"By denying chimps some basic rights"

Remember first we are talking about rights, not considerations or protections and that we aren't talking about SOME we are talking about equating them to a human being. That means chimps born in the US are citizens for example, have the right to marry, to vote, killing one is murder, putting one in a zoo is kidnapping, they have a right to trial, etc.

But your logic isn't sound. Either the humanzee is a distinct species, in which case whether or not we recognize chimps as having equal rights as humans will neither grant nor deny humanzees those rights or it is seen a hybrid of two species and not a distinct species, in which case it will inherit rights from it's human parent.

It would still be logical to group all creatures which our offspring as human derivatives with human rights while denying everything not our offspring.

I've never met a Chiman (it's sort of like if a white guy and a black girl have a baby, the white people call it black and the black people call it white, so the chimps would call the offspring a Humanzee, we'd call it a Chiman). So I reserve judgement on what level of consideration or protections I'd support for one but I wouldn't favor considering one to have human rights. I'm confident the Chiman will reserve for itself the right to disagree and just like the Chimp, I welcome its counterarguments.

"Why do you think this is at all hypocritical?"

Lab A tests on animals. Lab B sells cruelty free products.

Hypocrite wants to continue to use cosmetics but not support the animal testing needed to make sure those products won't hurt them. The result is not that as soon as Lab B spawns nothing new comes up. Nor is it that Lab B tests on people, that would be too great a risk. Instead, Lab A continues to test on animals and Lab B reads the results of their testing and produces cosmetics based on the results of Lab A's testing.

Even if Lab B was genuinely making products without testing rather than utilizing the results of Lab A's research, you won't find these activists stepping up to be the ones to test them. As soon as one of those cruelty free consumers got skin cancer from their untested skin cream they'd be chomping at the bit to sue. They would be right to do so, not testing on animals first is a foolhardy and reckless risk to take with human health and life.

"Is that a firm enough beginning to justify having the argument?"

Not really. That is certainly a good case for not being short sighted in our assessment of self-interest. But what does ecological interdependence have to do with granting equal legal rights to non-humans as are granted to humans?

Which part of the ecologic balance will be disrupted if we don't convict people of manslaughter when they accidentally hit a deer in the woods? Which part of the ecosystem is helped by no longer imprisoning endangered species in preserves, zoos, and/or biospheres?

"So 'shaitand', you're telling us that the psychopaths in that video are somehow BETTER than their victims?"

I don't recall saying anything remotely like that. I said they are humans and that I'm a human and therefore I choose what is best for me, my family, and my species. It simply isn't beneficial for my species to create the foundation of a reality where someone could suggest a person who killed a creature that exists to provide food for myself and my family should be put in prison or executed.

How can a cow be a victim? You can't commit a crime against a cow. Especially a farm animal, it wouldn't even have a life to make miserable if we weren't planning to slaughter it and eat it. It only exists because we do so. I'd stop someone needlessly harming an animal but I once stopped I don't support any kind of consequence. I'm going to eat that cow later and not feel the slightest guilt for doing so. Surely killing and eating the cow is a greater offense than anything else you'd do to it. And if you judge me for that you are wishing the cow had never had a life at all.

"reductio ad absurdum via race, clan and family in pure sociopathy."

Nonsense. Race (as the term is typically used) does not refer to any actual scientifically based genetic lineage, whereas species does. Clan again is not a scientifically based objective criteria for selection. Family can be and I'm confident most would, given a choice between having their family be subject to risks or others take those risks, have the others take the risks.

"YMMV, but I find that a rather more satisfying rationale than "the only basis needed is self interest."

Yes, my mileage certainly varies. You invoke sociopathy and then refer to a rationale based not on an objective reality but rather a cold legal technicality as satisfying.

Lets simplify this for everyone else. Last I checked there are two forms of sociopaths who have rights. Humans who are sociopaths and have done nothing wrong and corporations. Self-interest would dictate that the humans who are basically like Spock should have the rights as other humans but that corporations should not. Your rational would dictate that both the humans and the corporation (which exists only on paper) should have equal rights.

So, who among us believes a person should be given the death penalty or put in prison for an attempt to "kill" a corporation?

"They're capable of experiencing degrees of emotional suffering and trauma that a comparable to humans."

So are birds, Dolphins, cats, even dogs to a limited degree. What all these other creatures have in common is that they are not in fact humans.

The problem with this chain of logic is that it clings to the idea that we should avoid hurting humans because they have greater capacity are special or in some other way are superior to other creatures. Some sea creatures may in fact be our intellectual superiors. The reason is what I stated before, self-interest.

Everyone in the debate has being a human being in common, we should treat humans as special and distinct because 100% of us benefit from doing so. It's the only rationale we can guarantee will stand the test of time. Using inferiority to justify putting ourselves first will fall apart the moment something else is clearly superior. While I might choose not to experiment on alien life of superior intelligence, I would choose alien testing over human testing.

"Where I disagree, is the argument that it is okay to perform painful experiments on animals because it may provide some benefit to future generations. This would justify experimenting on humans as well. Sure, the individual suffers, but think of all the benefits to future generations! "

We DO experiment on humans as well. The experimentation happens regardless, it's just a question of whether or not we test on animals before we subsequently test on humans.

We also hypothesize, crunch a bunch of numbers, build computer models, and test in a tube before we test on animals and we have hierarchy of animals getting ever closer to humans. Each step exists to minimize the overall risk at every step and to make anything that goes wrong happen as far away from our own species or a species similar to us as possible.

But the results of science benefit animals and not just humans. Medical science is used in veterinary care as well as human care. Because of research most cat owners know not use negative reinforcement and needlessly make their cats suffer in futile training techniques, similarly research has led to anti-bark collars that are so effective in training dogs that most stop barking with only a single actual shock that more mild than what is used to stimulate a muscle electronically during rehab after a surgery. The old collars would just shock and shock dogs. Now dogs typically wear a device capable of delivering shocks but after the first day never bark with enough frequency to get shocked, only to hear warning beeps. It seems a little more humane to me, especially to the humans who couldn't sleep or enjoy their lives due to the barking.

  "This is why we value individual rights over species rights."

Yes. Just as we value our individual species over the rights of all species.

I'm not actually saying humans > other species, I'm saying humans > other species TO HUMANS. And I'm confident most of them feel the same away about their own species.

Of course humans are animals. That doesn't mean we shouldn't as a rule put our own species over other species.

"I'd like to do science on you for hours in my basement."

Which is exactly what would happen. Maybe not me or you or in someone's basement. But if you outlaw experimenting on animals the research would be performed on humans instead. Probably prisoners, the mentally ill, or homeless people.

""Doing the science is the right answer every time" is an absurd statement. The risks of experimentation must be balanced with the expected rewards. Or do you think we should resume testing hydrogen bombs by exploding them in random areas where we hope there aren't any people?"

What does that have to do with whether doing the science is the right answer every time? There is no science in testing hydrogen bombs, that's engineering not science, the science is old news. We were also talking about animal testing, that is risking humans not animals. And finally, that doesn't we don't do the science in the way that causes the least damage.

"Was that really worth it to have another confirmation that splitting atoms makes things boom? No, and it was done more for political intimidation tactic than for science."

Exactly. I said doing the science, not doing random crap with no scientific value that someone might call science.

"Probably not much, but at least, "this bomb design is not so flawed that it won't at least sometimes go boom when activated". It was science."

No, that would be engineering.

"Will there be an underground cosmetics market like the illegal drug market if we outlaw potentially unsafe new chemicals in cosmetics and don't allow them to be tested? No, silly, of course not."

I think you seriously underestimate the market in this case. I see no reason this wouldn't be different than treatments that are currently outlawed like human growth hormone therapies and some flavors of plastic surgery. There is ALREADY a thriving black market here.

"We've got plenty of cosmetics and we really don't as a society need anymore."

I think you'll find that women, especially over 40, will disagree with you strongly here.

"Nonsense. The FDA could outlaw any new, untested cosmetics, not have a procedure for testing/approving them, and no one would even blink except some wacko libertarian whiners."

I'm not a "libertarian whiner" but I am opposed to how far the government overreaches into my life. I'd certainly have a problem with this. I don't recall giving my right to decide what I want to ingest, inject, inhale, or apply to my skin to the FDA or to anyone like you who agrees with the FDA making those decisions. Since that authority lies 100% with me 0% of of the people who have a say are in favor of it.

Congress has the authority to empower a FDA that makes sure items are labeled/advertised correctly, manufactured in a safe way, that documentation and education materials are provided, and that they are secured when they actually are sold across state lines. Those fall under the commerce clause and the general welfare. Nothing else the FDA is doing is even actually legal. I doubt many would want to see it expanded.

"Cosmetics are not necessary"

I realize you aren't making the case that we shouldn't test on animals here. But tell that to someone with a hideous scar on their face who can't get a job.

Cosmetics aren't going anywhere so they have to be tested. They aren't tested on animals to find out pretty they make them. They are tested on animals to make sure the chemicals don't have unintended side-effects, this is the same reason we try to test medications on animals before humans. If you take animals out of cosmetics testing you run the risk of humans having serious side-effects from being the test subjects.

In some ways it makes more sense to test cosmetics than drugs on animals. Someone volunteering for a drug trial is probably broken in a way that the drug might fix and the mere concept carries the a generally understood idea of the risk involved. And generally a drug trial is testing only one isolated chemical combined with known non-reactive substances. Participating in a cosmetics trial is something people would consent to thinking it was safe and "just some lipstick" when in reality they the test subject of a compound containing dozens or hundreds of chemicals few if any of which have been tested previously and that have a very high probability of untested interactions even if they have been tested in isolation before.

"Many people would not agree with that."

I think they should ask a chimp in the wild face-to-face.

"But many don't agree that we should blind rabbits to test cosmetics."

And yet they'll still enjoy the benefits. Their cruelty-free products are build on generations of animal testing. If something contained in them is found to be risky it will be tested on animals.

"The only basis needed is self interest. Human Life > Animal Life"
"But no human life is at risk in the case of this chimp."

I'm sorry, were you under the impression that it was possible logically agree with one of those statements and not the other? Well it is possible to agree that the only basis needed is self interest without agreeing human life > animal life. Especially if you aren't a human. But it isn't possible to go the other direction. Nobody said anything about something having to be life and death, all aspects of human life > all aspects of animal life. Also, the animals that had their skin melted off testing cosmetics, saved the skin of not only humans but the next generation of animals being tested on. And since we obviously didn't expect their skin to melt off, we learned something about chemical interactions that might advance the production of rocket fuel 200 years from now and save us from a doomsday event.

You don't pick and choose because you can't anticipate what science is going to be useful for what later on. Doing the science is the right answer every time, it's who you are going to test on, us or them. Would you prefer cosmetics and their potential side-effects be tested on humans? They can say yes but it is impossible to make an informed choice, if it were possible there wouldn't be any testing.

People are resistant to the idea because there is far too much self-interest tied up in it. What are we supposed to do stop eating all plants and animals and eat only one another? Perform all research on humans? Or are we just supposed to skip all the research and instead of a few suffering to gain knowledge that benefits our interaction with all living things forever we condemn everyone whose suffering would have been alleviated by that knowledge?

I was waiting for this. Corporations aren't even real things, just words on paper and we've given them personhood. Chimps would come before corporations in my mind.