Multiconstruct

I just saw a story that the NIH is getting rid of almost all animal testing on our closest cousins chimpanzees. I’ve got a soft spot for chimps and grant them a certain level of personhood. Its not complete but its pretty close. Now we need to protect their habitat and keep extant their natural culture and genetic diversity and start building from that. I was all fire for chimps back in the day and wrote this song that kind of speaks for itself

Chimp Poem

Out in the jungle were some chimpanzees

Eating some fruit, swinging through the trees

Minding their own business, not hurting anyone

Raising their babies, and having fun

Until that fateful day when they were nabbed

And shipped to the States for a research lab

They were poked and prodded, separated from their mates

Ninety five percent of chimps shared the same fate

But our superior intellect the scientists say

Gives us the right to do what we may

Torture the dumb chimps in our quest for knowledge

Because that’s what the ethicist taught us in college.

Driving through the suburbs in their SUV

Was an upper middle class American family

They were driving to Junior’s first soccer game

On that fateful day when the aliens came

Sucked up to a saucer by a tractor beam

They were sent to another world by a teleport machine

They were poked and prodded, separated from their mates

Ninety five percent of humans shared the same fate

But our superior intellect the aliens say

Gives us the right to do what we may

Torture the dumb humans in our quest for knowledge

Because that’s what our ethicist taught us in college.

Believe it or not half of this tale is true

And you know you wouldn’t want it to happen to you

So keep in mind the Golden Rule

And don’t use chimps as your research tool

The wild chimps should be left alone

They need habitat to call their own

The research chimps should all be set free

To be the wild things God wants them to be

To be the wild things God wants them to be.

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