MONKEY BUSINESS :

Will chimps make chumps of us in court? : Comes now, plaintiff Bonzo, in the matter of Bonzo v. Researchers (SOLVEIG TORVIK, April 30, 2002, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)

[N]one other than the esteemed constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe has stood up more or less foursquare for granting chimps legal rights to sue in their own names and petition courts to protect their interests. The chimps would get a court-appointed guardian ad litem. [...]

"The whole status of animals as things is what needs to be rethought," Tribe told The Wall Street Journal. "Non-human animals certainly can be given (legal) standing." He contends, for example, that nothing in the Constitution says that the 13th Amendment forbidding slavery applies only to humans.

You'd think Mr. Tribe might reconsider his opposition to extending legal standing to humans before he moves on to monkeys. Here's a question for you : will these primates eventually be entitled to the same organ transplants, harvested from not-quite human beings, that the clonophiles imagine for the rest of us? Posted by Orrin Judd at April 30, 2002 7:02 AM