[swombat]

There's not a lot to read in that paper abstract, and I'm not spending money to support an organisation that charges for access to scientific papers (and especially not for an internet argument!)...

Based on the abstract, I see this as an attempt to mess with one gene that's hypothesised to be language-related, not as a deliberate programme to try and engineer intelligent chimps... So I'm afraid my point still stands. Your rebuttal is not convincing - it just addresses one gene. As you said, intelligence is a complex thing. To give this a "good try" I'd expect a programme that lasts at least a decade and has as its deliberate objective "genetically engineer intelligent apes"... I hope that such a programme does not exist!

But, as both of us have pointed out - humans don't even recognise other humans as fully human, let alone recognising the rights of an enhanced species... That's the real killer for this line of argument, not the possibility or lack thereof of bio-engineering intelligent chimps!