Primatology.net

Remember when I talked about the current state of using chimpanzee’s in biomedical research? If not, let me refresh your memory. About five months ago, I over-viewed the reasons as to why the United States is not using chimps as a model organism in biomedical research. At the core of it all, the issue for the moratorium was not as much ethical as it was more fiscal. I wish the NIH also took a stance in regards to the other issues, such as the ethics, in this situation.

Ever since 1995, research chimps have been prevented from breeding. A final decision has been made by the National Institutes of Health that chimpanzees will no longer be breed for research, according to Reuters. Kathleen Conlee of the Humane Society has commented on the issue,

“This decision is a huge step towards a day when chimpanzees are no longer used in invasive biomedical research and testing.

This will spare some chimpanzees a life of up to 60 years in a laboratory. While it doesn’t help chimpanzees already living in laboratories, it is a monumental decision.

Our ultimate goal is to put an end (to) the use of chimpanzees in research and retire those chimpanzees to permanent and appropriate sanctuary.”

I’ve mentioned in the previous posts where I covered this debate that I’ve always been a bit torn about using chimps in research. Often, they are kept in cages and scrutinized to invasive surgeries and treatments. By no means is the research done on them humane, especially since I know the psychological and emotional capacities of chimpanzees first hand.

However, I also know that chimps used in biomedical research aren’t thought of as disposable beings. They are used as important and valuable models to help understand very serious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and cancer. While it’s not ethically just to subjugate a being to torture, it is not right to abandon hope for treating terminal illnesses. I wish it really didn’t need to be reduced down to a issue of the lesser of two evils, but that’s how many people see it. It will forever remain a polarizing topic to me.

Going back to the news I’m sharing with you, I am happy to report that the governing body, a faction of the NIH, isn’t gonna just neglect the remaining research chimps. They say they are commitmented to maintaining the existing chimpanzee facilities, including the federal sanctuary for chimpanzees that are no longer needed in biomedical research.

Remember when, I asked y’all about great ape human rights, and brought up how Austrian courts will judge on it earlier this month?

I’ve been keeping track of this news, and caught a News @ Nature piece titled, “Chimp denied a legal guardian,” which reports that,

“An Austrian judge turned down a request this week to appoint a woman as legal guardian of a chimpanzee.”

I bet you are confused, as I was initially reading this opening line. After the post I shared with you earlier this month, I was under the impression that Austrian judges would be deciding something more theoretical than an actually case of guardianship. The article clarifies the situation,

“…Association Against Animal Factories (VGT) earlier this year went to court in an attempt to name a legal guardian for Hiasl (pronounced Hee-sel), who was taken in 1982 from western Africa with several other young chimps. The chimps were to be shipped to a research laboratory, but did not have proper documentation and were intercepted by customs officials, according to Martin Balluch, president of the VGT. Two of them, Hiasl and Rosi, ended up at the Vienna Animal Protection Shelter.

Balluch says they are worried that the shelter may no longer be able to afford to keep Hiasl and Rosi, and his group wants to ensure the chimps do not end up in a zoo or a laboratory. “If they are sent outside of Austria, then anything could happen to them,” he says.

The VGT decided the best strategy was to seek a legal guardian for Hiasl, and then, if they won, use that as legal precedent to appoint a legal guardian for Rosi and other chimps in Austria, Balluch says.

In the lawsuit, Paula Stibbe, a UK citizen living in Austria and in regular contact with Hiasl since 1999, was put forward to be Hiasl’s guardian. Stibbe, who still visits Hiasl regularly, says: “I consider him a friend. He greets me with kisses, hugs.”"

After reading about the details of the case, I’m a bit let down Hiasl didn’t get granted a legal guardian to preside over him because both Paula & Balluch seem to be truly invested in the welfare of him. But the judge ruled to not support legal guardianship of the chimp because she was worried her ruling may ‘create the public perception that humans with court-appointed legal guardians are at the same level as animals,’ which is generally the opinion I expressed before. Paula can still protect Hiasl.

The article goes on to discuss how this ruling carries out into the larger debate about primate rights.

But don’t let my bias sway your own personal opinion on the issue. Please check out the organization called the Great Ape Project, the one that is driving forward this global discussion on primate rights… and decide for yourself with this tricky moral issue.

Exactly two weeks ago, I was standing in the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico reading the latest Discover magazine interview with Jane Goodall. I was thoroughly captivated but it didn’t warrant me to spend the outrageously inflated airport prices for the magazine. I’m glad to share that Discover has put up the interview up on their site.

The interview answers a lot of basic questions about Jane Goodall’s research and life history with the chimpanzee’s of Gombe, with a lot of attention towards violence and behavior, as well as conservation efforts. There are some questions that make me wanna shake my head in embarrassment that a journalist would ask that. But I appreciate the following quote, because as you may have noticed, I’m currently involved in correcting a lot of reductionist misconceptions about non-human primates and their relates to humans:

“What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language. Chimps have something like the beginning of morality, but once you have language—once you can discuss something and talk about it in the abstract and take lessons from the past and plan for the future—that is what makes the difference.”

For those aspiring female primatologists out there, Jane also gives an insight into her life as a female scientist.

And here is a photo of Jane with Flint as a baby:

Last night, I caught news that Brazilian courts are considering giving chimpanzees human rights, and following suite, Austria may as well give non-human great apes human rights. This may sound alright and dandy, maybe even give some empathy and fuel towards the conservation effort of Great Apes, but I don’t like this news one bit.

Why you ask?

Well, I don’t feel like summarizing my arguments that I announced a year ago, around the very same time, when the government of Spain issued a bill which called for human rights to other primates… but you can read my comments here. Even recently, in this forum thread, I have argued that non-human primates are not humans.

Humans and other primates do share an evolutionary history, but we are not the same, and I feel that part of the problem with these human rights bills for primates, is that many people have a misconception that primates are our direct ancestors, where we share a monophyletic lineage, which is not completely true.

Don’t get me wrong, I do want to see conditions improve for primates both in the wild and in capitivity, but I do not feel that by giving them rights that will do anything. Maybe violators of these ‘human rights’ placed on primates might be brought to justice… but my gut feeling is that this is all a misdirected effort.

How do you feel about this? Should primates have human rights? If so, which primates… and how does one choose?

Personally, I have my own beef with sociobiology a.k.a. evolutionary psychology. I have yet to see it venture from a story telling, subjective science. But my issues don’t prevent me from acknowledging and respecting progressive work done in this subfield of behavioral studies and primatology.

I don’t know where Nick Wade truly stands about sociobiology, but I can tell he generally shares my sentiments on appreciating this issue, because he has eloquently summarized the work of Frans de Waal in his new article in the New York Times. I trust that you can tell what the topic and the scope of article is by reading the title, “Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior.”

At its core, this article is useful because it outlines the four basic behaviors for sociality, empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking. If you think about it, our social structure is founded on it, and based off of years of Frans’ observations of chimps, macaques, and rhesus monkeys these traits exist to some degree in non-human primates.

Dr. de Waal makes the tangent that human morality has spawned off of primate sociality,

“but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals. “

The article goes on with a discussion on how Frans has stood up to criticism, competing and contrasting theories on the origins of human morality. I also noticed Nick opens talk about the origins and concept of religion, something I talked about here. But aside from the intricate subtopics, at the very minimum this article also provides us with some insight on why some of us study primate behavior…. even if it is story telling.

I’m curious to open this thread up to a discussion of how and where we think we developed our sense of morality? Is morality a behavioral trait inherited from our evolutionary relatives? Or is our morality a bi-product of our human only cultures? What do you think? Is there a grey area between these two? Can we ever truly find out where morality originated?