Doctor Butcher: crank, genius or son of Frankenstein?

I hated reading this book. Not only was it objectively upsetting, as any book describing monkey vivisection would be (I put my head in my hands when I realised there were photographs), it was also dispiriting, because it showed up my hypocrisy. Like so many, I would gratefully accept perfusion brain-cooling techniques if they helped me survive surgery, yet I do not wish to read about how these techniques were developed on primates. It would be enough for me just to know that their suffering was minimised. This book asks even more of its reader, by focusing on gruelling experiments that lead nowhere.

Its cover is a little misleading, with engravings hinting at the period of Burke and Hare, when in fact the book centres on the Cold War, and the animal sacrifice is brutally 20th century. It is well written, in that the author can speak clearly to a layperson and engage a reluctant, even repulsed reader.