One of the animals exploited in the pharmaceutical industry is horseshoe crabs, which live in sea and brackish waters. . . The blue blood of these crabs is used in the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that vaccines, drugs and medical devices do not contain dangerous bacterial toxins.
Thousands of horseshoe crabs are caught every year for this reason. This blood, which has a very large market area in the pharmaceutical industry, threatens the lives of horseshoe crabs. Scientists are calling on the authorities to use synthetic material with the same function.
A more scientific method is possible
The global pharmaceutical and medical industry uses horseshoe crab blood to ensure that vaccines or various medical materials do not contain bacteria that can cause disease. During the test, blood clots around harmful structures, if any, marking their presence. Having an extremely important place in the sector, blood also creates a serious market. This contributes to more horseshoe crabs being captured for their blood.
When you first hear it, you might think that these creatures are extremely important for human life. But the blood of horseshoe crabs isn’t the only thing that helps people understand whether testing vaccines or similar drugs can harm humans. In 1990, biologists from the University of Singapore succeeded in producing an alternative that had the same function and was just as effective as crab blood. A synthetic substance called Recombinant Factor C (rFC) is now commercially available.
About 60 countries, including European Union countries and China, have approved a substance called rFC instead of horseshoe crab blood. However, around 500,000 horseshoe crabs are still caught annually only under the supervision of the American biomedical company, the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission. For this reason, the population of horseshoe crabs, which have lived for 450 billion years, has decreased by 30 percent in recent years. Researchers emphasize that although horseshoe crabs are discharged into the sea after their blood is taken, many crabs lost their lives due to these processes.
“Any pharmaceutical company that adopts new technology instead of horseshoe crab will have better quality control and better scientific output. It’s also right for the ecosystem,” said Ryan Phelan, co-founder of Revive & Restore, a nonprofit that aims to preserve biodiversity by genetically saving endangered species. “They’ll feel better for doing what they’ve done.”
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