BOOKS: Animals: Why They Must Not Be Brutalized

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 2005:

Animals: Why They Must Not Be Brutalized
by J.B. Suconik
Nuark Publishing (30 Amberwood Parkway, Ashland, OH 44805),
2002. 160 pages, hard cover. $28.00

Suconik’s book is basically a moral treatise against the
arguments commonly used to support vivisection. Give us the whole
balance sheet, he implores vivisection apologists, not just an item
from the profit and loss account. Then we can accurately determine
the legitimacy of the whole enterprise.
Don’t just argue, for example, that without biomedical
research on animals we can forget about a cure for AIDS. Tell us how
much it will cost, how many animals will be used, how cruel are the
procedures and what are the alternatives.
Sure, if you spend millions tormenting animals for years you
are bound to learn something, sooner or later. But if better ways
exist, then the millions spent on vivisection will have been
wastefully employed.

Suconik describes biomedical research as “the biological
science version of medieval torture to extract information.”
The second half of Suconik’s book offers harrowing examples
of egregious cruelty endured by animals around the world.
Suconik provides some deep thinking and some trenchant criticisms.
Unfortunately, Suconik compounds the often turgid nature of moral
argument with sentences such as, “the reader will discover
heretofore unnoticed, but relevant facts and rebuttal (truth) to
disprove fallacious and misleading rhetoric, and a myriad of need to
be known examples of the unceasing human tyranny of animals.”
–Chris Mercer