Hans Ruesch - Activism Career

Activism Career

Ruesch was internationally known as an outspoken advocate against vivisection and other forms of animal testing. An animal lover since his childhood, he became an activist against animal testing, while living in Rome. Ruesch did not believe that medical research could benefit by using such methods. Instead, Ruesch insisted that medicine was led dangerously astray by what he saw as pseudo-science, and a fatally false methodology. He argued that rabbits, mice, rats and other animals are not anatomically and physiologically similar to humans and drew upon numerous statements from doctors and researchers in support of his stance (see his work, 1,000 Doctors and More Against Vivisection). Therefore, such animal testing cannot reliably predict physiological reactions in humans. In 1974, he founded the Center for Scientific Information on Vivisection (CIVIS) and devoted the rest of his life to the abolition of vivisection.

In the 1970s, Ruesch started writing exposés of the animal testing and research industry. He wrote the Slaughter of the Innocent (Bantam, 1978) and the Naked Empress, or The Great Medical Fraud, as well as publishing "The International Foundation Report Dedicated to the Abolition of Vivisection." Slaughter of the Innocent (Civitas Publications, 1983) is credited with promoting and strengthening the animal-rights movement in the U.S. and abroad.

There is potential confusion concerning Ruesch's first two books denouncing vivisection. His first book on the subject was written and published in European countries with a title in each language that would translate into English as "The Naked Empress." (Ruesch was multilingual, and he wrote the translations himself.) When this same work was to be published in England, the title was changed, at the publisher's request, to "Slaughter of the Innocent", and that is the title used when the book was subsequently issued (by Civitas) in the United States. Some years later, Ruesch wrote a second book criticising vivisection, in English, which was released (again, by Civitas) in the United States, with the title "The Naked Empress, or the Great Medical Fraud". Whereas the first book focused on vivisection as a barbaric and unscientific means of obtaining medical knowledge, the second book focused on the profit motives of the medical-pharmaceutical industry in perpetuating vivisection. To summarise, the book known by the English title "The Naked Empress" is a different book to the one published earlier in Europe with that same title in other languages but known in English as "Slaughter of the Innocent". (This information is provided by the original organiser of Civitas.)