{"id":2864,"date":"2014-12-23T11:17:32","date_gmt":"2014-12-23T10:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=2864"},"modified":"2014-12-23T11:17:32","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T10:17:32","slug":"a-bit-more-on-nonhuman-persons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2014\/12\/23\/a-bit-more-on-nonhuman-persons\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bit More on Nonhuman Persons"},"content":{"rendered":"

A bit of a followup to my last post<\/span><\/a>: sometimes, nonhumans\u00a0are<\/em> granted\u00a0habeas corpus<\/em><\/a><\/span>:<\/p>\n

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Orangutans have been granted the status of “non-human persons” with legal rights in a landmark court ruling in Argentina. The decision clears the way for Sandra, a shy 29-year-old, to be freed from Buenos Aires Zoo after spending her entire life in captivity. […]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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The ruling came after animal rights campaigners filed a\u00a0habeas corpus<\/em>\u00a0petition \u2013 a document more typically used to challenge the legality of a person\u2019s detention or imprisonment \u2013 on behalf of the Sumatran orangutan, who was born at a German zoo and was transferred to Buenos Aires two decades ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Sandra will, unless there’s a successful appeal, be moved from the zoo to a sanctuary.<\/p>\n

In practice,\u00a0this might not make all that much difference. \u00a0She’ll still be confined in a sanctuary; it would\u00a0be utterly indefensible just to turf her out onto the streets, and she wouldn’t last long. \u00a0And in some cases, it’s quite possible that a well-run zoo is the best possible place in which to look after her or others like her. \u00a0Zoo, sanctuary: tomayto, tomahto. \u00a0Meh.<\/p>\n

What matters primarily is that a point of principle is established, and secondarily that there would be some guidance about the kind of facilities that would be minimally decent. \u00a0It’s likely to be wholly acceptable, morally and legally,\u00a0to keep great apes in some form of captivity if it’s in their interests, in rather the same way that we might provide a human child or an adult with an intellectual disability with sheltered or supervised accommodation, and might even limit their time away from it. \u00a0(The family home is a kind of sheltered and supervised accommodation!) \u00a0If a creature – human or orang or chimp or whatever else\u00a0–\u00a0can’t deal with the world around them, that seems to be morally required. \u00a0Let’s call this “soft captivity”, as opposed to the “hard” captivity of some zoos, prisons, laboratories, and so on. \u00a0The point is that, rather as\u00a0we wouldn’t deny that a child or adult disabled human is a person and thus protected by the law, it does seem reasonable to extend that protection to members of other species.<\/p>\n

I wonder how much further we could push it: it’s one thing to have a great ape in soft captivity for its own protection; and it’s one thing to say that\u00a0if<\/em> a great ape is in captivity, it ought to be soft captivity. \u00a0But could we make a similar claim about keeping a member of a species in soft captivity for the sake of protecting the species?<\/p>\n

Orangs are under threat. \u00a0Now, a threat to the species is almost always a threat to the members of the species, too – and so we would almost always be unable to distinguish acting to protect individual orangs and the species as a whole. \u00a0But this needn’t be the case. \u00a0Imagine that there are two small colonies of the animal left; a\u00a0genetic bottleneck means that neither is viable on its own, but, if they were combined, the species may be rescued and flourish in the future. \u00a0Furthermore, each colony is in a confined area that cannot support a bigger population. \u00a0There is no direct threat to either colony, though. \u00a0It so happens that a busy road separates the colonies, which means that they are to all intents and purposes isolated.<\/p>\n

Would it be permissible to swing into action to take all these orangs into a sufficiently big sanctuary, and maybe to keep them there for the sake of increasing the population? \u00a0It wouldn’t obviously be in the interests of any particular living orang; but it could be in the interests of the species. \u00a0Even if the captivity is soft, it is still captivity. \u00a0Would it be justified?<\/p>\n

Part of me thinks that it might be; but this does rely on thinking that the species\u00a0qua\u00a0<\/em>species has a moral value and interest, aside from the value and interest of its members. \u00a0And that does seem like a bit of a stretch – especially if (as seems plausible) individual orangs have no concept of species with which they can identify.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Admittedly, this isn’t a medical ethics post in the strict sense – but it’s a nice story, so ner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A bit of a followup to my last post: sometimes, nonhumans\u00a0are granted\u00a0habeas corpus: Orangutans have been granted the status of “non-human persons” with legal rights in a landmark court ruling in Argentina. The decision clears the way for Sandra, a shy 29-year-old, to be freed from Buenos Aires Zoo after spending her entire life in […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2146,511,2148,472],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-courts","category-in-the-news","category-law","category-thinking-aloud"],"yoast_head":"\nA Bit More on Nonhuman Persons - Journal of Medical Ethics blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2014\/12\/23\/a-bit-more-on-nonhuman-persons\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Bit More on Nonhuman Persons - Journal of Medical Ethics blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A bit of a followup to my last post: sometimes, nonhumans\u00a0are granted\u00a0habeas corpus: Orangutans have been granted the status of “non-human persons” with legal rights in a landmark court ruling in Argentina. 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