A chimp is not a person… period!
Calvin posted this on May 11th 2007 at 14:25 under Environment, Wildlife
Animal rights activists in Austria are trying to get a chimpanzee called Hiasl legally declared a person in a case that could set a global legal precedent for granting rights to apes.
In an article called Activists Want Chimp Declared a ‘Person’ on environmental news website ENN.com, Eberhart Theuer, a lawyer leading the legal challenge on behalf of the Association Against Animal Factories said: “Our main argument is that Hiasl is a person and has basic legal rights.”
While the underlying aim is laudable the struggle to assign the essentially human label of “person” to a chimp strikes me as bizarre. By all means fight for “apes rights” under the law — get chimpanzees entitlements in their own right, but don’t try and assign human status to them.
To be honest, given our track record, I doubt any self-respecting ape would want to be labelled human, given the choice!
Technorati Tags: chimpanzee, animal rights, wildlife, environment
