Ita Stein Gvirtzman

MouseStruck Ita Stein Gvirtzman

A genuine and rarefied glance into the world of vivisection
A significant contribution to animal ethics discourse

"For over twenty years, my friends at the laboratory were mainly white and black mice, there were also gray mice and rats and a few rabbits. I consider them my friends because I truly loved them all and it is beyond my understanding how in my own two hands, without a flinch or hesitation, and without even being able to think of another possible way, I had caused them all such suffering."

This is a unique and rare candid account of a vivisector who, after a long career in vivisection, had decided to break the wall of silence and courageously tells the story of lab animals that intertwines with her own life story.

The author is a former vivisector who, for over twenty years, had practiced animal experimentation for the sake of science.

MouseStruck is a true account unfolding the process of the author crossing the lines after contracting cancer following many years of participating in the research to find a cure for this class of diseases, and a sincere attempt to comprehend the vivisection act.

"This is my attempt to share my frustration and bewilderment in the face of the unreasonable reason, double standards, unsynchronized academic disciplines, and the rift between academic discourse and actual reality, while expressing my sense of freedom after releasing myself from the trap of a daily routine which eroded and distorted my life. I wish to reveal the atrocities, to protest against the scientific arrogance which is detached and alienated from the Humanities and the human spirit, and to allow the reader to grasp the inconceivable."