I feel almost ridiculous replying now, since the thread has moved on so far since, but I will primarily so that I can say the following:
My intention was certainly not to start a flame war, and to be honest I am amazed that my original point was modded flamebait when the post I originally responded to was modded as +3 insightful. Infact, until I reached the part of your comment that became a personal attack on me, I was actually glad to be reading a post that was based on a degree of science, whether right or wrong, rather than human chauvinism.
A. We do if we are trying to learn about the specific conditions that those individuals represent. You learn about Autism by working with autistic children.
I think that you have missed the point with this response, or perhaps so wrapped up in the reply that you almost forgot what the original topic was (which I have done a few times), since there is a big difference between "working with" autistic children, and experimenting on them in the way the animals in the article were to be experimented on.
B. More in line with what you probably intended to get a response to, Humans of any kind make horrible research subjects. The diversity within human groups, even within specific ethnic groups, is orders of magnitude greater than that between 2 strains of rats. That is why much of our biomedical and nutritional research is piloted in animals and only replicated in humans if it seems like the research is going somewhere.
We are indeed a very diverse species, but any research that did not take that into account would be terrible research to begin with, and (perhaps due to my own ignorance) I struggle to believe that there are fewer differences between a rat and the average human than there are between two humans.
I can state with a high degree of certainty that those monkey's that were going to be used for the Anthrax study were subjected to far less fear and pain in their life than most humans. I've worked with primates (in a behavior lab) and the regulations for working with and caring for them put the laws governing the rearing of human children to shame.
On the final part of this point, I have little argument - we share a world with some incredibly cruel and/or self-centred individuals, but regardless I feel that the pain that would have been experienced is more than what the monkeys ought to be exposed to. Finally, just to clarify it for anyone else reading this, I am not saying that they ought to be treated better than humans, and was never implying (as I am sure you must realise) that I believe we should experiment on children.