It would be interesting to see the societal repercussions if killing chimps were considered murder, for example.

They should at least be given the rights to not be used in medical experimentation and not to be owned as "pets", if not every single right humans enjoy. Granted it's not going to stop every abuse any more than having rights stops every abuse of human beings, but it's a worthy goal imho.

id like to see all humans get human rights before monkey's.

do i sound crazy?

There are millions of people in this country who do not live up to the definition of "human" (rational, intelligent, empathetic) yet they have 100% of the DNA as the rest of us. Why would you extend the definition to include biologically non-human animals based on a "high ratio" of DNA matches. 100% is 100%... Anything less is not a match. If you use other, less quantifiable criteria then someone could just as easily deny the definition of "human" to people who have a 100% match.

Why would anyone go so far out on a limb to solve such a simple problem. Save the chimp or not. Base it on OUR ability to feel compassion or base it on the public outcry but don't redefine "human" for such a trivial problem. Trivial problems/decisions can and should be made without involving the whole world's scientific community. Talk about overkill!

Two problems with that: not everyone has demonstrably 100% matching DNA. You could easily argue that someone with clearly deviant DNA (like trisomy 21/Down's Syndrome) differs enough not to be given human rights.

Also, you shouldn't save animals simply based on the amount of compassion people have for them - that's like saying only animals that are cute deserved to be saved.

Exactly, that's even a worse senario! Those people might not be clasified as human by the more outward standards like I mentioned above. If you can't even come up with a "test" that doesn't EXCLUDE real humans than how can you begin to talk about changing the test to INCLUDE another animals that might be considered human-like.

Well, compassion should go beyond cute but perhaps the general public might not see fit to save an animal based on more realistic standards.

What I was going after is, there are reasons - very valid reasons - to save this chimp without having to rely on the re-definition of the idea of "human". This animal doesn't need to be classified as a human in order to be saved and the people who think so have not exhausted all the options available. They need to fix the problem at hand, not re-define the problem to something they want to solve so they can be famous for their 15 minutes.