With the new #COVID vaccine approved, a reminder that we’re all indebted to the ancient & wondrous horseshoe crab.
Their blue blood contains Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) which clumps at contact with bacterial toxins. They are caught for their blood to test sterility of medical equipment & injections.
Unfortunately the harvest is unsustainable & populations are in decline. An effective synthetic substitute has been around for 2 decades & we just need the biomedical industry to switch.
from this article
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/02/the-blood-harvest/284078/
"The industry says that not that many of the animals die. Between 10 and 30 percent of the bled animals, according to varying estimates, actually die.."
But what is fucked up is that according to the article, they're only not harvested (i.e. killed) outright because the population is so valuable alive as a chemical source.
@Sheril
for those interested, here's where I first heard about this: https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/how-horseshoe-crabs-probably-saved-your-life/