Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights

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Summary: An engrossing, anthropological study!
Review: Drawing the Line by Stephen M. Wise is a deep and compassionate understanding of the evolution of mankind from the primitive creatures such as chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans who came before the Cromagnon and Neanderthal precursors of homo sapiens. Professor Wise, an attorney for animal rights, describes such animals' autonomy and the visual memory that enables them to find and often to deplete food in the wild. The author sketches their ability to learn to mimic people and even to pronounce words, which leads to a kind of dialogue with their caretakers in zoos. I am reminded of a baby girl I recently watched on a beach who had just celebrated her first birthday and who was learning to walk barefoot and to keep her balance on the sand. As she fell and rose many times, she saw a little boy of about three and one-half years who was shoveling sand into a purple pail. She immediately left her grandparents and walked about fifty feet to the little boy and sat down across from him and took the pail and tried valiantly to fill it with sand. Then she picked up the pail and carried it to her grandmother, who returned it to the boy. The girl then sat down again near the boy, and he helped her fill the pail. She was so intrigued and happy to have made a new young friend! Each time she felt the need for the security of her grandparents, she went back to touch home plate, then again returned to her new-found buddy. Her autonomy, familiarity, and contentment with him were observed by many, who praised her successful follow-through with a potential playmate. As I watched her, Professor Wise's story of the animals, with their developing human habits, humor, and playful signals, became more and more relevant to me, especially the passage in which the author finally meets Koko, a gorilla who uses red crayon as lipstick and practices deception and humor and is even sophisticated enough to use a toilet. It has been a very wonderful experience to read this book, which brings back memories of my anthropology course many years ago at the University of Cincinnati.

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Summary: Our Children Will Wonder
Review: Drawing the Line offers one answer to the perennial question of where will it all stop? Sure, many people will admit, maybe those chimpanzees and dolphins are so damn smart that we oughtn't treat them like we do lab rats or tuna, but where will it all stop? If we say chimpanzees get rights, then how long till we let roaches start voting?

Anyone who has ever engaged in conversation regarding the ticklish issue of legal rights for animals will have heard some version of this question before. Mr. Wise suggests that an honest and careful consideration of the available evidence presents a scale on which to decide just what animals should be acknowledged as possessing the right to have their self-interests protected by our legal system.

Data regarding the minds of other species is accumulating at an increasing rate. Drawing the Line looks at some of this data and paints us, purportedly rational and compassionate individuals, into an ethical and moral corner. If arguments for human rights are based on compassion guided by clear thinking and the plain undeniable fact of our fundamental similarities, then we are left with no logical reason for excluding those who, though different in many ways, seem to be similar to us in just the ways we claim matter.

Those who work so tirelessly to hold the line against the most basic rights for any and all animals will harshly criticize Drawing the Line. But harshness will do little to deflect the calm and reasoned conclusions that Mr. Wise presents.

Times are changing. Our children are likely to read Wise in school and wonder that such a book ever had to be written. Just as we wonder now about Uncle Tom's Cabin.

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Summary: Drawing the Line: Science and the Case for Animal Rights
Review: If you care about our animals, buy this book.
If you care about our environment, buy this book.
If you care about your health, buy this book.

After reading this book, you'll not only know the issues, you'll understand them - in a way that you'll be able to debate (and hopefully pursuade) those who don't.

you'll also realize that you have feelings.

Powerful reading and, believe it or not, this is not depressing reading; rather it is very uplifting.

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Summary: Yes, Virginia, your puppy does have a soul!
Review: In Drawing The Line, animal-rights attorney and law professor Steven M. Wise reprises and extends the arguments he presented in his highly successful first book, Rattling The Cage, on behalf of the legal personhood of chimpanzees and bonobos to that of gorillas, orangutans, dolphins, parrots, elephants, dogs, and honeybees, comparing their abilities to think, reason, remember, deceive, and play-act with those of his precocious four year-old son, Christopher. His goal is simply and modestly stated: "Shifts occur only after people come to believe that something is possible. Making the argument that at least some nonhuman animals should have basic legal rights and be recognized as legal persons is the first step toward informing policymakers, judges, and the public about what is known, and, therefore, attaining the goal." In the process, Professor Wise both confirms with scholarly and scientific citations what the reader intuitively expects - namely, that primates are more intelligent than other forms of animal life - and avoids such excesses as advocating vegetarianism which have too often vitiated the polemics of activists in the field. Like Rattling The Cage, Drawing The Line is highly readable, informative, educative, and entertaining. As Milton said, "A good book is the life blood of a master spirit," a classification to which the learned Professor Wise himself clearly belongs.

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Summary: Rights by Degree: Those with Low IQs Need Not Apply
Review: In the span of only two paragraphs of a 321-page book, Steven Wise rejects sentience as the criterion for rights.

Instead, Wise urges society to apply a scale that combines genetic and intelligence tests when deciding who is entitled to basic rights. (See pp 33-34.) Under the heading "Isn't Sentience Enough?" Wise concedes that the decision to reject the sentience criterion may be an "anathema" to some. But, writes Wise, "philosophers argue moral rights; judges decide legal rights."

So Wise says he must offer a legal and not a philosophical argument. To Wise it follows that the animal in question must pass tests by enduring a variety of scientifically-accepted cognition experiments. A human boy gets 100% on the scale of "Who Should Get Basic Liberty Rights under the Common Law?"
A dog (Wise's own dog, as it happens) gets just under 70%, which puts him out of the running, as an "autonomy value of .70 is the cutoff for basic liberty rights". (See p 241.)

Evidently it is not enough for Wise that an individual can feel pain and be frightened.

Wise's justification for negating sentience as the key criterion for animal rights law is seriously flawed, for several reasons. First, it is not the case that a sentience-based legal argument can't be successfully presented. An argument based on sound logic, backed up by meticulous research, was published by a person who is both a lawyer and a law professor. The book is "Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog" by Professor Gary L. Francione.

But could it be true, as Wise argues, that judges won't accept moral arguments as a basis for legal rights? That argument cannot be sustained either. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution did not parcel out freedom by degrees according to a purportedly scientific scale. Slaves had interests that were violated by classifying them as property, and those interests had to be respected. The abolition of human slavery was a matter of morality.

Moreover, modern judges have expressly accepted the moral argument that a person who can feel is a person who thus has legally protectable interests. See, for example, Youngberg vs. Romeo, protecting the basic rights of a person with the cognitive skills of an infant (U.S. Supreme Court, 1982).

Finally, as Gary Francione has noted in his excellent books on animal law, Bentham was a lawyer: Bentham made legal arguments and indeed it was Bentham's theory, with its emphasis on the capacity to suffer, which served as the inspiration for modern anti-cruelty laws.

In short, Wise dismisses in a mere two pages the argument that would respect animals, giving no valid explanation for doing so.

Not only does Wise's view of the world have frightening implications for a majority of sentient animals; its logic would also turn the clock back on the progress of rights for the disabled and a number of other vulnerable groups whose basic liberty rights the Supreme Court has, in recent years, acknowledged.

If activists working for social justice and animal rights fail to see the immorality of Wise's views, something is grossly amiss.

Lee Hall, Attorney at Law.

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Summary: Ending the slavery: it has happened before
Review: Like the critics of slavery abolitionists who asserted that efforts were better spent helping poor young chimney sweeps than African slaves, there will be those who argue that instead of concerning ourselves with the plight of nonhuman animals, we should concentrate on making the world a better place for starving people in Africa, diseased humans, etc. (There is nothing wrong with advancing worthy human causes, but some folks don't seem to realized they can be pursued simultaneously with nonhuman animal causes.) Steven Wise launches a convincing argument that nonhuman animals are remarkably similar to humans on many quantifiable levels, and that some nonhumans may therefore be justified in sharing basic rights with humans.

Among all the cited cases documenting the complex web of human-like (as well as unique) traits among dolphins, honeybees, orangutans, dogs, gorillas, African grey parrots, elephants (and from his previous book, chimpanzees and bonobos), I found one case most interesting. As an economist, I was particularly bemused to discover that orangutans have displayed an understanding of economic value! The author describes the orangutans Azy and Indah who were given bamboo tools to use in public demonstrations. After a demonstration, a human could only retrieve the bamboo tools from the orangutans in exchange for proper compensation. Offering the orangutans a sunflower seed was sufficient payment for a small piece of bamboo. Obtaining a large piece cost much more: an entire walnut. Shrewd bargainers, those orangutans were, and capable of very abstract thinking!

The book is filled with evidence of nonhuman intelligence, emotion, and language (making it an excellent companion to Joan Dunayer's book Animal Equality: Language and Liberation). The evidence ranges from anecdotal to experimental. The author quotes biologist Bernd Heinrich who says "We can't credibly claim that one species is more intelligent than another unless we quantify intelligent with respect to what, since each animal lives in a different world of its own sensory inputs and decoding mechanisms of those inputs." Having demonstrated that nonhuman animals can score highly on tests designed to measure human intelligence, surely we have only scratched the surface.

The stated goal of this book (and Wise's previous book) is to rattle the legal profession into extending basic rights to beings other than humans. Thanks to Steven Wise, I am confident that will happen, now sooner rather than later. As he says, "human slavery was once as firmly entrenched as nonhuman animal slavery is today." There is hope.

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Summary: Succeeds brilliantly
Review: Steven M. Wise's "Drawing the Line" presents a compelling argument for recognizing the rights of "nonhuman" animals. As a lawyer who has taught at Harvard and has championed animal rights for over twenty years, Mr. Wise directs our attention in this book to some of the recent scientific studies pertaining to animal intelligence. The evidence strongly suggests that at least some species qualify for dignity rights and other legal protections.

Mr. Wise provides introductory chapters that succinctly defines the struggle for animal rights. The author compares the historic practice of slavery with today's plight of nonhuman animals. Deep-rooted socioeconomic practices conspired to keep slavery alive for most of human history; today, animal slavery is fueled by longstanding cultural and economic forces. Consequently Mr. Wise approaches the daunting task of animal liberation with eyes wide open. He has written this book as a strategic move to further our understanding and with the hope of advancing the struggle.

To that end, I would have to say that Mr. Wise has succeeded brilliantly. The author employs a sound methodology to persuade us of the merits of his case. Mr. Wise rank-orders the intelligence of nonhuman animals by utilizing Piaget's well-known theories pertaining to the study of early childhood development. Consequently most of the chapters in the book are devoted to the study of specific animals (such as Koko the gorilla) who might represent the innate abilities of their respective species. You will be intrigued with how Mr. Wise utilizes Piagetian measures such as mirror self-recognition tests in order to compare animal performances with human intelligence.

I think that nearly everyone who reads this book with an open mind will be persuaded that at least a few species do indeed display the characteristics of "practical autonomy" that should assure them of rights under the law. Mr. Wise visits with leading researchers to demonstrate the mental acuities of specific animals; in many cases, we come to appreciate the unique personalities of these remarkable animals. The power of Mr. Wise's writing is such that the notion of subjecting these animals to cruel scientific experiments and the like seems unthinkable, and liberation suddenly appears to be a quite reasonable and humane thing to do.

In short, I highly recommend this compassionate, original and thought-provoking book to everyone who cares about animals. While the legal system may not yet have recognized the validity of Mr. Wise' argument, this book will no doubt help the good lawyer secure a favorable ruling in the court of public opinion.

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Summary: A rational and readable argument.
Review: Steven Wise accomplishes his goal admirably in his latest book. That is, he explains how consistant logic when applied to our current legal system mandates animal rights. Ironically, his critics within the animal rights movement apparently did not read the book. Mr. Wise makes it very clear that he is making a legal argument not a philosophic one. After all, we have Tom Regan addressing the philosophic issues of animal rights. I think Mr. Wise is to be commended for bringing his expertise in law to the table and exposing the inconsistancies that exist in our judical systems treatment of animals. I also think he does an excellent job of making the information accessible to those of us without a legal background. He does a super job of making a potentially dry subject riveting. Good job, Steve and thank you! Jean Swingle Greek, co-author of Sacred Cows and Golden Geese and Specious Science

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Summary: Drawing the line, Is 'man' yet Man?
Review: The argument in this book, and in accompaniement with the author's earlier Rattling the Cage, is of tremendous importance and deserves heartfelt endorsement at step one before examining some possible difficulties in the probing analysis of man--as much as the animal. To become human, ironically, requires the compassion of real men, and more the understanding of what constitutes man's will, and therefore the earliest signs and prophecies of man in the animal realm, where the same dilemma is shown by author to confront the chimpanzee, and other threshold creatures. There the mirror of our autonomy, or lack of it, challenges the mystery of the animal in ourselves. This work breaks new ground in the sense that it explores the narrower realm of the grey zone between autonomy and true self-consciousness as the ground of right, beside the broader argument proposed by such as Singer where the basic issue is simply the question, 'do animals suffer'.
The definition of human autonomy is a dangerous precipice that might exclude man, and thence we should in some wonder and caution see the plight of creatures as much in ourselves. It is a critical point since the Nietzschean theme concealed behind social politics is far stronger in history than we suspect, with the consequence that man has himself suffered the condemnation and peril that his is still animalistic.
If I have one problem here with the argument it is that the author's assumptions about Darwinism confuse the issue,perhaps. Evolution, as an idea, has taught us to see the continuum between man and animal. And that is to be applauded next to the confusions of some aspects of the Christian tradition with its arrogance about man. But as a theory, more restricted than the perception of evolution, Darwinism cannot establish the nature of man's consciousness or autonomy in a zone beyond the reductionist, and ascribes the very cruelties of nature to the mechanism of evolution, a proposition that has become dogma and yet is probably false. We must renew the question, how did man evolve, and how will he bring forth his latent autonomy. Then the plight of 'mere creatures' will become transparent. Since this is also a legal question, in the life and death matter of drawing the line, we should ask if Darwinist thinking as to selectionist will stand up in court. We cannot make this excuse for conflictual extinction exempt from examination, in such legal discourse.
What is the basis for establishing right at all in the competition of species, if natural selection is taken in such confused fashion as the source of ethical or conscious advance. The argument here in the book tends to collate two realms of discourse. Otherwise a superb effort.
I recommend wrestling with this argument, beside the more general stance of the compassionate embrace of all forms of sentient life as one. The author's novelties are both ambitious and fruitful.
Simply doing that much, will 'throw light' on the obscurity of our thinking in this travail of all sentient life. That causes change, slowly but surely.

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Summary: wonderful!
Review: This is a ground-breaking book. Read it if you love animals, read it if you hate animals. I garuntee you will learn a lot you diddn't know. I have an African Grey Parrot myslef who is extreemily intelligent, so when flipping through the book for the the first time, I was delighted to spot the chapter 'Alex'. Alex is an African Grey who is famous throughout the bird world for his intelligence. Naturally I read this chapter right away, and was worried that the rest of the book would not live up to the expectations I developed from reading 'Alex' However; the rest of the book was fantastic. I have a brand new understanding of non-human animals and the rights the should have.