
Lab chimps were dumped on Liberia's Monkey Island – their caretaker saved them - tomohawk
https://www.greenwichtime.com/news/article/U-S-lab-chimps-were-dumped-on-Liberia-s-Monkey-14901091.php
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ajna91
The title should note that they were saved from starvation.

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dang
We've added the bit about the caretaker.

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ghostly_s
> Chimp testing doesn't happen anymore. They hate to be cooped up. They laugh,
> cry, get jealous and have temper tantrums - "just like us," Thomas said.

Um, this is very much not true. Maybe they meant "doesn't happen here?"

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smokey_the_bear
I was hoping for a rats of nimh situation

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hyperion2010
Don't know if you did this on purpose, but it got a good chuckle out of me
because the NIMH has quite a few lab rats.

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lonelappde
That's why Rats of NIMH are named as such.

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hyperion2010
Now there's something that went of my head as a child when I read the books.

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xvector
Controversial opinion: I find it kind of sad that on one hand most people get
entirely up in arms about animal abuse, but on the other hand they eat food
constructed from the cruelty of the meat industry, which exacts far greater
torture on billions of animals every year.

If you kick a puppy in front of your coworkers at lunch (please don't), they
will absolutely freak out, while continuing to eat fish or sausage or beef or
whatever. And it's taboo to discuss this hypocrisy because apparently food is
sacred. Can't criticize someone's "personal choice" in today's society no
matter how much harm and pain it causes.

For hundreds of years, social progress has been about realizing equality
amongst conscious beings. Why is it so hard for people to realize this?
Instead we have had incremental widening of rights: African Americans, women,
LGBTQ+, - no, it's about the right to life and equality for conscious beings
at the core. When you treat it like this, you realize how much of what we're
doing is fucked up.

I guess it's true what they say: one death is a crime, a million deaths is a
statistic.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic. But I feel like if benevolent aliens ever visited
Earth, and saw how we torture and murder other life forms on the planet, we'd
be the first ones they'd wipe out. Moral calculus would demand it.

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colechristensen
When you're several generations away from needing to take life yourself to eat
and survive or knowing personally the person who did it for you... you lose
touch with what it means to eat something which was alive, often something you
cared for.

Every life ends. Clinging to, and insisting others cling to every possible
moment to extend that existence seems to be the default, but people don't take
the time to think this through.

I do not have a problem with a life ending to feed me instead of ending
because of long lived degradation or disease. I do not have a problem with a
life ended with a bad moment caused by me or someone on behalf of me. This is
what it is to be alive. You either consume something which lived or you rely
on others that do in some form or another.

I do have a problem with eating things which have a consciousness near my own.
I do have a problem with eating things which endured a life of hardship and
torture on my account. I do have a problem with torturing animals to do
scientific testing, more so as consciousness reaches a level nearing my own.

My moral calculus values life and consciousness, but does not preclude me
participating in the end of life to sustain myself.

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koboll
The parent comment is not arguing we shouldn't kill any _living_ things, only
that we shouldn't kill _conscious_ things.

You obviously need to participate in ending life to sustain yourself, but it's
_not_ necessary to end life capable of thinking, feeling, and suffering.

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ekianjo
Serious question: how do you feel about conscious animals in the wild killing
and eating each other's?

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koboll
We don't have the capability or will currently to do much about it in a way
that won't devastate the food chain, and thus the environment. So while it's
sad and unfortunate, there's not much we can or should do about it, on a mass
scale. If I personally stumbled upon a (small, not threatening to me) predator
attacking a prey animal, I would personally intervene.

This seems pretty intuitive. I think most people have roughly the same
mindset.

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geuis
Where can people donate now to support them?

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voxic11
Google turned up
[https://www.humanesociety.org/liberiasanctuary](https://www.humanesociety.org/liberiasanctuary)

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EdwardDiego
> By 2015, as the Ebola virus ravaged the country, the New York Blood Center
> notified the Liberian government that it could "no longer divert funds from
> its important lifesaving mission here at home," a spokeswoman said in a
> recent statement.

Imagine being that spokeswoman, speaking such monstrous words.

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harimau777
In what sense do you mean? It seems reasonable that the money might be better
used saving people than feeding monkeys.

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EdwardDiego
It's certainly effective, but "hey, so, we're going to let a lot of
chimpanzees we made dependent on us starve, so we can save human lives"
certainly isn't moral. At the very least pay for them to be euthanized.

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EpicEng
Which outweighs helping humans with that same money?

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loopz
This is what budgets are used for.

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EpicEng
To... formally allocate money where it's most needed? Agreed. That is what a
budget is for.

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loopz
Needed for who and what purposes? This is why budgets get sort of fixed,
unless something need constant neglect.

