weaker, why would you think non-terrestrial intelligence wouldn't enslave us?

Re:Necessary step

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is a necessary step and better done today than tomorrow.

Not that I think the chimps themselves right now are deserving of the same rights of personhood as human beings. But as our science advances, the question of what a "person" is will extend past our common genetics: we may soon have gengineered humans, uplifted animals, cybernetic entities (AI) and, unlikely as it may be, perhaps even non-terrestrial intelligences. After all, its taken centuries for many HUMANS to be recognized as fully protected legal entities by other humans. It is better if we have legal precedents set ahead of time so that the rights of these non-human intelligences are protected from the start.

The problem is that people tend to attribute human traits to animals even though those animals never exhibit any human traits. Recent studies proved that dogs don't feel shame, but react to the dominance its owner shows when berating it for doing something bad. Yet every dog owner claims their snookums is special.

Personally I wouldn't mind if they declared dogs to be persons. That ways we could free them from the oppression that is ownership and can stop the fuck from barking at night.

Re:Necessary step

[Jeremi]

What we've learned from our history is the stronger power typically enslaves the weaker, why would you think non-terrestrial intelligence wouldn't enslave us?

Historically there has been an economic advantage to enslaving people; if you enslaved someone you could get them to do work for you, so you didn't have to do the work yourself.

A non-terrestrial intelligence, contrariwise, would either not be present on Earth (in which case it wouldn't have the ability to enslave anyone on Earth), or if it did get to Earth, it did so by harnessing enough energy to make the trip across interstellar space. Any species capable of harnessing that much energy on its own is unlikely to need to enslave anyone to get its work done. It would be like you or I 'enslaving' a hamster to generate electrical power for our house -- there's not enough benefit to make it worth the effort of doing.

Summary is wrong

[jbolden]

The summary is wrong or at the very least highly misleading. What the judge did was allow the argument for chimp personhood to go forward. In other words the court did not find that chimps were unquestionably merely property. That's much weaker than deciding they are actual persons or legal persons. So yes there was a step forward for Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) but nowhere near as big a step as the summary implies.

Re:Summary is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is wrong or at the very least highly misleading.

It's both wrong and highly misleading - something that is not uncommon with the media's and very common with Slashdot (and it's not funny any more - never was actually).

What the judge did was allow the argument for chimp personhood to go forward. In other words the court did not find that chimps were unquestionably merely property. That's much weaker than deciding they are actual persons or legal persons. So yes there was a step forward for Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) but nowhere near as big a step as the summary implies.

Thank you Sir for informing us, something Slashdot should had done (i was misinformed by Slashdot, and YOU saved me from Slashdot's misinformation - someone could claim that since it was a Slashdot's user who finally informed... i was "informed" by Slashdot, but i would answer: it's not funny any more - never was actually)

By the way, since you seem like an informed person (and because i am a Greek - and sorry for my English!): this Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), is some kind of the usual left-wing group (that cares for the rights of animals but believes killing unborn human babies is a human right)?

Thanks for any answer, and thanks for already providing us with answers.

Re:Summary is wrong

[jbolden]

By the way, since you seem like an informed person (and because i am a Greek - and sorry for my English!): this Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), is some kind of the usual left-wing group (that cares for the rights of animals but believes killing unborn human babies is a human right)?

The Nonhuman Rights Project is the only organization working through the common law to achieve actual LEGAL rights for members of species other than our own. So normally in the USA groups work for "animal rights" which are specific prohibitions on acts of cruelty. They are aiming to give animals legally enforceable rights. So for example it is illegal to starve a dog to death but a dog under no circumstances has a legal right to food.

As far as their attitude towards abortion.

The organization is official neutral.

Steven M. Wise (Harvard Law School animal rights activist) who heads the group has written on the analogy though only with passing references so it is hard to develop a clear view. He appears to believe. that the fetus is less developed than sophisticated and thus they have a weaker claim. He has specifically made the claim that higher primates should have rights similar to those we grant profoundly retarded human beings. He seems mildly pro-choice, but his writings would be consistent with either pro-choice or pro-life positions.

Jane Goodall who is a spokesperson is a strong advocate for population control, unquestionably pro-choice.

Re:Summary is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound there as if "not property" implies "person", but in fact it's normal for an animal to be neither. I don't think that in England you can legally own a native bird, for example, and it's also a criminal offence to kill or interfere with the breeding of a native bird (with certain exceptions for certain species). One could imagine chimpanzees being put into a similar category, with consequences that are not immediately obvious. Perhaps anyone would be able to petition a court for an order that a certain animal be looked after "better". Such a system might even work quite well in some countries, but I can't imagine anything working well that involves US law and US lawyers.

Re:Summary is wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you Sir very much for your newest VERY informed answer!
"the Greek"

Re:Summary is wrong

[jbolden]

Well this is a USA group dealing with USA law so that requirement on evaluating the group can't budge. As for the rest, I don't know what the status is but mostly native animals in the USA can be owned.

While at it...

[CSHARP123]

give them voting rights too. Ask them to pay taxes as well. Especially social security. Well make sure they are not suppose to use brains like humans and submit to their corporate over lords.

Re:While at it...

[itzly]

Maybe elect one for president ?

Well, Chimps have been shown to communicate.

[Anonymous Coward]

Though the limit appears to be that of a 3 year old.

If they are not counted had "persons" then what about humans at or below the age of 3?

IRS

[jfdavis668]

The IRS will now show up and demand that they file their taxes.

Re:IRS

[Anonymous Coward]

And if they don't comply, they'll send them to prison. Oh, wait...

Re:IRS

[jfdavis668]

No, they have to take them to court first. You are innocent until proven guilty. But, just imagine that chaos.

Re:IRS

[Anonymous Coward]

A new IRS agent to his boss: "Why there is always poop in this person's tax report?"

Results may be interesting.

[wvmarle]

The judicial action could force the university, which is believed to be holding the chimps, to release the primates

Release... Great idea - just tell me: how? Where?

Usually these animals are born in the lab and live in the lab until they die, or until they go to some kind of sanctuary or zoo. For obvious reasons they can't be released anywhere in the US - it's not where chimps naturally live. Even if released in natural chimp habitats, they'd die because they can't take care of themselves, or they may even get killed by the native chimps that don't like the intruders. They are simply fully dependent on their human caretakers, and need, even deserve, proper care to live out their lives peacefully.

Re:Results may be interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Having visited a rat lab, I was told the ethics regulations due to animal rights activism clearly states that all animals are to be put down after an experiment, even those in the control group. If the regulations are the same for monkeys, 'release' here means euthanasia, unless they make a special exception or two for PR purposes.

Re:Results may be interesting.

[Jeremi]

Great idea - just tell me: how? Where? [....] they go to some kind of sanctuary or zoo.

There.

Re:Results may be interesting.

[wvmarle]

Great idea - just tell me: how? Where? [....] they go to some kind of sanctuary or zoo.

There.

That's not what I call "release". That's move from one cage to another. Maybe a bigger cage, but it's still a cage. Not freedom.

Re:Results may be interesting.

[tlambert]

The judicial action could force the university, which is believed to be holding the chimps, to release the primates

Release... Great idea - just tell me: how? Where?

The typical PETA reaction to "rescued animals" is that, having been domesticated, they should be euthanized. Not sure how the NhRP intends to handle emancipated chimps; one would expect that they have a larger plan that, them having legal rights, would not result in euthanizing the animals.

Re:Results may be interesting.

[Jeremi]

That's not what I call "release". That's move from one cage to another. Maybe a bigger cage, but it's still a cage. Not freedom.

They wouldn't survive in the wild, so leaving them in the wild wouldn't be freedom either, it would be a death sentence.

That doesn't mean that putting them in a humane environment isn't the right thing to do. Keeping an animal in a 4x4 wire cage for its entire life is cruel. The distinction you're trying to make (an abstract idea of "complete freedom") isn't relevant and would be meaningless to the chimp; what's relevant is the chimpanzee's quality of life.

Robert Heinlein story...

[VAXcat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...

It was New York, what did you expect?

[shellster_dude]

This is nothing more than a jobs program for lawyers. They get to make millions suing various pharmaceutical companies for years. In return, your drugs cost more, and are more likely to have unknown side-effects.

Re:It was New York, what did you expect?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just silly. The drugs cost the largest amount of money they can get away with charging regardless of cost.

So...

[g0bshiTe]

Since they are now recognized will these freeloading bastards now pay taxes as well?

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they are now recognized will these freeloading bastards now pay taxes as well?

Do freeloading welfare mothers pay taxes now?

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as they start getting paid.

Re:So...

[Rich0]

Since they are now recognized will these freeloading bastards now pay taxes as well?

Sure. They can get that witheld from their disability payments, since they'd probably qualify as mentally disabled.

Looking forward to the new generation of Walmart greeters.

Can of worms

[Phreakiture]

This just opened up a whole new can of worms . . . and set them free from their unconstitutional detention, apparently.

Re:Can of worms

[NotARealUser]

This just opened up a whole new barrel of monkeys . . . and set them free from their unconstitutional detention, apparently.

Fixed that for you!

should be filed under

[Anonymous Coward]

it takes one to know one.

Not recorgnized as people

[Anonymous Coward]

The article said that the judge didn't actually recognize the chimps as people. But rather the judge actually agreed to hear arguments instead of just rejecting the petition from the animal rights people as a waste of time.

While the judge has not actually granted personhood to the chimps, One can assume that the judge is looking to make a name for her self instead of following legal precedent.

Re:Not recorgnized as people

[jythie]

Actually, there is some pretty good legal precedent for this to move forward, but there is also precedent for it to fail. Current social attitudes and economic factors (people tend not to get personhood until the value in keeping them subhuman has faded) today indicate it will likely fail, but it would not be without precedent if the judge moves forward or even accepts the arguments. We have been expanding personhood for the last century already.

Plants are people, too!

[argStyopa]

Precisely why are we stopping at recognizing chimps as people, except some sort of gross, obvious anthropocentrism?

Let's point out that there is an entire class of life forms on this planet that have ALSO gone through millions of years of evolution to reach where they are, and yet they are continually exploited, manipulated, and murdered on behalf of humans whims: that's right, I'm talking about plants.

There is no question that they live, breed, and grow. There is ample evidence that they feel pain, and even communicate with each other in ways that we barely understand. In many ways, they are far more in touch with their environment than we are, yet we chop vegetables up for food, we decapitate grass by the billions every week because they had the audacity to try to flourish, heck, we RIP THEM UP BY THEIR ROOTS and chemically sterilize them simply for living in the wrong place, dismissing it by calling them "weeds". We annihilate them, and even have the gall to use their corpses for DECORATION.

We are perpetuating a moral crime, yet nobody can be "bothered" because they don't have fur, a face, or make cute baby pictures.

#stopthehate
#lawnmowersaregenocide
#christmastreeisahatecrime

Re:Plants are people, too!

[Neil Boekend]

Lawnmowers are hardly as nice as genocide. They are tools of mass torture that leave the victim alive for as long as possible, drawing out the torture for as long as possible.

Re:Plants are people, too!

[Drethon]

I don't kill plants, I just give them haircuts.

Re:Plants are people, too!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your joke is not smart, because we have no reason to believe plants experience experience pain or pleasure, suffering, or plan and have desires for the future, whereas for Chimps we do. And yes, these are appropriate criteria to consider who qualifies as a person, because a legal person is an entity with interests that deserve to be protected.

Re:Plants are people, too!

[Qbertino]

I am Groo!

Re:Plants are people, too!

[argStyopa]

http://science.howstuffworks.c...

http://www.pri.org/stories/201...

"ollan describes an experiment done by animal biologist Monica Gagliano. She presented research that suggests the mimosa pudica plant can learn from experience. And, Pollan says, merely suggesting a plant could learn was so controversial that her paper was rejected by 10 scientific journals before it was finally published.

Mimosa is a plant, which looks something like a fern, that collapses its leaves temporarily when it is disturbed. So Gagliano set up a contraption that would drop the mimosa plant, without hurting it. When the plant dropped, as expected, its leaves collapsed. She kept dropping the plants every five to six seconds.

"After five or six drops, the plants would stop responding, as if they'd learned to tune out the stimulus as irrelevent," Pollan says. "This is a very important part of learning â" to learn what you can safely ignore in your environment."

Maybe the plant was just getting worn out from all the dropping? To test that, Gagliano took the plants that had stopped responding to the drops and shook them instead.

"They would continue to collapse," Pollan says. "They had made the distinction that [dropping] was a signal they could safely ignore. And what was more incredible is that [Gagliano] would retest them every week for four weeks and, for a month, they continued to remember their lesson.""

Better Get these Chimps Cameras

[IMarvinTPA]

These chimps can get copyrights! Don't let that one photographer near them.

http://metro.co.uk/2011/07/14/...

Whee!

lab animals or volunteers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Welllll, this does take the cake. Somewhat of a pie-in-the-sky moonbat ( borrowed ) daydream.
And, just like human volunteers - what if the chimps 'volunteered' to be lab monkeys?
Testing mind-altering drugs draws plenty of volunteers, as well as kooks...
Testing potential cures for cancers, genetic disorders also draws human volunteers...
The lawyers missed this take on being a test subject...
Similar analogy - the british courts tried to ban dwarf-tossing, until the dwarves, errr, little people, protested that they liked it!

Re:lab animals or volunteers?

[jythie]

Since the case is pulling on examples from humans who have personhood but not self determination, like children they would probably not have the ability to enter into legal contracts, thus can not volunteer.

While people are scoffing at this, we already have the legal framework in place for dealing with entities that have the legal protection of personhood but not full legal rights.

While this is doomed to fail, much of the mocking has chilling similarities to earlier fights for personhood.

Airbud 3: Legal Eagles

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant wait for it to come out straight to dvd.

Congress and Parliament

[msobkow]

If the politicians in Congress and Parliament qualify as "legal persons", I guess chimps are over-qualified. :P

Sanctuary?

[morgauxo]

They are people being unlawfully detained so the fix is to send them to a sanctuary? Wouldn't that be like sending groups of humans to reservations? What's next? Smallpox bedding?

Obviously they can't be left to just roam the city. Maybe that's a clue that they are still animals...

Re:Sanctuary?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather live in a reservation than live in a laboratory cage and be experimented on.

Same goes for being in a cubicle all day too. Where can I get in on this human sanctuary business?

Re:Sanctuary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the same applies to children, the mentally incompetent, and sometimes even refugees with no other impairment.

They can be kept in sanctuaries of various kinds, and while sometimes they'll get out, other times they won't.

Re:Sanctuary?

[rubycodez]

I've started a sanctuary for Hot Women. Send any such to me.

Re:Sanctuary?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously they can't be left to just roam the city. Maybe that's a clue that they are still animals...

Minors and the mentally disabled can't be left to just roam the city. And being an animal doesn't mean one isn't a person too (humans are animals).

Your confusion doesn't justify someone else's oppression.

monkey brains.

[Anonymous Coward]

Put the money on the stand and ask the animal questions, then shout at the animal for not answering.

So the school should just toss the monkeys out their front door and tell them to go home. Guess we should be glad monkeys can't fill out paperwork to get federal aid money!

Catch 22

[Dareth]

They can only sign to you because they were trained to do so as lab animals. So you want a threshold of sign language competence to trigger release from captivity?
I honestly don't know how I feel about lab animals. Some reasonable debate and facts on their treatment and value of what is provided by the research would be nice. Of course I also want honest answers from politicians, so maybe I am just deluding myself.

Re:Catch 22

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't human children converse with you only because they were trained to do so?

Re:Catch 22

[HornWumpus]

Chomsky is that you?

You know the answer is no. Even if language isn't wired into the brain (as it currently looks) human children develop language by observation and emulation.

Re:Catch 22

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the answer is no

Reality disagrees.

Re:Catch 22

[koan]

You have not spent any time with chimps, I can tell when a person is speaking from assumption instead of experience.

Re:Catch 22

[HornWumpus]

Single feral children don't talk. But groups of children, held in isolation without any language contact, develop their own invented language.

The Catholics did it in the middle ages. Apparently they expected the kids to spontaneously start speaking Hebrew. Experiment couldn't be ethically repeated today.

Re:Catch 22

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Actually I believe that it was observed in those experiments that chimps actually start to teach each other sign language.

What did the chimps ask?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your stinking paws off me you damned dirty ape!

Re:Apes will rise!

[GargamelSpaceman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Legal Schmegal

[tiberus]

Should we treat chimpanzees that way we do? NO

Are chimpanzees feeling, intelligent animals? YES

Are chimpanzees persons? NO

In may cases the way we treat animals or allow them to be treated is appalling. The same is also true of how humans treat other humans, as well. I'm left to wonder how long before the fact that I've had two of my dogs euthanized is no longer a legal act? The thought of having to prolong the suffering of or put them through treatment that has little chance of success and a high chance of increasing their suffering and shortening their lives, pains me deeply. There is a long list of potential unintended consequences to consider.

Re:Legal Schmegal

[HellYeahAutomaton]

Are chimpanzees persons? NO

They are now, in a NY court of law.

I'm left to wonder how long before the fact that I've had two of my dogs euthanized is no longer a legal act?

Legal for now, but you might think twice before euthanizing more dogs.

Re:Legal Schmegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Your last question and convenient answer are not as obvious as you claim (even though it's in all-caps). "Person" is a nebulous word that can change in definition. Do you think it will always and forever mean only Homo sapiens sapiens? Ignoring alien intelligence, which might or might not exist, our civilization will inevitably (assuming survival) arrive at genetic variants of Homo sapiens sapiens, eventually and inevitably have a general artificial intelligence with self awareness, and might even one day clone one of our ancestors (Homo erectus? Australopithecines?) Will our definition of "person" continue to be only Homo sapiens sapiens? Will that argument one day seem as archaic as the notion that only whit European makes deserved the right to vote or own property?

Re:Legal Schmegal

[Anonymous Coward]

*white European males One typo and one really poor autocorrect. Yes, phone, "males" is a word

Re:Legal Schmegal

[tiberus]

I do believe it is as simple, and obvious, as that, caps or not ,chimpanzees, aren't persons. I abide Merriam Webster's definition of person. Chimpanzees, may be self aware and possess a modicum of language yet this does not make them persons.

While, I would assert, that all persons are humans, I would not assert that all persons are strictly Homo sapiens but in fact contain a fair bit of Homo neanderthalensis.

One day may come and one day we may be visited by extraterrestrials and knowing humans, it may well be a mortal insult to call them persons. On That Day(tm) the question can be revisited and some will choose to expand the definition of person, others will want to refer to them as what they are, or create and define a new noun.

Re:Legal Schmegal

[Obfuscant]

Legal for now, but you might think twice before euthanizing more dogs.

Yes, it is much better to let them hobble around, if they can, on arthritic joints running into doors because they're going blind.

As for the chimps in question here, of course they are persons. I say drive them to the nearest bus stop, hand them a twenty dollar bill, and bid them a happy life. Freedom! And keep the change!

Re:Legal Schmegal

[HellYeahAutomaton]

As for the dogs I murdered, of course they are persons. I say drive them to the nearest bus stop, hand them a twenty dollar bill, and bid them a happy life. Freedom! And keep the change!

There, FTFY. Hard to see it as a charity for the dogs you've enslaved for your own enjoyment.

Re:Legal Schmegal

[Obfuscant]

As for the dogs I murdered,

Don't put words in my mouth. I've murdered no dogs. And the comment you misquoted was specifically about the chimps that are the topic of the overall discussion, not about any mythical dogs you want to accuse me of murdering.

It is generally considered unethical and dishonest to misquote someone like you did, especially under the pretense of "fixing" things for them by changing the subject of the sentence and then accusing someone of murder.

Re:Legal Schmegal

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Until an appeals court rules otherwise. Hell, other courts don't even have to give credence to the precedent.

Re:Legal Schmegal

[HellYeahAutomaton]

Two features of the law of euthanasia sit very uneasily with each other. One is that
euthanasia is murder; the other is that only a light punishment (if any) should be imposed in
cases of euthanasia. This is slashdot, and FTFY is a common technique, to illustrate a point.

You're euphemizing murder by calling it euthanasia, and I'm calling you out on it, as the expansion of personhood to other intelligent animals is a clear inevitability from this ruling.

Re:Legal Schmegal

[Obfuscant]

Two features of the law of euthanasia sit very uneasily with each other. One is that euthanasia is murder;

Cite the law that makes putting an old ailing pet to sleep "murder". The law says nothing of the kind.

the other is that only a light punishment (if any) should be imposed in cases of euthanasia.

Exactly what punishment is there in the law is there for euthanizing a pet? And then explain why there are so many public and private pet shelters who do this kind of thing on a regular basis. You do realize that many, if not most, shelters kill (not murder) the pets they cannot place because they just don't have room or resources to do otherwise. Where is the law pounding on their doors for committing murder, if the law is as you pretend?

This is slashdot, and FTFY is a common technique, to illustrate a point.

I know what FTFY is, and it isn't used to change the context of a comment and then use the comment to accuse someone of committing murder. You changed the context from the chimps that are in court to someone else's dogs, and then claimed I was murdering them. You changed my statement about "the chimps in question" to "the dogs I murdered", which is so far outside the pale of FTFY that it an insult that you pretend that's what you did. That is a deliberate misquote. You tried putting words in my mouth and I called you on it.

You're euphemizing murder by calling it euthanasia,

The misquote you produced was originally about the CHIMPS, not dogs. That comment had nothing to do with euthanasia, it was talking about releasing them alive and well. I did not mention euthanasia, so don't tell me I'm euphemizing anything.

and I'm calling you out on it,

No, you are misquoting me so you can make some ridiculous claim about murder. I don't expect an apology for your claim that I am murdering dogs because you are too much of a looney with an agenda to ever admit that you never saw me say that I was doing anything to dogs, much less murdering them. You think your deliberate misquote was appropriate, so you aren't worth discussing this with further.

Re:Legal Schmegal

[HellYeahAutomaton]

You think your deliberate misquote was appropriate, so you aren't worth discussing this with further.

You still haven't even considered your euthanization of dogs as possibly immoral, so you aren't worth discussing this with further -- a far greater misdeed.

To set the record straight

[RivenAleem]

For the most part we don't use their whole corpse as decoration, just their genitals.

Re:To set the record straight

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no small amount of using our own genetalia for decoration, though we generally appreciate it in vivo.

Not people

[tumutbound]

For fucks sake, they are animals, not people. Treat them humanely but not as people. What's next? rats?

Re:Not people

[Anonymous Coward]

the idea that people = human being is a very recent and very incorrect misnomer. The judge understands that because he's a judge.

Re:Not people

[Morpeth]

People = animals, hate to break it to you. The notion that we are somehow not, or better than, animals is a rather egocentric and recent notion.

So, if we have enough monkeys with typewriters....

[Anonymous Coward]

They can now copyright their "entire works of Shakespeare" once they manage to type them out?

But can the gay chimps get married?

[Anonymous Coward]

But can the gay chimps get married?

Chimps but not "suspected" terrorists?

[moeinvt]

The U.S. federal government will indefinitely detain or even assassinate a U.S. citizen accused of beign a "terrorist" without so much as a criminal indictment. Obviously that's depriving them of habeus corpus and other Constitutional Rights.

This is deemed legal while a court decides to extend those rights to a pair of chimps?

Consider the implications. The government points a finger at you and says "terrorist!" without presenting a single shred of evidence and your life is suddenly worth less than that of a chimp?

Can we skip a bit of misinformation?

[Cinnamon Beige]

Corporations are legal persons because only legal persons can sign legal documents. The moment they stop being persons, every single contract they are one of the signatories upon are worth precisely as much as the paper it's on, possibly less if it's an electronic document. This is good--as long as they don't own things you need access to or owe you goods, services, and/or money...and it's safe to bet that at least one of these is true. (You thought you had a contract with your employer saying they paid you? Not anymore!)

The real question ought to be, if chimps are legally people, does this mean I can bu...I mean adopt a chimp and have the chimp be legally the owner of my shady business? Maybe even as the CEO of my shell company?

And, most importantly, do they owe taxes?

STUPID

[p51d007]

Great...once you grant them "rights", the next thing there will be, is people and CHIMPS demanding the right to "marry" each other. The downward spiral of humanity into hell continues.

This ruling is correct

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people think person = human being, but that's wrong (remember, non-whites, non-males, non-property-owning humans, have all been excluded as "persons" in thepast) the Koran, certain rivers, corporations, are all currently classified as persons.

A legal person is any entity that has interests that deserve protection. Chimps qualify.

Coming to a corner near you ..

[Anonymous Coward]

You will find them at intersections holding cardboard sign, "will test for bananas"

Lack of geniuses is a problem.

[Overzeetop]

There are plenty of humans who would volunteer for tests with full knowledge and understanding of the risks.

You are vastly overestimating the ability for even the average human to assess such risks, much less a significant majority of the population.

Re:Lack of geniuses is a problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case, we can't trust people to take the medication in the first place, even with a prescription.

But since we do, we can at least establish that they're generally more prepared than the non-consenting animals, right?

And they'll even be able to get compensated.

Re:Lack of geniuses is a problem.

[tnk1]

Having known people who have been in human trials, I can tell you that there is a big difference between an average drug you take which has been FDA approved, and one you might be fed in a clinical trial. Lots of side effects crop up in trials, some which can be dealt with by changes to recommended dosage or formulation, but others which send the drug back to the drawing board entirely.

I'm kind of bummed that *anything* human or higher animal has to be subjected to that kind of testing, but it is what it is until we can develop simulations that can adequately do the job. I would not want us to settle on only human testing, though.

Re:Lack of geniuses is a problem.

[digsbo]

In that case, we can't trust people to take the medication in the first place, even with a prescription.

No, we can't, not fully. Drug addicts and ignorant folk who don't finish their antibiotic course because they "feel better" on day 6 of 10 are part (yes, part, not all) of the reason we have resistant bacteria.

But since we do, we can at least establish that they're generally more prepared than the non-consenting animals, right?

Not really, no. My friend's college buddy died because he ignored the "only do one trial at a time" mandate and the drugs interacted, fatally. As it turns out, people who get paid to take experimental drugs are more risk-tolerant, to the point of danger, than most people. They're not more prepared, rather more desperate for money.

Re:Lack of geniuses is a problem.

[ceoyoyo]

If you think there are nasty surprises in human testing, you should see what happens in the preclinical animal testing. Nothing gets put into a human until we're as sure as we can be that it works as desired and isn't harmful in animals.

Beat me to it

[mpercy]

This was the first thing that popped into my head when I read the headline.

Ha ha.

[Anonymous Coward]

Failed lawyers, anyway. Or anyone else that doesn't have money. That's how humans actually do things.

Re:Ha ha.

[meerling]

Lawyers don't care about them, most of the lawyers are concerned about getting paid and making a name for themselves in the shark tank, err, legal field.

Your premise of guilt is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the gitmo detainees never did anything other than upset a diabolical neighbor, who ran right to US troops and made up a bunch of allegations to get their neighbor disappeared.

Re:Genius of death.

[Anonymous Coward]

> In other news, medical research slowly comes to a crashing halt in test phases.

If it is OK to experiment on chimps, then soon there will be a new Dr. Mengele. After all he will only be doing valuable medical experimentation on humans, which is just another sub-species of primates.

The world needs to be a better place! Neither people nor primates should be subject to uninformed medical experimentation. Furthermore, if chimps are denied rights, someone somewhere soon will have the funny idea to create "chimp mother - homo sapiens father" hybrids and claim those "orcs" also don't have rights, thus making them ideal slave labourers.

Cows too

[Anonymous Coward]

If this holds up, then it makes logical sense to me that the same logic applies to every cow, pig, sheep, chicken, etc currently being raised for food.

Re:Cows too

[rubycodez]

Nope, God didn't make chimps out of tasty meat but those critter are full of that

In other news ... election of animals

[debrain]

... is so common that Wikipedia has its own page dedicated to it.

Better chimp than corporations

[Morpeth]

I'd rather see chimpanzees get that kind of status than corporations. Plus, I'd trust a chimp behavior over a corporation's any day.

Fixed summary :)

[davidwr]

The judicial action could force institutions in New York State to funnel their primate research through 3rd parties that are located in other states or countries or abdicate such research to out-of-state or out-of-USA institutions.

There, fixed that for you.

Makes sense

[Minwee]

Hey, if Florida man has the right to be treated as a human, then these chimps surely should too.

All you learn from torturing animals

[Anonymous Coward]

is better ways to torture animals.

I eat dogs and cats to be more consistent than you

[0xdeadbeef]

I wonder what the intersection is between the people complaining about this and the people who want to do active SETI, aka "METI".

Because we're all fucked if the aliens you alert to our existence share your conveniently simplistic notion of personhood. They'll most likely be further beyond us than we are to our higher primate cousins.

I mean, do you people even believe in evolution? Or do you believe in souls and animals not having them and all that claptrap?

It's also a rational assumption that we'll develop some form of strong AI eventually, even if it requires the complete simulation of human brains. You don't have to drink the Singularity kool-aid to know where that leads. If I were you I'd be a little more circumspect about promoting a worldview that would discard your grandchildren as dumb meaty animals.

Why just great apes?

[Akaihiryuu]

What's this obsession with giving great apes more legal rights, but not other animals. Why not cats, or dolphins?

Bad Summary by sciencehabit

[rubycodez]

Neither the judge nor any court has recognized any right or personhood of any animal, merely a hearing was called. There are zero legal implications for non-human primates in that action. Summary was written by agenda-driven person

Effectively recognizes?

[prgrmr]

Effectively for whom?

Because they are smarter

[bussdriver]

How about by genetics?
The DNA between a male ape and a male human is so small it's almost the same amount as the difference between the genders! A great deal of fighting was done just to admit women as equals and that hasn't been won worldwide and nobody seems to treat them as equals yet...

Point is, genetically they are really close to an accepted group (majority actually) which wasn't recognized in the past.

Dolphins only have our brain size; their brains are full of fat. literally. the ocean temperature's impact on submerged body temperature is extremely great compared to the wind. They need fat heads for temperature stability since analog brains function around the influence of environmental factors like temperature impacting all those massively parallel chemical reactions. Your body does a great deal to maintain brain temperature so it can function not because neurons are so much weaker.

Re:Because they are smarter

[Dcnjoe60]

The DNA between a male ape and a male human is so small it's almost the same amount as the difference between the genders! A great deal of fighting was done just to admit women as equals and that hasn't been won worldwide and nobody seems to treat them as equals yet...

The difference, depending on how one looks at it is around 4%. Of course, a sea cucumber is about 10%. That is because most of the DNA is involved with things like cell division, and processing cellular functions, etc. Now, if you look at just the portion of DNA that makes an ape an ape and a human a human, the difference is far larger.

The DNA argument is a bit like saying that visible light and ultraviolet light are basically almost the same thing, just different wavelengths of electromagnetic spectrum. That would be true. On the otherhand, you might want to think twice about standing under a UV-C bulb versus a standard incandescent.

Re:Because they are smarter

[bussdriver]

Perhaps I wasn't strong enough in my phrasing:

The difference between a male ape and a male human is so small it is almost the same distance between a MALE HUMAN and a FEMALE HUMAN! No kidding, go look it up.

That is the reason I brought up DNA in the first place. The difference is not as great as it seems when you consider the DNA variation within the human species and the obvious place to look is the genders (which is an average, one could probably increase it more by finding the most opposite two humans of opposite genders and seeing just how big a gap you can find to approach the male primate gap.)

The % means little without a contextual reference point and since we only care about humans, the starting point is to find the widest range of human variability. If any two humans are equal, therefore one can make a DNA based argument based around an ape which fits within a smaller DNA delta... or really close to that delta. Obviously, one would have to set bounds on species allowed for that kind of threshold induction.

I was just aiming for a quantitative argument; qualitatively, animal studies already prove ape cognitive skills are equivalent to small human children. We do not do experiments on the severely mentally retarded who are unable to develop further than an ape. It is a much more "fuzzy" debate.

Habeas Corpus (not "Habeus" Corpus")

[robi5]

The summary writer and at least four other equally ignorant fellows here don't know how to spell this 'difficult' word, and dozens quoted them no problem. Not one latin nazi and no IANALs or IAALs. Anecdotal evidence that Slashdot is rotting away?

When can I marry a chimp?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that has been PETA's goal all along.

This is no more insane than usual

[istartedi]

If corporations are people, and the government can sue a suitcase full of cash, then recognizing chimps is really not that big a deal.

Really. The way our legal system behaves, I'm surprised Bonzo didn't get involved earlier. Now go to bed, Bonzo. Good-night...

Later in the day, the verdict was extended to the

[melted]

Later in the day, the verdict was extended to the rest of the bill of rights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Chimps are corporations?

[mveloso]

People mocked the idea that corporations are essentially people. And yet here we are, giving the same rights to chimps.

Re:Chimps are corporations?

[Jane Q. Public]

People mocked the idea that corporations are essentially people. And yet here we are, giving the same rights to chimps.

Point is noted. There isn't much difference between them, so why should one have rights but not the other?

Re:Chimps are corporations?

[Drethon]

The chimps might be smarter collectively...

Re: Chimps are corporations?

[timesuredoesfly]

A corporation is made up of actual people. They simple share liability via 1 ein#. This argument will pose a hypothetical future scenario where humanoid robots(glorified calculator ones) could bring up the same issue but the reason would not be for consciousness it would be because people become emotionally attached to them. So elevating status is more of a problem then special consideration for groups, imo.

Ook

[cyberchondriac]

Well, this is good news for the Librarian I guess, though the wizards at UU seem to treat him pretty humanely already anyway.

Natalie Prosin

[MT.LinuxUsr]

Is an idiot. As is the judge.
What the hell has happened to people? How do they come up with this crap?
Common sense is non existent. It's all about how far stupidity can be pushed.
And, apparently, our gov't is just fine with helping it along.

So let me get this straight

[epyT-R]

In an era where human rights (like equality before the law and due process) are being trampled in western countries by radical, emotionally driven agendas, animals somehow deserve habeus corpus? What about the prisoners in Guantanamo bay? Those on secret no-fly lists? The behavior of TLAs? National security letters?

Did peta manage to get a presidential department too?

chimpanzee-personhood

[Anonymous Coward]

The ruling failed. http://news.sciencemag.org/plants-animals/2014/12/chimpanzee-personhood-fails-appeal

vegetarian dictatorship

[firewood]

Next, they figure out a way for all the cows, pigs, chickens and turkeys to sue over their confinement and death sentences before being sent to your local grocer.

After that all the indoor cat people will be forced to let fluffy out in the street to get run over, or killed by raccoons.

In the end the ants, termites and cockroaches will re-take the planet for themselves. Death to all human slavers.

Gitmo(tm) brought to you by the GOP

[Tenebrousedge]

Why bother lying about Gitmo? I mean, yes, it's useful as an extraterritorial prison, but attributing its continued existence to Obama is bizarrely counterfactual.

Obama issued orders to close Gitmo in 2009. Congress fought back with appropriations bills. The GOP has been and continues to be hugely critical and combative with Obama's attempts to close the detention camp. Romney was openly supportive of it, and a Republican Senator has said the Gitmo detainees can "rot in hell". Are you just completely ignorant of everything that has happened until this point, or are you arguing the President should just ignore the law, Congress, Republicans, and 53% of the country and close it anyway?

Re:Gitmo(tm) brought to you by the GOP

[tlambert]

Why bother lying about Gitmo? I mean, yes, it's useful as an extraterritorial prison, but attributing its continued existence to Obama is bizarrely counterfactual.

Obama issued orders to close Gitmo in 2009. Congress fought back with appropriations bills.

Which Obama then signed into law in order to obtain the powers granted the executive branch under Patriot II.

Just order everyone the hell out, and it won't matter what's in the appropriations bills, will it? As soon as the detainees hit U.S. soil, it's game over as far as denying them constitutional rights.

Utter Baloney

[johnwerneken]

I suppose we COULD decide to grant some other less capable life form status as a legal person, but I doubt we ever will. Only crazy people support putting anything other than the interests of human beings, over the interest of even a single human being. Let's experiment on and vivisect the animal rights lunatics, that judge included.

H1-B?

[Dcnjoe60]

Well, if these chimps are persons under the law, then I assume they are here on an H1-B visa and are reporting and paying their taxes based on the housing and food allowance they receive at their employer's place of business. If not, they should be locked up for tax evasion. Likewise, the university in question, I am sure, is paying the employer's share of FICA/Medicare and has verified their I-9 status.

As silly as all of that sounds, if one is a person under the law, then one must comply with all of the laws.

Re:H1-B?

[david_thornley]

Some chimps are born in the US, and therefore don't need visas. If they're human, yes, they need to pay taxes, but the housing and food allowance may be too low to require filing income taxes (I don't know about FICA). They are accountable for any illegal actions they commit. If old enough, they have the right to get married, and I know of no laws that would require it be to another chimp.

Incorrect headline

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the actual stories on this, they explain that the Judge has simply called for a hearing on the subject. And it's not the first time a Judge has done so. And in every other case, the Judge subsequently dismissed.

Goverment entitlements

[nbritton]

How long before they're eligible for Social Security Supplemental Security Income?

IQ Match

[Anonymous Coward]

The Judge must have concluded that the chimp had the same IQ as him, so it must be his equal.

Ook!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ook and Eek want their day in court! If they can sign, then they should be able to testify...

CEO animals

[Tablizer]

We certainly have Corporate Chimphood.