The book presents a re-reading of H. G. Wells' novel "The Island of Doctor Moreau" as a key to addressing the controversies of our own humanity. Ron Edwards is a broadly-experienced researcher and teacher specializing in evolutionary theory, as well as a long-time participant in animal care oversight at a leading research institution.
His careful examination in this book looks strictly at the novel's actual story to rehabilitate it from the widespread distorted version, and argues that the real story provides an outstanding means to confront human exceptionalism, a prevailing stopping-point for science and ethics. It integrates literature, history, and science; it bluntly criticizes, discloses, and advocates; and it combines accuracy with clarity, directed toward a lay audience.

Finally, the book also raises a genuinely new and relevant issue: with human exceptionalism abolished, where do ethics come from?