The Great Ape Project: Premises and Implications

Is it consistent to accept ethical constraints on scientific research when humans are involved, and to reject them when it comes to non-humans? Is the current scientific practice of experimenting on sentient animals a “necessary evil” which must simply be tolerated, or is it an indefensible practice stemming from arbitrary discrimination based on species? These are some of the questions we address in this paper, in order to illustrate the implications for scientific experimentation of the first attempt to grant to some non-human beings the basic rights which have so far been limited to members of our own species. Resulting from the recent rethinking on the moral status of animals, this attempt revolves around the collective argument for the enfranchisement of chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans that, together with a distinguished group of scientists and philosophers, we have presented in The Great Ape Project. We draw from this volume some of the evidence that ethologists, language researchers, psychologists and anthropologists have gathered in favour of the attribution to the other great apes of many of the characteristics we traditionally consider to be morally significant when we find them in ourselves. After stressing the relevance of a species-neutral notion of person in the actual philosophical debate, we highlight the overwhelming case for its application, in both the moral and the legal senses, to the other great apes. While, on a general level, this would lead to the inclusion of our closest living relatives in the sphere of equality, as far as the practice of experimentation is concerned, it would result in extending to them those very restrictions which at present apply to scientific research on humans.