No, no issue there. They just don’t want them “made” here. :rolleyes:
I don’t think we’ll ever see a 50/50 human/chimp hybrid.
What scientists will eventually work on is transferring certain specific characteristics from one species to the other. I can definitely see them making humans with the upper-body strength of chimps, or making chimps with higher human brain functions and opposable thumbs. The former would just be stronger humans; the latter, OTOH, would be something a bit more com plex, and I think that after years of legal struggles they will eventually be granted equal rights.
I’d be very surprised if not one person has taken eggs and sperm from the relevant species and mixed them in a petri dish to see if fertilization is possible (and if fertilization occurs, whether the resulting hybrid begins to divide in the manner of a normal fertilized egg).
Whether this human-chimp hybrid has rights depends on several things, not the least of which being whether or not it can be implanted into a host and develop through a full-term pregnancy resulting in a live birth. If, for the sake of argument, someone produces a living chimp-human hybrid, I think that the creature’s claim to human rights would depend on its ability to interact with humans like another human.
That might work if you can provide a nice clear definition of “sophont,” and if it turned out to be appropriate to the issue.
In the rest of my post I did address the OP’s second, and more interesting question in some detail.
As to the first question, unless someone comes along with some reliable looking cites showing that a humanzee actually has been created, the only honest answer is that we do not know whether it can be done (although it seems most likely to me that our species are not sufficiently closely related for anything close to a 50-50 hybrid to be possible).
Incidentally, if it were possible for the species to hybridize naturally, I should have thought the most likely scenario would be that of a male chimp raping a human woman. They are very strong, after all (although I believe I have heard that their penises are very small, and because of the size of human buttocks, might not be able to reach a woman’s vagina very easily).
Oliver the humanzee! Well, he sort of looks and walks like a humanzee.
One of these days somebody will be drunk enough to try it, and I don’t mean in a lab!
That would be my guess, too: the last common chimp/human ancestor was about four million years ago; I can’t imagine we’re still interfertile with them. Chimps have an extra chromosome compared to us, and they’re demonstrably less likely to be swayed by flowers and chocolate.
Nah, I’d be much more inclined to believe that some nasty-assed zoo keeper date-raped a chimpanzee, than that a chimpanzee would get the urge for some human poontang.
I don’t know about chimpanzees, and hope never to find out, but primatoloist Birute Galdikas reported witnessing the rape of a human female by an orangutan, and hearing of other such instances she did not personally witness.
Give a Greek House Fraternity a she-chimp & a keg of cold lager, & an attempt will be made. 
I don’t expect that humans can be bred back to bonobos or chimps. I suspect we are well-speciated now, as we’re down a chromosome.
But if we could, yeah, sure, human rights.
“Bred back to”? Are you saying that humans are descended from chimps or bonobos? 
Also Elephants on Acid.
Speaking as a grad student in biology, I believe the prevailing opinion is that chimps and humans are probably close enough that a hybrid could happen, though maybe not easily. The differing chromosome numbers isn’t a huge deal, as they’re still homologous enough to pair up during meiosis, which in itself isn’t necessary for a viable organism, just a fertile one.
I know I’ve heard people say that hybrids have been observed in species pairs that are farther apart than us and humans, but I can’t remember offhand which species they were referring to.
If humans share a “genus” with anything, it’s probably chimps & bonobos. We are more or less descended from the same thing. Socially, we’re probably closer to baboons, but genetically, proto-bonobo/chimp ancestry is not terribly controversial.
I wasn’t asking if you thought humans shared a common ancestor with chimps and bonobos. I asked if you thought that humans were descended from chimps and/or bonobos.
Can the Humanzee suck it’s own weenie? Then it can do pron. Profit!
For what value of “human,” “chimp,” & “bonobo”? The proto-ancestor was probably not quite the same as any modern representative of the three. Do you think that bonobos & chimps evolved from humans?
I said, “bred back,” a bit thoughtlessly & loosely–I tend to see the bonobo as the more “primitive” version of man–I threw “chimp” in there as I expect chimps & bonobos aren’t fully speciated at all.
No.
See? It’s actually possible to answer a yes or no question with a yes or no an dnot have your thumbs fall off.
I was asking because there are persons with a sufficiently mistaken understanding of the theory of evolution as to think that humans did in fact evolve from one of the other great ape species.
Why do you see bonobos as more primitive homo sapiens? What do you mean by the term primitive?
(By the way, I try to avoid rhetorical questions, and I’m not breaking that rule now.)