Let Great Apes be Apes

The world of animal liberation continues to buzz with the potential that Spain will soon grant human-type rights to great apes. I weigh in on this issue in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, by pointing out that not only do animal not understand the concept of rights, but that granting rights to animals would cause tremendous harm to humans, both by preventing crucial medical research and undermining our self-concept as the world’s most important species—from which flows the drive to enact universal human rights and our distinctly human duty to treat other animals humanely. Check it out.