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[Carrie McLaren <carrie AT stayfreemagazine.org>]

Is a Chimp a "Person" with a Legal Right to a Lawyer?

By DAVID BANK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

April 25, 2002

MESA, Ariz. -- Simba has had a good life since he retired from the 
Ice Capades more than two decades ago. The 31-year-old chimpanzee 
lives here with five other chimps in a clean enclosure shaded from 
the desert sun. For lunch, he eats half a melon, six oranges, a bunch 
of spinach and a head of lettuce. His caregivers cater to his 
fondness for Pavarotti. His teeth are cleaned every six months.

At any moment, however, Simba could be yanked from this home provided 
by the Primate Foundation of Arizona and sent to a laboratory as a 
subject for medical research.

It sounds as if he could use a lawyer. More and more legal reformers 
think so. They are pressing to give chimpanzees legal standing -- 
specifically, the ability to have suits filed in their names and to 
ask courts to protect their interests. Chimpanzees couldn't take such 
action on their own, of course, but animal-rights advocates say 
judges could appoint a human "guardian ad litem," or guardian at law, 
to represent a chimp, much as judges now appoint such guardians to 
represent children in abuse cases or mentally incompetent adults.

The Chimpanzee Collaboratory, a new, national coalition of research 
and advocacy groups, has drafted model legislation to allow nonprofit 
groups to petition courts to act as guardians for any chimpanzee 
"subjected to the willful use of force or violence upon its body." 
Members of the coalition have received a total of $1 million over the 
past two years from the foundation of Rob Glaser, chief executive of 
RealNetworks Inc., a Seattle software company.

The advocates of granting legal standing to chimps have gained 
support from constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law 
School professor. Mr. Tribe argues that the leap isn't as great as it 
might appear: Courts recognize corporations as juristic, or legal, 
"persons"; that is, they enjoy and are subject to legal rights and 
duties.

"The whole status of animals as things is what needs to be 
rethought," says Mr. Tribe. "Nonhuman animals certainly can be given 
standing."

In legal terms, animals are "things," that is, they don't possess 
rights on their own. The push is to extend the legal definition of 
"persons" to Pan troglodytes, the species closest to man.


With legal standing, chimpanzee plaintiffs could seek injunctions 
against researchers, Hollywood animal trainers and operators of 
roadside attractions who might harm them physically or 
psychologically. They might seek compensatory damages to cover 
medical expenses or to provide for a comfortable retirement. Punitive 
damages might even be levied on those who deny chimps their basic 
rights.

Steven Wise, a lecturer at Harvard and author of "Rattling the Cage," 
a 2000 manifesto for chimpanzee rights, says the animals are more 
like our children than our property. It isn't just the 98.7% of DNA 
the two species have in common. Like Homo sapiens, chimps have 
complex social interactions, use tools and teach their offspring 
distinctive cultural traits. With sign language, some chimps seem to 
be able to communicate at about the level of a three- or 
four-year-old child.

"If a human four-year-old has what it takes for legal personhood, 
then a chimpanzee should be able to be a legal person in terms of 
legal rights," Mr. Wise says.

Outright abuse is already illegal. The federal Animal Welfare Act 
requires "a physical environment adequate to promote the 
psychological well-being of primates." But because chimps currently 
lack legal standing, advocates say it is difficult to compel the 
Department of Agriculture to enforce the law.

"Our culture is much more interested in protecting animals than our 
laws are," says Cass Sunstein, a prominent law professor at the 
University of Chicago who supports the appointment of legal guardians 
for animals as a way to bolster enforcement. "The lawsuits are just 
beginning," he says.

One reason for the interest is that there are so many chimps in 
captivity. Chimpanzees were bred aggressively in the 1980s for AIDS 
research but proved to be too similar to humans for testing 
treatments and vaccines: It also took years for them to get sick 
after exposure to the HIV virus. Chimpanzees continue to have a role 
in research on hepatitis, malaria and other diseases, but because 
they are expensive and difficult to manage, few are used. Since 1997, 
the National Institutes of Health has imposed a moratorium on 
breeding.

That has left in limbo many of the 1,500 captive chimpanzees, who can 
live 50 years or more. Congress in 2000 passed the Chimpanzee Health 
Improvement, Maintenance and Protection -- or CHIMP -- Act, which 
provided financing for a few chimp sanctuaries for fully retired 
chimps. Others, such as Simba and most of the 74 other chimps housed 
here, are available for research if the need arises.

The pharmaceutical industry's lobbying group in Washington opposes 
legal standing for chimps to stop what it sees as a broader effort to 
end all animal research.

"The chimpanzee example is the beginning of what we view as a 
slippery slope," says Frankie Trull, president of the National 
Association for Biomedical Research. "What concerns us is the 
increasingly litigious nature of those who believe that no animal 
should be used for any reason."

Mr. Wise has publicized the case of Jerom, a 13-year-old chimpanzee 
who he says died alone in 1996 in a windowless box at a research 
facility in Atlanta after being infected with several strains of HIV 
virus. In a speech in Boston and a later law-review article, Mr. 
Tribe agreed, "Clearly, Jerom was enslaved."

But Mr. Tribe says there's no need for constitutional protections on 
that score. The 13th Amendment already forbids slavery. Mr. Tribe 
notes that nowhere does it state that only humans are covered; the 
status itself is forbidden, he argues. Likewise, the Eighth Amendment 
bars cruel and unusual punishment. Legal standing for chimpanzees 
could make it easier, not harder, for courts to balance conflicting 
interests, he says.

"Recognizing that a being is entitled to being treated with respect, 
not wanton cruelty, and an eye to its own flourishing by no means 
translates into an absolute right, an absolute veto, over any 
possible use of that entity to save a human life, or achieve a higher 
goal," says Mr. Tribe. In other words using chimps for medical 
research would remain possible.

At the Primate Foundation, where Simba lives, the chimpanzees' care 
is largely paid for by medical-research funds. Jo Fritz, the 
director, has taken in more than 100 chimpanzees abandoned by pet 
owners or declared surplus by zoos or medical labs since 1969. She 
kept the first three chimps, retired from an animal act, in cages in 
a downtown Phoenix apartment. Then she moved to a former chicken 
farm. She nearly went broke before getting research money from the 
National Institutes of Health to help build a $4 million facility in 
a converted hydroelectric plant just beyond the suburban sprawl.

Ms. Fritz says her ability to provide quality care is worth the 
tradeoff of the chimps' possible use in research. Ms. Fritz is 
scornful of animal-rights activists who oppose all invasive 
procedures. Chimps under her care are anesthetized every six months 
so veterinarians can perform complete physicals, including blood 
tests and teeth cleaning. She is equally dismissive of those who 
would entangle chimpanzees in the legal system, when what they really 
need are dedicated caregivers.

"They don't need guardians. We're all guardians here," she says. "I 
am so against legal rights for these chimpanzees."

Simba's ice-skating career, which took him to Japan and the "Donny 
and Marie Show," ended before he was seven years old. His trainers 
claimed he had become hostile toward women. Now he spends much of 
each day banging his feet against the steel mesh of his cage in a 
distinctive rhythm his caregivers surmise he learned in his 
performing days. Simba calms down as soon as he hears the opening 
bars of Pavarotti singing "O Sole Mio." Recently, Ms. Fritz invited a 
24-piece orchestra from Arizona State University to perform for the 
chimps.

Write to David Bank at david.bank AT wsj.com

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