Attention vegans and vegetarians and animal lovers
If you’ve ever had an IV, a medical implant, or any injectable medication or vaccine in the past few decades, thank a horseshoe crab. The one with the helmet-shaped shell, blue blood, fourteen legs, and 10 eyes is being exploited for the ingredients in his bloodstream.
In the 1950s, they discovered that the blood of the western Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus ) will clot when exposed to certain bacteria, fungi, and proteins called endotoxins. So it was that they began to harvest Horseshoe crab blood to detect bacterial contamination in vaccines
Big Pharma reaps the blood and then return the crabs to the water. Most crabs do not survive this ordeal. Because a third of their blood is taken to take the extract limulus amebocyte lysate, or LAL for testing.
They claim without LAL, Big Pharma could not produce the billions of inoculations. For decades Horseshoe crabs have made the sacrifice for Big Pharma to keep vaccines free of contaminants. A new endotoxin test, doesn’t require horseshoe crab blood—This synthetic alternative, called recombinant Factor C (rFC), can detect endotoxins But American regulatory hurdles have prevented Big Pharma from switching over. Big Pharma would not promote rFC as an equivalent for LAL pointing at stakeholder concerns, patient safety, and need for more study. However China, and Japan have both replaced LAL with rFC.
Vaccine production indirectly affects migrating shorebirds like the rufa Red Knot. The Red Knots feed on Horseshoe crab eggs during the spring migration from Tierra del Fuego, South America, to the Canadian Arctic when it stops to feed at Delaware Bay.
Shorebird populations are declining in relation to the number of eggs at Delaware Bay., The rufa Red Knot population plummeted from about 100,000 in the 1990s to around 12,000 today, making the bird an endangered species,
Horseshoe crabs—plus the shorebirds who feed on their eggs—face extinction. the choices we make determine whether these living fossils continue to thrive. Some of us can choose not to take vaccines.