Proposed legislation would ban experimentation and research if they would harm the animals
, Madrid
Tuesday September 24 2024, 8.26pm BST, The Times
In 1975 the founder of a new field of biomedical ethics came up with 15 criteria by which someone’s “humanhood” could be judged.
Among the qualities defined by Dr Joseph F Fletcher, an ordained Episcopal priest in the US and a controversial professor of ethics who espoused the virtues of euthanasia, were some minimal intelligence, self-awareness, self-control, a sense of time and concern for others.
These, he said, distinguish us from our animal ancestors.
Yet today the Spanish government is citing Fletcher’s research as part of efforts to create a law to protect animals, arguing that the hominid family of primates, which includes gorillas, orangutans, bonobos and chimpanzees, is close to another family member — humans — in cognitive ability.
The objectives of the law, according to the ministry of social rights, which is drafting the legislation, are the prohibition of experimentation and research on great apes if it causes them harm.
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It will also establish the conditions of their ownership or custody as well as ban their use for commercial purposes, including in shows, and the improvement of efforts for their conservation.
The government has taken the first step by launching a public consultation on the law that would affect the animals. The reason for the law lies in their “genetic closeness” to humans and because “they share the 15 attributes that bioethicist Joseph Fletcher once established to define the human personality”, says the ministry’s public consultation document.
The government argues that in addition to the fact that Spanish law considers animals to be sentient beings, in 1997 an international confederation decided to classify great apes in the Hominidae family, alongside humans and our extinct ancestors.
Chimpanzees are classified as part of the Hominidae family alongside humans
AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“This decision, accepted by the entire scientific community, is of great importance as it puts these beings on the same level as our ancestors, homo erectus, homo habilis, australopithecus, etc,” says the document.
The ministry adds that great apes “have cognitive abilities such as learning, communication and complex reasoning that bring them close to those of human beings”.
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The creation of the legislation was mandated by the Animal Welfare Act, which was passed last year, where it was introduced as an additional provision during its passage through parliament.
The idea of a law on great apes is not new in Spain. In 2006 the organisation Proyecto Gran Simio promoted a non-legislative proposal but it did not prosper. “This law on great apes would be the first in the world and in this way Spain would recognise what science admits and supports, that non-human hominids are our evolutionary brothers and sisters and being within our own family, they deserve special recognition,” Pedro Pozas Terrados, head of of the project, said.
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