Saving our closest cousins . . .

[Bobby]

GRASP - Great Apes Survival Project

New treaty signed that gives us hope to save the apes, monkeys, babboons

"The agreement signed in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is on a par with the 1982 whaling moratorium and the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change. It offers a real chance to halt the remorseless jungle slaughter of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos [pygmy chimpanzees] and orang-utans, which on current trends is likely to kill them all off within a generation."



http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/article311909.ece

[boxcar]

GRASP - Great Apes Survival Project

New treaty signed that gives us hope to save the apes, monkeys, babboons

"The agreement signed in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is on a par with the 1982 whaling moratorium and the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change. It offers a real chance to halt the remorseless jungle slaughter of gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos [pygmy chimpanzees] and orang-utans, which on current trends is likely to kill them all off within a generation."

Have you considered petitioning the U.N. to get the Security Council to send peace-keeping troops in there to protect your cousins? (Err...on second thought, this might not be a good idea, given all the rapin' they did of the women and young girls in the Congo.)

But I do hope everything works out for your blood relatives, Bobby.

Boxcar

[Bobby]

I get the idea that your kind of elderly Boxcar. Are you? Just curious.

I do indeed respect my elders. No joke

[boxcar]

I get the idea that your kind of elderly Boxcar. Are you? Just curious.

Sure, Bobby, I understand your curiosity. I'm as old as Methusela.

I do indeed respect my elders. No joke

I never questioned that for a moment.

Boxcar

[Tom]

Save the Monkeys!

I am behind that cause 100% !!!:jump:

[boxcar]

Not only "save" them, but let's confer upon them the same civil rights we have.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Boxcar

[DJofSD]

The great apes my cousins'? Since when?

The last time I visited with my cousins (and their respective kids) they didn't swing from trees nor drag their knuckles along the ground.

Oh, let me guess. You mean figuratively not literally. It's that 97% exact DNA thing, isn't it? Well you assume too much. Scientist say they know that most of the DNA is just so much noise and the important parts match up between the two species very closely.

That's just so much bull sh*t. If all of that is true then why can't we transplant more organs from apes into humans? Why can't we do more with monkey stem cells for the benifit of people?

Yes, protect the wild animals but don't call them my cousins.

DJofSD

[Turntime]

I'm sure Bobby meant cousins in a biological and not literal sense. There's no doubt we share many physical similarities.

As for transplants, in 1963 the first tentative baboon to human transplants were performed , with little success. Such experiments continued over the years in the United States and South Africa. In 1992-93 researchers at the University of Pittsburgh transplanted baboon livers into two men who suffered hepetitis B virus-induced destruction of their own organs. Though both patients succumbed, the transplants were not the cause of their deaths and physicians hailed the breakthrough.

But infectious disease experts cried foul. The donor baboons came from the Southwest Foundation, the largest research monkey facility in the United States. Officials at the San Antonio based primate center were shocked to learn that the baboon organ had been transplanted into a human being. The baboon used in the first Pittsburgh transplant experiment was infected with SIV (the simian AIDS virus), CMV (the simian cytomegalovirus), EBV (the simian type of Epstein-Barr virus), and simian agent 8 (the baboon form of the B virus). If the 35 year old man had survived for months after receiving the liver, critics asked, what might have happened with those viruses?

The concern is that monkey viruses that seemed initially harmless to people might exchange genetic material with human DNA following a transplant, resulting in highly lethal new super-bugs.

Not to get off subject, but this is the same concern health officials have with the bird flu infecting people with an existing human flu virus and exchanging gentic material resulting in a killer virus that we have no immunity to (similar to the influenza pandemic of 1918 which killed 20 to 40 million people worldwide).

[JustRalph]

Who let the Dogs Out!!! Wow!

[Tom]

Here's where: