02-04-09 - Chimpanzees

I'm watching this "Nature" on PBS about Chimpanzees that have been used for medical research in the US and are now being released to private sanctuaries. It's really quite moving and sad. But I was listening to some of the quotes :

They are our closest relative, 99.9% identical to humans, but we have locked them up for our gain.
Most of them don't have records, their origins were not recorded.
It's hard to say what we might do if we could rewrite our history with this, our closest relative.
I know it's wrong now to take them as pets, they belong in Africa.
His trials have come to an end, he's finally able to walk free and call this his home.

and it struck me that it's funny to imagine they're talking about black people instead of chimapzees.