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722

Horseshoe crabs be like (i.ibb.co)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 months ago (4 children)

And then humans came along to mess with em

human in protective clothing harvesting horseshoe crab blood in a lab

[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 months ago

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago

Stupid life-saving copper based blood...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I find it hard to understand, what special thing the blood has, that is not synthetically manufacturable. With most foodstuff companies trying to synthetically manufacture as much of the food as they can, what makes this "Near Threatened" animal, so important to harvest?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I googled it for you, there is LAL which is a blood clotting agent (that exists only in the blood of horseshoe crabs) that reacts with the bacterial capsule which makes it important for vaccine safety tests. Alternatives do exist but ya know, money is more important to corporations than some animal's life.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Alternatives do exist but ya know, money is more important

What are the alternatives, and how can we reduce their costs to match that of horseshoe crab blood?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I have done some more googling (I can't stress this enough, I am just googling)

The top alternatives are rFC (genetically modified cells produce the required enzyme) and MAT (human monocytes do the detection) They're more costly, picking ready fruit is easier than growing an orchard.

Also I should mention how new the alternatives are, they're just (2018 is just now for me lol) getting their approvals and regulations so given time LAL will be replaced.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

given time LAL will be replaced

That sounds encouraging!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Subsidies

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

So they'll use alternatives once the crabs go extinct.
Well... 😶

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

It's like a more realistic representation of what Neo would see when he wakes from the Matrix