I’ve been reading some utilitarian bioethicists who argue against the use of animals in medical research. The argument seems to be that what counts most is one’s cognitive ability, not one’s species. Thus, the life of a healthy chimp is more valuable than that of an anencephalic child. Thus, one would be more moral to conduct medical experiments on such a child than upon a normal chimp. Since we’re *not* performing gruesome experiments on such children, then there are no circumstances under which it could be moral to use chimps (or other primates) in medical research.

I thought to myself: what if this train ran both ways?

Consider the military and its use of human subjects. Clearly, we *are* willing to make soldiers of young, healthy men and women. This isn’t a medical experiment, of course, but it is a case of putting a primate in harm’s way for the larger good of society. In a utilitarian sense, these are exceptionally valuable primates because they are young and healthy with many options open to them, such as higher education, raising a family, citizenship, and voluntary service to the community. (Not to mention, only human primates can effectively work for the advancement of animal rights!)

So it seems to me that the lives of human soldiers should be worth much more—in a strictly utilitarian sense—than those of any other healthy primate.

So why don’t we, say, suit up chimps, put ‘em in cars loaded with bombs and propel them into terrorist enclaves?

Or have apes in uniform patrol dangerous areas drawing sniper fire that might otherwise strike a human primate with a higher IQ whose death would cause more pain to more other beings than that of any primates? (Nonhuman primates live in smaller communities than do humans; it’s a rare primate whose death would grieve over fifty people, while most humans in their late teens and early twenties would be missed by many more people if they fell during battle.)

LISTEN: I am *not* advocating this. I’m wondering why utilitarian ethicists are *not* advocating this.

Why don’t we enlist other primates in the military? Isn’t it “speciesist” to make cannon fodder only of human primates?