They deserve considerations comparable to ourselves. They have a basic right to life and liberty, though obviously in the latter case it should be some kind of protective liberty, like the kind we provide for individual humans who cannot look after themselves. Apes are used as test subjects for AIDS research, the HIV-1 virus having spread from chimps to humans earlier this century. If AIDS scientists were suddenly stripped of a principal research subject, their efforts to create drugs and vaccines would be seriously disrupted, they point out. HIV research would be set back years.
Campaigners are obdurate, nevertheless.
Several countries have outlawed experiments on great apes, including New Zealand and Britain. The important point is that they have got complex emotions and display feelings. We use that as an argument for not experimenting on our fellow human beings, and that is why we should not experiment on chimpanzees or other apes. Their relatedness to us is not the issue. The importance of an animal's self-awareness is also stressed by Goodall.