It's not a pretty picture, but there are reasons for hope.

Chimpanzees are incredibly intelligent. They can learn more than 400 signs of American Sign Language. They have memories for spatial distribution, like numbers on a TV screen, way better than ours. You come onto the emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and despair - all the things for which I was accused of being anthropomorphic when I ascribed them to chimpanzees.

It made me feel particularly sickened to know that this kind of callous attitude toward animals is repeated again and again in laboratories around this country.

It would be absolutely useless for any of us to work to save wildlife without working to educate the next generation of conservationists.

Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.

I urge you to read Eternal Treblinka and think deeply about its important message.

We, as humans, have actually developed a sense of social responsibility. We have gone beyond our basic instincts. We can and we do. This is what sets us apart from the chimps. They are extremely brutal and hostile. Your next door neighbor is to be killed unless she is a juicy young female, who hasn't yet had her first baby, in which case you want her.