This week we head to the Denver & St. Louis Film Festivals to screen the film.  Our entire team will be at this Friday night's screening in Denver, and then we split up - Jordana will stay in Denver for the other two screenings, while Lisa, Cristina, and Miriam fly to St. Louis for the Saturday night screening. 

Following Saturday night's screening in St. Louis, we'll have a discussion with Lisa, Cristina, David Balding, Willie Theison (Pittsburgh Zoo elephant manager), & Stephanie LaFarge.

Stefanie was the 'foster mom' to the chimp known as Nim Chimpsky (a play on Noam Chomsky).  As a psychology student at Columbia University, she studied with Herbert Terrace, a psychologist at Columbia who was attempting to find out if a chimpanzee could learn to communicate using American Sign Language.  As a sort of surrogate mom, LaFarge carried Nim around on her body for almost two years, until he became 'too much of a handfull.'  There's an excellent and poignant article on NPR's website, which details the debate over whether Nim and other chimps were learning language like humans do, and more compellingly, what happened to Nim after the study finished.  His life story is a big reminder, and reality check, about what happens to animals when humans are 'done" with them.

FROM the NPR article:

"Research is not a secure proposition, and in 1981, all funding ended for the Oklahoma research program. There was no exit plan for the chimps.

Within a year, Nim was sold to a medical lab for tuberculosis studies. Because he was a famous chimp — who even appeared on Sesame Street and The David Susskind Show— Nim's supporters were able to rescue him. He lived out the rest of his days at Cleveland Amory's Black Beauty Ranch, an animal sanctuary in Texas. He died in 2000.

Many of the people involved in Nim's life have been reflecting on their experiences and on the ethics of what they did.

And Elizabeth Hess, in a new book called Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, interviews many of the people who were involved in Nim's life and tells the story from differing perspectives

Lee, Nim's surrogate sister, says she took it hard when Nim was sold to the lab.

"How do you reconcile a tiny chimp in blue blankets, drinking from a bottle and wearing Pampers. Those are the baby pictures," she says. "And then, when he is 10 — him in a lab, in a cage, with nothing soft, nothing warm, with no people? This is my brother. This is somebody that I raised — and that the system could let this happen was shocking."

LaFarge, Nim's surrogate mother, says that as amazing as it was to have the experience with Nim, she now believes what happened was unethical. The project essentially tricked "him into thinking he is a human being, with no plan for protecting him," she says."

But Terrace says that "given that people eat meat, have pets and raise horses for races," what was done to Nim was not unethical."

What do you think?

(the NPR article includes photos & the audio radio story as well)