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Horseshoe Crabs Are Bled Alive To Create an Unparalleled Biomedical Technology
Lasrick writes "Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic: 'The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn't the color. It's a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of its blood cells that can detect mere traces of bacterial presence and trap them in inescapable clots.' Madrigal continues, 'To take advantage of this biological idiosyncrasy, pharmaceutical companies burst the cells that contain the chemical, called coagulogen. Then, they can use the coagulogen to detect contamination in any solution that might come into contact with blood. If there are dangerous bacterial endotoxins in the liquid—even at a concentration of one part per trillion—the horseshoe crab blood extract will go to work, turning the solution into what scientist Fred Bang, who co-discovered the substance, called a "gel." ... I don't know about you, but the idea that every single person in America who has ever had an injection has been protected because we harvest the blood of a forgettable sea creature with a hidden chemical superpower makes me feel a little bit crazy. This scenario is not even sci-fi, it's postmodern technology.'"
Does PITA know about this? /ducks and covers
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Why is it postmodern technology? Because it deconstructs the cells? ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
Before this discovery, they used to inject rabbits with the substance being tested, and measured if the rabbits got a fever. It was obviously not a great way to do things. Wasn't very quantifiable or sensitive. Source.
Another bit of trivia: one of the other major commercial uses of horseshoe crabs is cutting them up for bait. Works well for that, but you obviously use up the crabs quickly. So we can inconvenience them for a life-saving medical wonder, or we can kill them for a few pounds of fish to eat. Naturally, using them as bait has not been outlawed.
One last bit of trivia: this isn't really news. I mean, I obviously find it cool, but seriously, 1960 was the discovery. Beta isn't bad enough, now they're altering the content too?
It's one of the big arguments for environmentalism and bio diversity. When push comes to shove you sometimes hear "so what if a few species go extinct? They weren't doing all that well before $BUSINESSACTIVITY, why should we try saving them? Why do I care about this species?". And the answer is that the creature represents a massive chain of thousands to millions of generations of genetic experimentation in real-world real-time environments. We're just starting to open Pandora's box of genetics and culling the biodiversity of the planet could be throwing away truly helpful and useful tools we could use in the future.
Plus genocide is just sort of a dick move.
Horseshoe crabs are hardly a forgotten species when they breed on beaches outside your back door...
Maybe this guy also forgot about the baby fur seals until somebody showed him a picture.
There is nothing forgettable about horseshoe crabs. They are older than dinosaurs, the oldest fossils of horseshoe crabs are 450M years old!
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Horse Shoe crabs area already a depleted resource as they have been used as cheap bait for fishermen for years. The impact being subsequent affects to migratory birds who feast on there eggs. I don't think the pharmacological community have a choice but to treat these crustaceans with the respect due
http://www.endangeredspeciesin...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature...
According to Wikipedia, they are not an endangered species though there are reports of declining populations. As to breeding them in captivity:
Raising horseshoe crabs in captivity has proven to be difficult. Some evidence indicates mating only takes place in the presence of the sand or mud in which the horseshoe crab's eggs were hatched. Neither what is in the sand that the crab can sense nor how they sense it is known with certainty.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
When I go to donate blood, am I in a room of people being "Bled Alive"? Technically yes but there's a good reason that term is not used to draw people to donate blood, and is also rather a bit much in this case too.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Horseshoe crabs are now grossly over fished; some for medical and some for eel bait. The rarer they get, the higher the price and the more fishermen want them, thus resulting is a crash.
The crash destroyed the food supply of a rare shorebird called the Red Knot that depends on horseshoe crab eggs in the Spring during their migration. So they arrive exhausted and hungry in the DelMar area, but there is now no food. So the population of Red Knots has crashed.
Don't work for a major corporation hey?
They're not endangered and they don't have throats. Also, before you ask, they're not crabs and they're not horseshoes.
Use of the words "good", "bad" or "evil" is almost invariably the result of oversimplification.
"Alexis Madrigal at the Atlantic: 'The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn't the color."
I'd suggest color be damned, the marvelous thing about them is that their blood isn't iron based, but copper based; 1 - a clear proof of convergent evolution; 2 - just really damn neat; and, 3 - proof that Spock, having deep green blood, must not be from a species that uses copper as a blood base (a fantastic way to make diehard trekkies squirm).
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
From a lab tech's point of view, LAL testing is brilliant. Mix 10mL of some sample that's supposedly "clean" into a premade LAL test kit. Snap the lid shut. Shake. Incubate for a day. If it changes color, it's positive for endotoxins. If it stays clear, it's negative. Simple as that. And being that the sensitivity is picograms/mL, it's great. Knowing the backstory is neat, too, from the tech's view. Which I am.
Chris Knight is my hero.
Seriously? Such an enlightened attitude.
Actually one of the strongest memories I have as a young child was coming across a horseshoe crab at a beach, it was in shallow water -- and it both scared the sh*t out of me, and had me intensely fascinated for a good long while. When an adult picked it up so I could see its underside and all those moving legs, I was absolutely, positively, enthralled. Nothing forgettable about it...
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
Well I am sorry but the wikipedia article for the horshoe crab found off the Atlantic and gulf coasts state that they are not presently endangered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
LAL is obtained from the animals' blood. Horseshoe crabs are returned to the ocean after bleeding, although some 3% die during the process. Studies show the blood volume returns to normal in about a week, though blood cell count can take two to three months to fully rebound.[24]
So three percent of them die, Frankly I am not that worried about that.
They place them on your face where they attach themselves but eventually fall off. Your blood is highly acidic then but it kills all bacteria and viruses.