Customer Reviews

Slaughter of the innocent

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As somebody who has read many books about our mistreatment of animals, this is the most comprehensive book I've read about the wrongs of vivisection. Hans Reusch describes how vivisection or animal experimentation is wrong for the following reasons: 1. the horrific cruelty to animals; 2. it is fraudulent research and is not helping humans, eg., a drug which reacts in humans one way may react completely different in another species; and 3. how the pharmaceuticals are more interested in profiting from diseases instead of looking into preventing them in the first place.

Reusch gives great historical perspectives on medicine and pharmaceuticals. He provides plenty of footnotes. I also found it good that Reusch forwarns the readers of a chapter which can be skipped over because it graphically describes the actual experiments.

I'm giving the book four stars instead of five because I really hope Reusch considers a new edition. Everything written in this book rings true today. It would, however, be useful to see more recent examples of the harm which the experiments have brought to both animals and mankind.

A harrowing read but a seminal work on the subject of vivisection, the injustice to both man and animals is coherently explained.

Few books can be said to really change our lives but 'Slaughter of The Innocent' is truly one of them. I urge you to read this book especially if you are a believer in vivisection.

Reading this may cause you to question the myths, spin and downright lies that have been promoted so effectively by the medical and pharmaceutical industries for decades. Read and form your own view as to why this book is banned from many bookstores.

This book is a MUST for whoever considers himeself a human being. It deals both with moral issues and clinical issues, thus stating that animals are not ours to experiment on.

This book is an excellent study of the damage to human health by the misleading experimentation on animals. Many years ago this book changed my life. I had no idea of the depth of the deception involving human health. This book explains it all.

This book was written sometime around the 70's, yet most of the information presented still compares and refutes vivisector claims nowadays, things like how they say "without animal research we would not have discovered penicillin, surgery, analgesics" etc.

I have the 2003 edition and that has some extra pages from later events. The preface in that version explains a little about first the author's early life and earlier career, then how he came across vivisection and suddenly changed because of both realizing what will happen to animals when they get sent to labs, and especially because of his baby brother Konrad, who had been given a drug tested on animals and died because of it. Then the tactics used by the vivisectionist community to ban and or block his books (especially in the BUAV and Dr Hadwen Trust org), and more goodies they didn't want people to read.

I've read this book once already and am going through it again taking notes and comparing them with claims by a vivisector group called "Pro-Test" (a group made up to defend vivisection and their jobs mainly). The author of "Slaughter of the Innocent" knew why that group was created, and it was just one of the many dirty tactics to try to keep as many people as possible believing in vivisection or "animal research".

There is a chapter alone that just goes into detail about the vile, ludicrous old vivisection experiments and as said by another review, you can just skip that chapter, although, again I'm finding some useful notes to refute vivisectors with. In this angle they tend to be based on those arguments or claims that "We don't do that anymore" or "They are just old scary stories", "We have better laws now" etc. Not likely when they actually come from the medical journals, old (and new) reports, because I'm still finding those old experiments being repeated nowadays. The newspapers occasionally post a short article from animal researchers trying to make out as if they are getting somewhere with their "research" which has been done so many times now its a joke.

Another later chapter goes into human experimentation, demonstrating how the vivisection mentality has encouraged such experiments on humans and is not merely restricted to some "nazi experiments" in world war 1 and 2 as some people may think or perceive it as. Some examples describe an animal vivisectionist that conducted experiments on people yet was let off. I like to use that part to refute the laymen who say: "You would rather test on people?"

There are many ways one can "look" at this book, one; you can just say "thats just his opinion" (which implies you didn't read the whole book or the references provided).

Two; you could claim that this is an "animal rights book" (but again you obviously haven't read the whole book and animal rights is only a fragment of the information. Human rights is also covered if you read it properly. Then of course the universal danger vivisection constantly presents humanity.)

Three; "This book is full of lies" (those who say this are actually vivisectors trying to put you off reading this book, and they have tried this before, saying at least some of the information is biased in some way. The author refuted them all in his CIVIS group later on when they began attacking the book).

Yes there are various books and authors who do many novels, facts, fictions. One could easily say without reading that he is just another money grabbing author who sold a book or two. But thats not the case here, he didn't mind people using his book, in fact he wanted people to use his books to put an end to vivisection. The other book called "Naked Empress or the great medical fraud". Another one was "1000 doctors and many more against Vivisection".

Those books and a website: [...] (site may be temporarily down at time of typing), have been very useful because they go from vivisection to why and how it still goes on without people realizing how and why, how some people are unwittingly supporting vivisection through misleading animal welfare charities, cancer charities, and more information that was described on that site such as why his books were ignored and not known to many people.

At the end of the day if you want to know how and why vivisection/animal research came to be, all the lies made by vivisectors, and the real background in medical history, then this is the book for you. Just don't rush through it and you may need to re read it until you start remembering the information.

This book is the bible of the anti-vivisectionist movement. It provides irrefutable proof of the harm caused to humans through animal testing. It completely validates the point that animal research is scientific fraud

The self-evident fact is that Slaughter of the Innocent is a polemic, not an even-handed academic review. By definition, a polemic is an argument aimed at promoting a particular point of view--in this case, that animal experimentation, apart from its often barbaric nature, does not produce data that can be reliably extrapolated to human health and medicine. Ruesch's accomplishment is that he offered an antivivisectionist perspective that directly challenged it on scientific grounds rather than on humane or ethical grounds. He brushed aside the usual assumption that vivisection is a "necessary evil" by questioning its necessity. His claim that animal-based data can never be applied to humans may be an overstatement, but the pro-vivisectionist claim that animal research has been of great benefit to human health is outrightly false. Ruesch was a pioneer in setting the stage for a more honest appraisal of what we can and can't expect from animal research. As a result, opposition to animal experimentation has been gathering momentum within the clinical professions; it is still a minority position, but a growing minority.

Reading this you see that the medical profession is concerned with profits and not with health. It's absolutely shameful.

Vivisection once was defined as a surgical procedure conducted on a living organism; it has since become a graphic term used by those with radical goals to end all types of animal testing. These tests are categorized as cosmetics research and medical advancement procedures. The medical procedures, which make up roughly 10% of the animal experimentation industry, are conducted by medical students practicing surgery operations and trained personnel testing medicines for both animal and human use. The other 90% are starting to fade away. Throughout Europe, there have been two monumental laws passed that ban cosmetic testing on animals altogether. Even so, individuals like Hans Ruesch have dedicated their lives to the advancement of animals by pursuing the abolition of animal experimentation. Ruesch wrote Slaughter of the innocent, his magnum opus, in attempts of pursuing his goal. His writing style couples emotional factors and factual data to produce what appears to be a logical and persuasive arguments. Even so, Ruesch manipulates the data and misrepresents facts in order to reach his desired conclusion. His conclusion, therefore, while possibly true is not justifiable based on his arguments. Furthermore, Ruesch is a drop-out law student who has no experience in the medical field, and published this book far back in 1983.