Dear Editor,
Ed Yong, author of “Of Primates and Personhood” writes an informative article on according rights and dignity to nonhuman organisms and how there should be a halt in research. Yong continuously asks his readers if great apes deserve rights to legally become a person and if so don’t other animals deserve the same right. Great apes should not be allowed to legally become a person. “I do think we have special obligations to the great apes as our closest relatives, but if we give rights to apes, what would be the compelling reasons not to give rights to monkeys, dogs, rats,and so on.” If we give great apes legal rights to become a person shouldn’t we be giving other animals rights too.
Animals should not be used for harmful experiments, but at the same time animals should not have human rights. Ultimately, evolution will advance and great apes will eventually start to breakthrough and be at the same intellectual level as humans. Humans were at some point monkeys too and look at where we are today. It is just a matter of time before great apes catch up with us on the evolutionary train. Great apes deserve our respect, as all animals do, but at some time we as humans should know when we are being cruel to animals. “All creatures that can feel pain should have a basic moral status.” Animals should not have to participate in any harmful experiments, but if at some point the experiment will help them then it is a possibility.
Yong writes about how there is now a law that requires animal owners to keep social species in groups of two or more and I completely agree with this statement. Animals from the wild work better in groups, as do house animals. This is about the only part of this article that I agree with. Animals deserve respect not human rights. What’s next? Are we going to allow animals to drive cars? Vote? One little action like giving animals legal human rights will lead to things like this. We all know that animals are not capable of these...