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Animal rights activists want a 26-year-old Austrian chimp named Hiasl declared a "person" so that he may own property and receive donations to help keep him alive.
Hope he's ready to pay taxes, too.
Turns out a handful of countries are considering declaring apes as people.
This raises all sorts of issues: Some countries might consider apes humans but we don't guarantee the same right to fetuses .... hmmm. Would we no longer have the right to put apes in cages? And if one of them throws its own poop at a human, would it be charged with assault?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070504/ap_on_re_eu/chimp_challenge
From AP: Austria isn't the only country where primate rights are being debated. Spain's parliament is considering a bill that would endorse the Great Ape Project, a Seattle-based international initiative to extend "fundamental moral and legal protections" to apes.
If Hiasl gets a guardian, "it will be the first time the species barrier will have been crossed for legal 'personhood,'" said Jan Creamer, chief executive of Animal Defenders International, which is working to end the use of primates in research.
Paula Stibbe, a Briton who teaches English in Vienna, petitioned a district court to be Hiasl's legal trustee. On April 24, Judge Barbara Bart rejected her request, ruling Hiasl didn't meet two key tests: He is neither mentally impaired nor in an emergency.
Although Bart expressed concern that awarding Hiasl a guardian could create the impression that animals enjoy the same legal status as humans, she didn't rule that he could never be considered a person.
Martin Balluch, who heads the Association Against Animal Factories, has asked a federal court for a ruling on the guardianship issue.
"Chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA with humans," he said. "OK, they're not homo sapiens. But they're obviously also not things — the only other option the law provides."
Hope he's ready to pay taxes, too.
Turns out a handful of countries are considering declaring apes as people.
This raises all sorts of issues: Some countries might consider apes humans but we don't guarantee the same right to fetuses .... hmmm. Would we no longer have the right to put apes in cages? And if one of them throws its own poop at a human, would it be charged with assault?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070504/ap_on_re_eu/chimp_challenge
From AP: Austria isn't the only country where primate rights are being debated. Spain's parliament is considering a bill that would endorse the Great Ape Project, a Seattle-based international initiative to extend "fundamental moral and legal protections" to apes.
If Hiasl gets a guardian, "it will be the first time the species barrier will have been crossed for legal 'personhood,'" said Jan Creamer, chief executive of Animal Defenders International, which is working to end the use of primates in research.
Paula Stibbe, a Briton who teaches English in Vienna, petitioned a district court to be Hiasl's legal trustee. On April 24, Judge Barbara Bart rejected her request, ruling Hiasl didn't meet two key tests: He is neither mentally impaired nor in an emergency.
Although Bart expressed concern that awarding Hiasl a guardian could create the impression that animals enjoy the same legal status as humans, she didn't rule that he could never be considered a person.
Martin Balluch, who heads the Association Against Animal Factories, has asked a federal court for a ruling on the guardianship issue.
"Chimps share 99.4 percent of their DNA with humans," he said. "OK, they're not homo sapiens. But they're obviously also not things — the only other option the law provides."
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