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Michael Slusher
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They All Had Eyes: Confessions of a Vivisectionist Paperback – 21 April 2016

by Michael Slusher (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 38 ratings
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.
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  1. ISBN-10
    1940184231
  2. ISBN-13
    978-1940184234
  3. Publisher
    Vegan Publishers
  4. Publication date
    21 April 2016
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    14.61 x 1.27 x 22.23 cm
  7. Print length
    208 pages
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Product description

About the Author

Michael 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. He and his wife currently reside in the Eastern United States and are owned by several rescued cats.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vegan Publishers
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 21 April 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1940184231
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1940184234
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 kg
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 14.61 x 1.27 x 22.23 cm
  • Best Sellers Rank: 2,498,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 38 ratings

About the author

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Michael Slusher

Michael Slusher

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Michael 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. This book is his first major step towards that goal. He and his wife currently reside in New Mexico and are owned by several rescued cats.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
38 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Dorothy P.
    5.0 out of 5 stars What they don't teach you in University!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 August 2020
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    This book is an absolute necessity for any science student. It's sickening to realise how easily we students are programmed into believing the need for non-human animal testing and vivisection. I spoke to one particular lecturer of mine, after reading this book, to delve into her justification of her vivisection work. She told me that she had never thought about the rights violations inherent in her field of work. She was told that non-human animal tests were necessary for benefiting humans. She had never questioned this! This book is also important in dispelling the "welfare" myths that are so commonly heard from companies which carry out non-human animal testing. A very difficult read but essential if we want to change this disgusting practice.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Madeleine Edmonds
    5.0 out of 5 stars An eye-opening read
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2016
    Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
    This book reveals the staggeringly routine cruelty hidden behind the glossy image portrayed by the drug companies and research charities. The level of disconnect the author displayed is truly shocking and although there were hints of compassion in the early days I was astonished to read that he remained brainwashed into believing he was helping humanity for so many years. I believe this is a hugely important book for those who wish to enlighten themselves with the no-holds-barred truth behind the vivisection industry's thin veneer of lies.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Kj Watkinson
    5.0 out of 5 stars A journey through the vivisection industry and out the other side
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2016
    Format: Kindle Edition
    This book offers a rare glimpse into the vivisection industry, whilst providing a narrative from someone that experienced that environment. It is a very familiar refrain, where consideration for non-human animals has only stretched as far as their perceived utility to us. Fortunately these ideas are changing for the better, and the author provides just such an example with this book.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Care2care
    5.0 out of 5 stars excellent
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 March 2016
    Format: Kindle Edition
    does your money fund animal research? maybe u are unaware that medical research charities use/abuse animals in experiments? this book proves animals should not be used as the suffering is horrendous and research is erroneous.[...] charities to find the good and bad charities. heres to nonanimal research thanks.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Sophie.strider
    5.0 out of 5 stars Draws you in page after page into a world you wont want to believe exists.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 March 2016
    Format: Kindle Edition
    A heartrending and emotional read, draws you in page after page into a world you wont want to believe exists. Thank you for speaking out for those who cannot and for shedding light on the horrifying truth about animal testing.
    5 people found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for those who want to help change the world
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 February 2016
    Format: Paperback
    The author Michael Slusher describes in his book the cruel reality of animal testing he has performed for many years. According to law, these are the allowed practices to develop medicine, to test cosmetics and household products. Michael tells the stories about the gruesome testing on defenceless animals who by no means have neither our DNA nor our blood types. Michael has written this book to shed a light on what should not be normal practice in our modern world anymore. His wish is that this type of cruelty stops. I recommend to read this book to everyone who still believes that any product should be tested on animals, and those who also think that this money making industry needs to be closed down.
    4 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • MusiKate
    5.0 out of 5 stars A necessary and eye-opening read. Strongly recommended reading
    Reviewed in the United States on 8 August 2020
    Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
    Micheal Slusher's book 'They All Had Eyes' is a very important work, one that is I think unique in the current animal rights literature. A former laboratory vivisectionist and now its polar opposite, an ethical vegan, he writes from the point of view of his complete 180 with regard to the animal (ab)use he took an active part in, standard in science labs all around the world.

    What comes strongly to the fore in the book is a good sense of the staggering scale of vivisection's destruction of innocent lives for trivial and questionable reasons - and sometimes demonstrable pointlessness, such as when experiments are cancelled before completion because of funding cuts, for example. This is illuminating and helps put the 'science' world into more realistic perspective than many people see it. Far from the organised, objective, meticulous and ultimately benevolent result-machine that a lot of people like to imagine, scientists (however well-intentioned) do not work in a vacuum. Scientific research projects do not exist for their own sake - they are part of industry, part of politics, part of education, and need to pay people's wages. As such, the blocks that make up what we collectively call 'science' are haphazard and quite random, uncooperative (they frequently overlap and duplicate work already done, with little attempt to minimise this) and of necessity competitive since they are funding-reliant - if someone else's almost identical project beats you to the funding body or offers a more convincing pitch, you'll have to find money somewhere else. They also heavily exaggerate their own usefulness and significance, often for reasons of prestige and credibility (employees in tenured research positions must publish regularly in established journals, something that is not easily achieved without overselling tenuous results and manipulating statistics etc). The book, albeit indirectly, illustrates this very well by highlighting the plight of the hapless animals involved - the sheer waste of life that is actually built into the methodology (injury and death are often not the mere lamentable byproduct of experiments, but their actual intended outcome by design), the lack of concern that seems utterly capricious when compared side-by-side with the flimsy results obtained, the breathtaking audacity needed to permit dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of animals to suffer for one study that is ultimately cancelled halfway through without ever being completed or written up, etc etc. A picture is skilfully and accurately painted of a 'science' that is floundering, disorganised, flawed and decidedly not unbiased (I say this with an insider view of that same world, which the book simply confirms).

    I also appreciated the fact that although it is extremely hard to read in places, the author's approach to describing the violence and suffering he caused is almost matter-of-fact: brutally honest, though without being gratuitous. He is clearly contrite and remorseful but he wisely does not allow this fact to sway the narrative into one of emotional hand-wringing nor anthropomorphism. That these innocent animals must have suffered horribly from such procedures and treatment is clear simply from the precise (and yes often stomach-turning) descriptions of what was done - there is no need for him to belabour the point. And in some ways, our pity and compassion are ignited almost more by the fact that during the narrative, his is not yet activated: this gives the reader a sense of being a horrified but helpless onlooker.

    After his change of heart and the accompanying grief and guilt that must have come with it, I appreciate how hard this book must have been to write and I commend Mr Slusher for doing it. This book is horribly necessary, and a compelling, eye-opening read. For those in the vivisection world as well as those who have no idea what really goes on behind those ominously closed doors.
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  • Lauralot
    5.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to read, but necessary
    Reviewed in the United States on 20 April 2016
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    This book is so important. It moved me to tears and there were points where I had to set the book down and take a break, but I still feel this is something everyone should read. Michael Slusher does more than make readers feel for these helpless animals; he also clearly demonstrates how worthless animal testing is for development in human drugs. After reading this book, I was compelled to do my own research, and I found that in 2006, the FDA stated that nine out of ten new drugs fail because what works in animal studies does not translate to humans. That's a failure rate of ninety percent, a completely unacceptable loss of life, time, resources, effort, and money. We need to spread the word about these appalling truths. We need to put an end to this outdated, inhumane model.

    Slusher also brilliantly describes how he came to feel so desensitized toward the animals he was tortured. That may anger readers, but I feel like it may be the most important part of this work. I'm sure most lab workers - or slaughterhouse employees, or anything of the sort - consider themselves to be animal lovers like Slusher did at the time. I'm sure that they believe they're doing a necessary evil, or that these animals can't miss a life of freedom they never knew. It's important to understand why people in such positions feel this way so that we can learn how to combat it.

    I recommend this book to everyone. I know that it's painful and upsetting, but sometimes we have to open our eyes to unpleasant realities in order to make a difference.
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  • mally
    4.0 out of 5 stars inside view of research labs
    Reviewed in the United States on 18 June 2021
    Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase
    if you want to know the horrors of the inner workings of the locked corridors where vivisectionists work, this is it. it is not an easy read.
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  • Alessandra
    5.0 out of 5 stars A riveting essential read for the entire human population... a heartbreaking eye opener that will sicken to the core...
    Reviewed in the United States on 16 March 2016
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    As a life-long animal advocate, I knew I had to review this book for Mr. Slusher. There was no option. Although it was extremely tough to get started, when I finally had the guts, I finished it in 3 hours. This book is a must-read for the medical students, pharmacology students, the politicians, pharmaceutical CEO's, biologists,the indifferent population, and all those who already advocate for the welfare and justice for these imprisoned souls. The former vivisectionist turned vegan paints an accurate horrific picture of the macabre profession of animal torture taking place in laboratories managed by monsters and surrounded in secrecy. They exist in an almost secret society where most don't talk about what really goes on in these dungeons of torture that roll in the big money. This book exposes the macabre and sadistic "procedures" and "experiments" done on a daily basis in this country and takes into account the innocent wasted lives so easily disposed of purportedly in the name of Science. This book challenges that perception and goes beyond the walls of Hell to set the record straight about the lies of animal experimentation and the real reasons behind it.
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  • Jack McMillan
    5.0 out of 5 stars I loved the book
    Reviewed in the United States on 8 April 2016
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    I loved the book. Very very brave of him to write it. Yes, there are difficult to read accounts in it. But don't shy away from purchasing this book because it tells the raw truth. It needed to be told and it needs to be read, far and wide. The details he allowed his memory to go to, well, if he can go there, the least we can do is go there with him, and with the animals he speaks of. There is a call here for readers to match his bravery by reading this honest work.
    Equally impressive was his transformation, and his heartfelt articulation of the remorse he feels and shares with his readers. It is so impressive how he does not hide from what he did, but uses it to educate and change others, and this horrific industry. His insights into that industry, and the absurdity of it, seen from the inside, are so critically important to relate and expose. He does a near perfect job of that. And his final chapter, "Reformation", really brings it all home. His sincerity throughout, and then his humble reflections, and his story of transformation in the end, makes the rest of the book irrefutably convincing. And genuine. Buy this book, if for no other reason than to help Michael in his quest to open eyes to the truth of this horrific industry.
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