Two types of experiments: the conflict within We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Karen Joy Fowler's We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves raises two parallel and to a degree conflicting issues regarding inter-species relationships. First, laboratory experiments on animals: much of the novel is concerned with the fate of Rosemary's "sister," Fern, a chimp with whom she was raised as a coeval sibling as part of an experiment by her psychologist father; the experiment went wrong in some manner - we don't yet (more than half-way through) know exactly what went wrong, but in any event Fern was removed from the family and the project, involving several grad students, ended - though one, Matt, apparently accompanied Fern to her next destination. This devastating removal led older brother, Lowell, to become a militant animal-rights activist, apparently involved in the bombing and destruction of several experimental labs; Fowler, or her narrator Rosemary, describe some of the clandestine activities of the (fictional?) Animal Liberation Front. Clearly, these experiments are hideous and we are meant to, and do, side w/ the ALF: they are reacting against treating animals as objects in these cruel experiments. Diet issues aside, who wouldn't hate these labs? This part of the novel reminds me of the interesting documentary If a Tree Falls about radical environmental groups that stop at almost nothing in drawing attention to their cause - a good film because it allows viewers to form their own opinions and to figure things out themselves. The second issue is the reverse: experiments that treat species, chimps in particular, as if they are human. Isn't it equally cruel to take a chimp and try to raise it (or her) as a family member? What good can come of this for the chimp or for the human children? Though we are sympathetic toward Rosemary and her brother, we have to see them as victims of an experiment every bit as cruel as the lab experiments - and just as destructive for Fern, it would appear. There's a pretty long chapter in which Rosemary recounts a lecture in one of her college classes in which the prof discusses the sexual behavior and social structure of chimp and bonabo clans - and student erupts in opposition to his assertion that it's all about the males controlling the females, the student arguing that the female bonabos have banded together and they actually control the society - at least that's what I think she said: some key points in this chapter and I should probably re-read to understand the book, but there's a little too much "telling" rather than showing or dramatizing through character and action in that section of the book, so I'll just move ahead with the story.