by Holladay Allen
Native Foods Cafe
I love horseshoe crabs. I grew up with them in the canal behind my parents’ house in Florida. My friends and I would hang out in the mangrove forest and try to catch them and then let them crawl on our backs. We called them back scratchin’ crabs. They were nice enough… never seemed to have a problem with crawling around on our backs.
I also like the way they looked… truly prehistoric. They have been around for more than 350 million years! Hanging out with the dinosaurs… you know… so scientists affectionately refer to them as “living fossils.” They are indeed strange little guys that live on the bottom of the ocean, usually in shallow areas, or sometimes can be seen cruising the beach. Although referred to as “crabs” they are Arthropods – more closely related to spiders than to real crustaceans such as shrimp, lobsters, and crabs. They are really cool… and really ancient and we are harvesting the buh-jeezus out of them for medical research.
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What in the heck?! (You are probably shrieking aloud as you read this) Well here is the breakdown… The simplicity of the horseshoe crab’s immune system (which took a really long time to evolve to this state of efficiency) is actually what makes the horseshoe crab’s blood useful to the biomedical industry. Horseshoe crabs live in essentially a cesspool of different kinds of bacteria… the ocean! But the blood of horseshoe crabs contains a critical component, Limulus Amoebocyte Lysate, known as LAL, which immediately binds and clots around fungi, viruses, and bacterial endotoxins.... essentially protecting them from some of the most dangerous toxins, bacteria and viruses around.
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Dr. Frederik Bang discovered LAL in the 1960s when he injected common marine bacteria into the bloodstream of the horseshoe crab and it immediately clotted. It was truly amazing. The components in LAL, for example, not only bind and inactivate bacterial endotoxin, but the clot formed as a result of activation by endotoxin provides wound control by preventing bleeding and forming a physical barrier against additional bacterial entry and infection. Once the biomedical discovered this modern miracle, the blue horseshoe blood began to spill.
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The U.S. Food & Drug Administration now requires all drugs intended for human consumption to be tested using LAL. Including medical devices such as pacemakers! Currently, scientists have no means to reproduce this compound synthetically; therefore horseshoe crabs are of vital importance to human drug development. Until we wipe them out that is.
Here’s an idea! Why don’t we start eating better… taking less drugs and then we wouldn’t need to be constantly inundating ourselves with chemicals to “fix” problems we most likely created for ourselves. Ay yay yay.
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So exactly how do we harvest the blood of these prehistoric creatures?
Every year, horseshoe crabs are gathered up (largely along the Eastern shore, check the picture above) and transported to a laboratory where up to 30 percent of their blood is removed while they are still alive. Once the blood has been collected, the crabs are taken back to the water and released. LAL manufacturers have measured mortality rates of less then 3%. Yet two recent studies estimate that between 10% and 15% of crabs do not survive the bleeding procedure, which accounts for the mortality of 20,000 to 37,500 horseshoe crabs per year. Another concern is that it takes the crab a few months to rebuild its blood cell count level back up after a bleeding. Horseshoe crabs could be bled up to three or four times a year, which would take a toll on the health of the animals. But LAL manufacturers claim they only bleed them once a year. Hmmmm…..
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Some other interesting facts…. Its blood is a distinctive blue color thanks to the fact that it contains copper-rich hemocyanin as opposed to iron-rich hemoglobin. The blood also contains amoebocytes, which play a similar role to white blood cells. When a crab is wounded, the amoebocytes swim to the area and coagulate to form a viscous gel surrounding the invading bacteria. This blood-clotting mechanism ensures the crab doesn't develop an infection. This video gives a nice rundown of the whole she-bang...
So of course this sad story does not end here. The fate of the amazing horseshoe crab is delicately intertwined with that of the beautiful red knot shorebird. More on that later this week….
Thanks to the following sites for the copious amounts of info on the plight of the mighty horseshoe crab: