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They All Had Eyes: Confessions of a Vivisectionist
Most people have a blind spot in their understanding of how biomedical and pharmaceutical research is performed. They may be vaguely aware that some mice and rats were involved - the animals themselves no doubt benefiting from wondrous injections of life-saving compounds, with minimal suffering. The truth is far more horrifying and brutal than people can imagine. In this book, the author has laid open a raw wound in his heart to help people see behind the curtain and observe what actually takes place in what can only be described as true dungeons of despair. In it, he chronicles the animals that he worked on - from mice to dogs to monkeys - and the terrible procedures that he performed on them as a matter of business. The author shares his reflections about his work and the traumatic memories he experiences as a result, pulling no punches nor whitewashing the details of his previous profession. This book highlights the intense suffering and waste of thousands of lives in such a way as to leave the reader without any doubt about whether animal research is justified or required.
- GenresNonfictionVegan
177 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 16, 2016
About the author
Michael Slusher
1 book46 followersMichael Slusher worked as a research biologist for many years before pursuing a career that was more in line with his ethics and morals. Still interested in animals, he earned a degree in Anthropology, with a focus on Zooarchaeology -- the study of animal remains as found within a human archaeological context. After recognizing the cruel and exploitative role humans play in the lives of animals, he became dedicated to vegan education and outreach. His new book, "They All Had Eyes: Confessions of a Vivisectionist" is his first major step towards that goal. He and his wife currently reside in Santa Fe and are owned by several rescued cats.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 19, 2016
4.5 stars -- Most people know very little about animal research, and the industry is all too happy to keep it that way. Of all of the major animal industries, vivisection is by far the most secretive. THEY ALL HAD EYES is a book that takes readers behind those locked, windowless doors courtesy of a man who was actually in the midst of it—working every day in animal experimentation laboratories.
Michael Slusher didn’t start out intending to work in animal research. Instead, he fell into the job as a science-obsessed college dropout who took a simple job as a lab technician, weighing rats at a biotech startup in the 1980s. His experience took him into places few people wish to even acknowledge the existence of, let alone work in for eight hours a day.
However, as his proficiency with the animals made itself apparent, Slusher “graduated” to performing a variety of experimental procedures on the animals as determined by the principal investigator, who devises the experiments but rarely does the day-to-day dirty work. From injecting experimental compounds to dissection, Slusher and his colleagues performed the procedures and collected data. At the conclusion of the experiments, Slusher even gassed the animals and cremated their remains with little more thought than one would give to disposing of empty bottles.
The sheer amount of waste involved in vivisection is one of the first things that hit you. Slusher’s original lab, the biotech firm, primarily dealt with rodents, who are plentiful and cheap. Sometimes there would be too many in a shipment, so the surplus was killed. Sometimes the water bottles would malfunction and flood the shoebox-like cages, drowning the inmates. Sometimes a careless lab tech would mix up data labels on cages, compromising the data, so the animals would be killed and the study began again. And of course, after each study, all of the survivors—even the perfectly healthy “control” rodents—would be killed, as well.
However, most sobering example of waste may be what happens when investigators try to develop an “animal model” of human disease—in other words, attempt to artificially induce a condition in a creature quite different from a human being. Slusher writes of his painstaking “work” trying to induce infections in hamsters, causing pain and death to dozens of the little animals before the investigator ultimately decided to abandon the experiment:
Nothing ever came of these studies, despite dozens of attempts to get the model to work. Again, failures such as this were considered a normal but unfortunate waste of time and resources.
Yet this is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg.
Most of our studies failed, regardless of the lab I worked in. Is that the case for all animal research, or was that only true about my studies in particular? … Years later, I learned that the actual failure rate of animal models used in biomedical research is a whopping 92%. In no other field of endeavor, whether industrial, educational, or pure research, is a 92% failure rate even remotely acceptable. Only in the use of animal experimentation is this inconceivable level of non-performance ignored as “the price of doing research.”
Those who find themselves wondering aloud, “then why do we still do it?” would be well advised to read the author’s description of attending a laboratory animal trade show. It’s a bonanza of companies selling everything from specially formulated monkey chow to patented strains of genetically engineered animals. There are a lot of interests out there who don’t want it to end.
After the biotech startup folded, the author found himself at another laboratory, a far larger and better-funded one at a major Florida university. As with just about every American animal experimentation facility, the enormous, warren-like lab was located in a sub-basement that required special permissions to enter. Students attended class and walked across a grassy park completely unaware that right below their feet, kennels full of dogs barked, sheep bleated, and even monkeys screeched.
Slusher had before mostly confined his work to rodents at the biotech firm, but at this new lab he prided himself in getting to participate in experiments upon far larger animals—namely, monkeys and dogs. The fate of these animals, far more relatable to him, however, also began to work some cracks in a hardened heart.
Before a new drug can be tested in humans, the FDA requires that toxicity first be established using two different mammal species. One must be a rodent (most often rats or mice) and the other species most commonly used is the dog. The reason dogs are used more frequently than other species, such as monkeys, is price, availability, size, and temperament.
The vast majority of dogs used in research are beagles—bred at puppy farms specifically to supply the vivisection trade. Beagles, as anyone who’s met one knows, are endlessly happy and trusting. They are gentle and will rarely retaliate—even when in great pain. They are far more easy to handle than monkeys—wild animals who are terrified, aggressive, and obsessive about escaping, as the author details in his experiences with these animals in the same laboratory.
When a particular beagle study ended, the author lobbied to have the dogs released for adoption. However, the powers that be at the University insisted on euthanizing the beagles, because they did not want it to be known in the general public that the school used dogs in research. It’s amazing to me that our society, which values dogs above all other animals, still for the most part has nothing to say about thousands of sweet beagles being poisoned to death in corporate and academic labs each year across the country. Many will, in fact, even mindlessly defend it without even looking further into the issue beyond a bumper sticker slogan like “iyt sayves lahves.”
Slusher’s life has changed drastically after the experiences detailed in this book. He has given up animal experimentation work, of course, but he’s also taken it a step further. He no longer eats or wears animals or their products—he’s gone from vivisector to vegan. If someone can go from dissecting dogs’ stomachs to championing animal protection, perhaps there is hope for everyone.
As the author writes of our society’s seeming indifference toward industrial animal abuse:
I really don’t think that it’s a case of not caring at all about animals. Instead, I think it’s a case of caring so much about one’s own self that everything else becomes immaterial.
Michael Slusher didn’t start out intending to work in animal research. Instead, he fell into the job as a science-obsessed college dropout who took a simple job as a lab technician, weighing rats at a biotech startup in the 1980s. His experience took him into places few people wish to even acknowledge the existence of, let alone work in for eight hours a day.
However, as his proficiency with the animals made itself apparent, Slusher “graduated” to performing a variety of experimental procedures on the animals as determined by the principal investigator, who devises the experiments but rarely does the day-to-day dirty work. From injecting experimental compounds to dissection, Slusher and his colleagues performed the procedures and collected data. At the conclusion of the experiments, Slusher even gassed the animals and cremated their remains with little more thought than one would give to disposing of empty bottles.
The sheer amount of waste involved in vivisection is one of the first things that hit you. Slusher’s original lab, the biotech firm, primarily dealt with rodents, who are plentiful and cheap. Sometimes there would be too many in a shipment, so the surplus was killed. Sometimes the water bottles would malfunction and flood the shoebox-like cages, drowning the inmates. Sometimes a careless lab tech would mix up data labels on cages, compromising the data, so the animals would be killed and the study began again. And of course, after each study, all of the survivors—even the perfectly healthy “control” rodents—would be killed, as well.
However, most sobering example of waste may be what happens when investigators try to develop an “animal model” of human disease—in other words, attempt to artificially induce a condition in a creature quite different from a human being. Slusher writes of his painstaking “work” trying to induce infections in hamsters, causing pain and death to dozens of the little animals before the investigator ultimately decided to abandon the experiment:
Nothing ever came of these studies, despite dozens of attempts to get the model to work. Again, failures such as this were considered a normal but unfortunate waste of time and resources.
Yet this is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg.
Most of our studies failed, regardless of the lab I worked in. Is that the case for all animal research, or was that only true about my studies in particular? … Years later, I learned that the actual failure rate of animal models used in biomedical research is a whopping 92%. In no other field of endeavor, whether industrial, educational, or pure research, is a 92% failure rate even remotely acceptable. Only in the use of animal experimentation is this inconceivable level of non-performance ignored as “the price of doing research.”
Those who find themselves wondering aloud, “then why do we still do it?” would be well advised to read the author’s description of attending a laboratory animal trade show. It’s a bonanza of companies selling everything from specially formulated monkey chow to patented strains of genetically engineered animals. There are a lot of interests out there who don’t want it to end.
After the biotech startup folded, the author found himself at another laboratory, a far larger and better-funded one at a major Florida university. As with just about every American animal experimentation facility, the enormous, warren-like lab was located in a sub-basement that required special permissions to enter. Students attended class and walked across a grassy park completely unaware that right below their feet, kennels full of dogs barked, sheep bleated, and even monkeys screeched.
Slusher had before mostly confined his work to rodents at the biotech firm, but at this new lab he prided himself in getting to participate in experiments upon far larger animals—namely, monkeys and dogs. The fate of these animals, far more relatable to him, however, also began to work some cracks in a hardened heart.
Before a new drug can be tested in humans, the FDA requires that toxicity first be established using two different mammal species. One must be a rodent (most often rats or mice) and the other species most commonly used is the dog. The reason dogs are used more frequently than other species, such as monkeys, is price, availability, size, and temperament.
The vast majority of dogs used in research are beagles—bred at puppy farms specifically to supply the vivisection trade. Beagles, as anyone who’s met one knows, are endlessly happy and trusting. They are gentle and will rarely retaliate—even when in great pain. They are far more easy to handle than monkeys—wild animals who are terrified, aggressive, and obsessive about escaping, as the author details in his experiences with these animals in the same laboratory.
When a particular beagle study ended, the author lobbied to have the dogs released for adoption. However, the powers that be at the University insisted on euthanizing the beagles, because they did not want it to be known in the general public that the school used dogs in research. It’s amazing to me that our society, which values dogs above all other animals, still for the most part has nothing to say about thousands of sweet beagles being poisoned to death in corporate and academic labs each year across the country. Many will, in fact, even mindlessly defend it without even looking further into the issue beyond a bumper sticker slogan like “iyt sayves lahves.”
Slusher’s life has changed drastically after the experiences detailed in this book. He has given up animal experimentation work, of course, but he’s also taken it a step further. He no longer eats or wears animals or their products—he’s gone from vivisector to vegan. If someone can go from dissecting dogs’ stomachs to championing animal protection, perhaps there is hope for everyone.
As the author writes of our society’s seeming indifference toward industrial animal abuse:
I really don’t think that it’s a case of not caring at all about animals. Instead, I think it’s a case of caring so much about one’s own self that everything else becomes immaterial.
February 29, 2016
A very difficult subject matter. The author writes in a way that keeps you reading and he doesn't hold back on the gruesome details. A book like this is so important. More people need to be aware of what happens in the name of science so that humane alternatives to animal experimentation can be supported.
April 8, 2016
The importance of Michael Slusher’s book They All Had Eyes: Confessions of a Vivisectionist cannot be overstated. Animal testing and especially vivisection are hidden from the public eye and the general public does not know, or care to find out, what happens in laboratories in the name of science. Exposing the atrocities that are legally perpetrated behind closed doors is essential. While there is ignorance, we will not large-scale condemnation of this unnecessary cruelty. The remorse and horror of this book makes it not only difficult to read, but also indispensable. It should be compulsory reading for every citizen of this earth.
November 22, 2016
Emotionally hard to read. Must have been a nightmare to write. The last chapter is the most appealing to me in seeing the transformative nature of empathy and vegan life style. Grateful for the list of bibliography and readings. Five stars for content.
April 10, 2016
There was once a psychologist, named Stanley Milgram, who carried out experiments in the 1960’s to determine people’s willingness to obey authority even if it conflicted with their personal morality. A surprisingly high number of subjects, when ordered by an authority figure, were willing to inflict what they thought were high voltage electric shocks on paid actors posing as study participants.
Michael Slusher’s career as an animal experimenter, and how he was prepared to maim, injure and even inflict agony on laboratory animals in the name of science without asking any questions – until several years later – would have interested Milgram. After drawing back the veil on the deliberately secretive world of testing drugs on animals, Slusher reveals that after sacrificing thousands of animal lives, from rats and mice to beagles and capuchin monkeys, that not a single one of the hundreds of experiments he worked on ever produced a cure or treatment for a medical condition. And that today, 92% of such experiments fail to produce data relevant to humans.
Slusher tells his life story – from how his father, an avid reptile collector who owned a boa constrictor that he fed on live mice, rats and then chickens - passed on an interest in animals and how he lands his first job in a small biotech firm weighing rats. As he gets promoted to poisoning, inducing inflammation, stapling and punching holes in the rats, then killing them in a macabre ‘death bucket’ of frozen carbon dioxide before dissecting them and analyzing their intestines, the reader is spared no gruesome detail. Had the book been badly written, it could have been just a catalogue of horrors that would turn most people off after the first 20 pages. But Slusher’s honest observations, often poignant, or replete with self- effacing humour, keep the reader’s interest.
He is not a monster (nor are his other researcher colleagues) and he tries to avoid causing pain and suffering to the animals as much as possible, but ultimately, he follows the protocols and procedures he is given: from injecting an experimental drug to treat irritable bowel disease followed by acetic acid into rats’ colons and causing them acute agony before killing them and studying their colons, to observing a beagle overdosed on indomethacin slowly waste away in excruciating pain, to force feeding monkeys with a mixture of dirt and arsenic to check if a playground is safe for children to play. He observes the scurrying joy of rats and mice, near the beginning of studies, running around together and playing in groups, the beagles who prefer the attention of the experimenter to being left alone in their cages, monkeys who, he is warned by supervisors, have become deranged and very dangerous because of years of desperate boredom and confinement in steel boxes. His heart is softened by one young monkey, who unlike the others, is submissive and desperately afraid.
Slusher writes of his experiences several years after having lived them. With hindsight, he recalls a massive industry, where the scant regulations that exist to ensure a modicum of welfare for the animals are only minimally applied – when well-meaning psychology students provide toys for the monkeys in an attempt to lessen their boredom, the researchers remove them, because they hinder the work. The statutory rules for daily out of cage exercise and play with beagles are barely applied. When he tries to organise the end of study adoption of the beagles who haven’t already died during or been euthanized in the experiment, superiors refuse, as they don’t want the public to know the university experiments on dogs. And sometimes, the observation of animal welfare laws is insufficient, as these are inadequate anyway, failing to mandate pain relief for rodents who have undergone surgical procedures. The monkeys that Slusher experiments on, whose human like expressions of fear, boredom and violent hatred for the researchers seem to haunt him are treated with a modicum more of care than some of the lesser animals. Only not out of respect for their advanced level of sentience – but because they are very expensive and difficult to get hold of. The rodents are dirt cheap, plentiful and are hence expendable cogs in a machine.
Slusher also muses on the futility of many of the experiments. The IBD drug study, after inflicting excruciating agony on hundreds of rats, finally concluded that the acetic acid rodent model is not the best way to determine how these drugs actually work in real human IBD conditions. Tests in which hundreds of rats are maimed to test a bovine growth hormone are stopped when the company discovers there is not a sufficient market to sell the product. Other tests are stopped when they prove, hundreds of lives later, inconclusive.
Ultimately, Slusher’s obvious remorse and his thoughtful reflections about his self-described career as a ‘monster’ redeem him to the reader. This account raises questions not only about the treatment of animals behind doors that are very deliberately kept firmly shut, but also about the usefulness of the data being gathered by such experiments. In a context of rapidly evolving technologies that are quickly replacing the use of animals in scientific experiments, a full and transparent public debate that balances both the ethics and the effectiveness of animal tests is well overdue.
Michael Slusher’s career as an animal experimenter, and how he was prepared to maim, injure and even inflict agony on laboratory animals in the name of science without asking any questions – until several years later – would have interested Milgram. After drawing back the veil on the deliberately secretive world of testing drugs on animals, Slusher reveals that after sacrificing thousands of animal lives, from rats and mice to beagles and capuchin monkeys, that not a single one of the hundreds of experiments he worked on ever produced a cure or treatment for a medical condition. And that today, 92% of such experiments fail to produce data relevant to humans.
Slusher tells his life story – from how his father, an avid reptile collector who owned a boa constrictor that he fed on live mice, rats and then chickens - passed on an interest in animals and how he lands his first job in a small biotech firm weighing rats. As he gets promoted to poisoning, inducing inflammation, stapling and punching holes in the rats, then killing them in a macabre ‘death bucket’ of frozen carbon dioxide before dissecting them and analyzing their intestines, the reader is spared no gruesome detail. Had the book been badly written, it could have been just a catalogue of horrors that would turn most people off after the first 20 pages. But Slusher’s honest observations, often poignant, or replete with self- effacing humour, keep the reader’s interest.
He is not a monster (nor are his other researcher colleagues) and he tries to avoid causing pain and suffering to the animals as much as possible, but ultimately, he follows the protocols and procedures he is given: from injecting an experimental drug to treat irritable bowel disease followed by acetic acid into rats’ colons and causing them acute agony before killing them and studying their colons, to observing a beagle overdosed on indomethacin slowly waste away in excruciating pain, to force feeding monkeys with a mixture of dirt and arsenic to check if a playground is safe for children to play. He observes the scurrying joy of rats and mice, near the beginning of studies, running around together and playing in groups, the beagles who prefer the attention of the experimenter to being left alone in their cages, monkeys who, he is warned by supervisors, have become deranged and very dangerous because of years of desperate boredom and confinement in steel boxes. His heart is softened by one young monkey, who unlike the others, is submissive and desperately afraid.
Slusher writes of his experiences several years after having lived them. With hindsight, he recalls a massive industry, where the scant regulations that exist to ensure a modicum of welfare for the animals are only minimally applied – when well-meaning psychology students provide toys for the monkeys in an attempt to lessen their boredom, the researchers remove them, because they hinder the work. The statutory rules for daily out of cage exercise and play with beagles are barely applied. When he tries to organise the end of study adoption of the beagles who haven’t already died during or been euthanized in the experiment, superiors refuse, as they don’t want the public to know the university experiments on dogs. And sometimes, the observation of animal welfare laws is insufficient, as these are inadequate anyway, failing to mandate pain relief for rodents who have undergone surgical procedures. The monkeys that Slusher experiments on, whose human like expressions of fear, boredom and violent hatred for the researchers seem to haunt him are treated with a modicum more of care than some of the lesser animals. Only not out of respect for their advanced level of sentience – but because they are very expensive and difficult to get hold of. The rodents are dirt cheap, plentiful and are hence expendable cogs in a machine.
Slusher also muses on the futility of many of the experiments. The IBD drug study, after inflicting excruciating agony on hundreds of rats, finally concluded that the acetic acid rodent model is not the best way to determine how these drugs actually work in real human IBD conditions. Tests in which hundreds of rats are maimed to test a bovine growth hormone are stopped when the company discovers there is not a sufficient market to sell the product. Other tests are stopped when they prove, hundreds of lives later, inconclusive.
Ultimately, Slusher’s obvious remorse and his thoughtful reflections about his self-described career as a ‘monster’ redeem him to the reader. This account raises questions not only about the treatment of animals behind doors that are very deliberately kept firmly shut, but also about the usefulness of the data being gathered by such experiments. In a context of rapidly evolving technologies that are quickly replacing the use of animals in scientific experiments, a full and transparent public debate that balances both the ethics and the effectiveness of animal tests is well overdue.
March 27, 2018
Michael A. Slusher käsittelee kirjassaan työtään eläinkoelaitoksissa. Itse tutkimuskuvaukset olivat vähemmän brutaaleja kuin mitä olin odottanut eikä niillä mässäillä. Slusher kuvailee tekemiään kokeita tutkijan kliinisyydellä, vaikka tuokin jatkuvasti esiin katumuksensa entistä uraansa kohtaan. Kirjan mielenkiintoisin osuus on mielestäni Slusherin kuvaus eläinkoetutkijan ajatusmaailmasta. Työntekijöitä neuvotaan jatkuvasti olemaan muodostamatta tunnesidettä eläimiin ja työtä käsitellään mustalla huumorilla (esim. koehiirien hävityslaitetta kutsuttiin "Mauschwitziksi"). Koe-eläinten hengellä ei ole juuri arvoa: jatkotutkimuksiinkin soveltuvat hiiret ja rotat hävitettiin usein kokeiden jälkeen, koska uusien ostaminen on halpaa ja adoptioon soveltuvat koirat tapettiin tutkimusten päätyttyä, koska yliopisto ei tahtonut ihmisten tietävän heidän tekevän kokeita koirilla.
Jo tutkijana toimiessaan Slusher kertoo suhtautuneensa eri eläimiin eri tavoin, mutta myöskin saman lajin yksilöt ovat tuottaneet erilaisia reaktioita. Kokeiden tekeminen oli kuulemma helpompaa aikuisille apinoille, joiden Slusher katsoi "vihanneen" häntä. Tätä reaktiota oli helpompi sietää kuin nuorten apinoiden pelkoa saatikka koirien jatkuvia kiintymyksen ja ilon osoituksia.
Slusher kertoo, ettei hänen tekemistään kokeista yksikään johtanut ihmisille kelpaavien lääkkeiden tai tutkimusmenetelmien keksimiseen. Ylipäätänsä yli 90 % eläinkokeissa toimivista lääkkeistä ei enää toimi halutulla tavalla ihmiskokeissa, mutta uransa aikana Slusher tai hänen kollegansa eivät tajunneet tätä huolimatta jatkuvista epäonnistumisista. Syynä lienee työntekijöiden tarve puolustaa tekojaan "suuremmalla moraalisella hyvällä". Erittäin mielenkiintoinen lukukokemus!
Jo tutkijana toimiessaan Slusher kertoo suhtautuneensa eri eläimiin eri tavoin, mutta myöskin saman lajin yksilöt ovat tuottaneet erilaisia reaktioita. Kokeiden tekeminen oli kuulemma helpompaa aikuisille apinoille, joiden Slusher katsoi "vihanneen" häntä. Tätä reaktiota oli helpompi sietää kuin nuorten apinoiden pelkoa saatikka koirien jatkuvia kiintymyksen ja ilon osoituksia.
Slusher kertoo, ettei hänen tekemistään kokeista yksikään johtanut ihmisille kelpaavien lääkkeiden tai tutkimusmenetelmien keksimiseen. Ylipäätänsä yli 90 % eläinkokeissa toimivista lääkkeistä ei enää toimi halutulla tavalla ihmiskokeissa, mutta uransa aikana Slusher tai hänen kollegansa eivät tajunneet tätä huolimatta jatkuvista epäonnistumisista. Syynä lienee työntekijöiden tarve puolustaa tekojaan "suuremmalla moraalisella hyvällä". Erittäin mielenkiintoinen lukukokemus!
May 2, 2024
This is a nonfiction book about a scientist working for biotech firms. He worked for many years with rats, mice, dogs, and even monkeys and described his experiences here. He explained his job from the beginning, where he was weighing rats, to force feeding them medication and then killing them and dissecting them. He also wrote about working with dogs, and the disconnect between the dogs he saw as pets vs the dogs who were lab subjects. And eventually he ended up working with monkeys, whom he was forced to dissect for their brain tissue. This must have been a difficult subject to write about and the author pulls no punches when he describes killing mice in a gas chamber that he and his co-workers have labeled "mauschwitz." His unflinching memoir about working with animals deserves more attention from the animal rights community. I am giving it five stars.
February 18, 2018
This is a powerful book. Although I've been aware through activist newsletters and emails and other secondhand experience of the tragedy that is vivisection, little sparked my gag reflex, my anger reflex, and my sense of sorrow like this book - because the author was there. He participated in the atrocities, and while I suspect he holds back on some things, really he covers a long time span very nicely, without too much repetition. In fact, the repetition lay in the gruesomeness of the testing on and killing of the animals, and Slusher knows when to expand on these details and when to back off.
He tells his story non-judgmentally and traces his evolution from a kid with parents who treated animals as objects (as he did) to vegan activist. He doesn't hold the other vivisectionists too much to task (which I see a bit as a weakness, but of course, since he did the same I guess it would be hypocritical for him to do that), and he concludes the book by admitting his lack of financial success in life - but anything is better than vivisecting. And I respect him for that.
The sketches within the book add a nice, dramatic touch. There are a few typos that I wish had been noticed and fixed, but overall this is an important, powerful book. The only thing I wonder related to this is how to get other people to read it and inform themselves so that they'll stop supporting this nonsense and cruelty. Highly recommend.
He tells his story non-judgmentally and traces his evolution from a kid with parents who treated animals as objects (as he did) to vegan activist. He doesn't hold the other vivisectionists too much to task (which I see a bit as a weakness, but of course, since he did the same I guess it would be hypocritical for him to do that), and he concludes the book by admitting his lack of financial success in life - but anything is better than vivisecting. And I respect him for that.
The sketches within the book add a nice, dramatic touch. There are a few typos that I wish had been noticed and fixed, but overall this is an important, powerful book. The only thing I wonder related to this is how to get other people to read it and inform themselves so that they'll stop supporting this nonsense and cruelty. Highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews