Sir, - Reviewing Stephen Budiansky's If a Lion Could Talk (Books, January 30th), Michael Viney cited the author as resisting any suggestion that animals "share in our thoughts and feelings and thus deserve the same kind of consideration".
Human babies do not share the thoughts and feelings of human adults. Yet, if they do not deserve the same kind of consideration, they do (we all agree) deserve equal consideration - if by consideration we mean respect for their lives and well-being.
Other animals, however, are evidently to be denied similar respect for their lives and wellbeing, for in the next sentence we read that "their right is to exist, species by species ..." Why not, as with humans, individual by individual? Well, why not?
Chimpanzees, our close relatives, may soon be an extinct species because of human greed and callousness. I cannot be sorry: extinction will mean the end of the suffering, individual by individual, that we have inflicted on them, and continue to inflict on them in the name of AIDS research. - Yours, etc.,
Ruarc Gahan, Knockaboley, Hollywood, Co Wicklow.