this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Here's a description of the bleeding process:
https://www.horseshoecrab.org/med/bestpractices.html
It's specifically non-fatal:
It may look uncomfortable to us humans, but keep in mind that horseshoe crabs are not human. What's normal for the spider is chaos for the fly. Granted, it would be kinda weird to be hoisted from your home by a giant ape and forced into a blood drive. It's done as gently as possible though.
Unfortunately the practice often results in death anyway. 30% die in the process.
It also has unforseen consequences in the food chain, so by all means we should look for alternatives.
Thankfully alternatives already exist .
Last I read synthetic LAL was nowhere near scaleable. Bleeding Crabs is very expensive.
By vegan moral logic they shouldn't be allowed to accept vaccines.
Not taking vaccines is endangering far more people
Hmm. Assuming that the production was actually harmless, what's the difference between wearing a wool sweater made from excess animal production of wool and using a vaccine made from excess animal blood?
No such thing as "excess blood", brother. That's why we generally want it to stay inside of our bodies.
Yes donors voluntarily give up a pint of blood every month, because it replenishes.
That's still not excess, lest you think there's such a thing as "excess skin" because when you get cut eventually it heals.
Vegans can receive transfusions because I believe it's down to "consent". Humans consent to the blood draw. Crabs do not.
So vegans shouldn't be taking any medicine or vaccines that have had blood crab blood used in their manufacture.
I have discovered the solution to the vegan problem! Tell all vegans about medicine being made using animal blood and they will die out faster than their B12 & iron deficiency does at the moment!
Patent Pending
Still, I was disappointed to find that a large percentage of released crabs die anyway. Can't find the number, but it's significant. 1/3rd?
Afair estimates put the portion of dead crabs between 10 and 30%. Some might also be unable to reproduce due to the bleeding.
Sadly a lot of the companies harvesting them will just kill and sell them for bait anyways.
Of those that are released, about a third die. Not to say about the decrease in overall fitness, which can lead to them falling prey more easily.
It's obviously a traumatic experience for the animal in the best case scenario and that is going to reflect on their ability to survive in the wild.
being bled is not my concept of normal for and species
Oh, I don't mean the "blood donation" being normal. The person I was responding to asked why they were being drained "this way". I assumed they were concerned about the folded-over positioning of the crab.
Also, counter argument (in good fun): plenty of animals get their blood drained regularly in nature. Mosquitos, ticks, leaches, and vampire bats are a few examples of things that drain blood from others. Maybe the crabs see us as giant pests?
Defo not the best arrangement for the crabs though. As others pointed out to me, apparently despite the optimistic wording in the link I shared the process is still fatal to some. I'm glad we're working on alternatives.
Red Cross enters the chat.
Thanks for the link and info.
Not a reply directly to you, but to contrast the dominant view in the thread - what would it matter if even 100% of the crabs died? Sustainability considerations aside - a crab died for my delicious salad, who cares if they die for a life saving vaccine? Who cares if it's painful and disorienting for the crab, it's a crab. As humans, why should we prioritize crab life and well-being over our own?
Because we aren’t special and every time we make a stupid decision like that it has disastrous ripple effects.
Ripple effects, sure, I'm with you there, sustainability considerations, which I haven't seen anyone mentioning ITT.
I completely disagree with you about the status of humanity. Is it really your view that the well-being of a crab has equivalent moral status to your own well-being?
Why because we happened to evolve to think? Given enough time something else would of if not us. Given we may end up causing our species to go extinct due to careless disregard for our environment and even human life in general. We really are not that special and it would serve us to treat the ecosystems, which enable life on this planet to thrive and evolve, with respect if we want to live long enough too see other stars or at least leave the planet in a decent state for the next species if we all die from pointless wars like humanity seems to love doing regardless of if we treat our environment better.
I don't like hurting animals. If one believes we really are a special species because of things like our innate curiosity, I think you'll understand the interesting quest to try to eat without hurting anyone/thing.
Why? Better, why not?
I still eat eggs & cheese. Perhaps a day will come where I don't need those either. I hope you'll be curious enough to try some alternatives too.
I've read good moral arguments for a veganism. I think it's the right thing to do when it comes to diet. For what it's worth, this isn't really a discussion about diet.
It isn't a decision between a lentil burger and a beef burger, this is an animal resource that can assist in saving human lives. There are other clotting factors used in medicine, and that's great, let's use and develop those. But suppose something more lethal and dangerous than COVID comes along, and vaccines need to be produced quickly and globally. I think it would be foolish to wince if we needed to take crab blood to roll out a program that would save human lives.
I'm vegetarian for moral reasons primarily. Steak smells great, I miss al pastor tacos, etc. But, nothing wrong with wincing, doing the extraction as gently as possible, and trying to keep the crabs alive as well. Sure, we gotta live too but I won't accept taking every other creature with us just so we can survive.
We need to degrow a bit. As a species, humanity is running the planet a little too close to the redline, to put it mildly. Overpopulation has almost guaranteed a dependency on fossil fuels for more than just powering farm equipment, we now artificially produce fertilizer out of it.
Nothing is black and white, and the older I get, the more shades I see. I think we can exist, in a less damaging way that people can enjoy. We humans can, should, and will strive for better.
If the crabs die out we lose the blood, from both sides its better to be as sustainable as possible.
I don't know about spacecowboy, but I do. I still eat crabs, but I don't think I'm superior to them morally just because I'm more intelligent or something. We're just animals eating each other.
What I mean when I say moral is, I don't see why it's wrong if a bunch of invertebrates are subjugated, in pain, or die in order to provide something that improves the lives of humans. It's not sad, it's a good thing. "Oh but the crabs get stressed out, and 30% might die", yeah, who cares, they're crabs.
Sure, I'm a human, and I have a particular perspective on these things. But, we are special. Anyone who considers a trolley problem with a crab on one track, and a human on the other and honestly says, "hey it doesn't matter humans aren't special", that's, unappealing. In a purely academic, cosmic, arrangement of particles sense, OK, nothing is special. But in that condition, the suffering of animals isn't even a question worth considering.
The fact that so many accounts in this thread are going out of their way to give weight to the well-being of invertebrates, in a conversation about human well-being, is baffling.
Should we be using existing clotting factors in medical settings that don't rely on the blood of an endangered species that lives in an incredibly volatile habitat? Probably, but crab discomfort is at the very bottom of the list of reasons why.
People can think of other species as being morally as valuable as people and not be psychotic.
They can also chose the human in the trolley problem and still feel bad for the crab. If the trolley problem included people from my familly and strangers, I'd chose my family, but not because I think it's morally superior. I would feel bad for the other people.
The line where compassion stops can be drawn anywhere. Many people draw it where their nation or race ends. Many people draw it at the elusive pet/food distinction. Many people draw it where being mammal stops.
I don't think drawing the line is based on moral principles. It's practical. Sometimes you need to eat meat, sometimes you need to fight in a war. But when it comes to morality animal lives are animal lives, no matter whether it's a crab or a white male human. They're either all worthy of compassion or non of them is.
So that's my point of view. And thanks for your previous answer.
Disclosure - Before you had replied, I edited out the word 'psychotic' above, felt it was unfair.
Cheers, thanks for the thoughtful and reasonable reply. I agree with most of what you say. & it circles something I think about a lot but haven't made much sense of (if there even is sense to make if it), which is, the role of bad feelings in moral decision making.
I think though, the compassion line should be drawn somewhere, sometimes, with moral reason as a guide. To dip into the quagmire of philosophical thought experiments, you know, what if certain humans produced this special clotting factor, and we had to bleed them to get it, and it came with a risk of their mortality? I think reasonable people could agree, that would be an entirely different question to grapple with. So, you know, I would say it does matter, it's not a black & white thing, where either everything is worthy of compassion or nothing is. The circumstance can, should, dictate the moral approach. Eating meat, fighting in wars, there might be a right or wrong that's worth determining there. And knowing that, the moral and the practical are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
And totally, I expect people to have differences when it comes to compassion. Suppose I'm just surprised at the outpouring of love for the gross horseshoe crab, in spite of its real usefulness for global human health. Or at least my understanding of it, which I admit, is not very deep.
Because some people see morality not as something that's subjective but believe it is a moral objective truth that suffering should be reduced as much as possible.
That's not more or less rational than to believe humans are somehow 'special'.
For the sake of argument, let's take for granted your statement, that 'suffering should be reduced as much as possible'.
If the discomfort of a single crab can prevent worse discomfort/suffering/death of many other beings, and results in reduced net pain, then the utilitarian line of reasoning seems to be that we might actually be morally obligated to take blood from crabs.
Sure, but the question was why humans in the first place have trouble with seeing suffering. And the reason is that we naturally seem to have a tendency of making moral judgements in the favour of being against suffering.
It's often not easy to decide which decision leads to the best outcome. And people have a tendency to react more to what they are seeing now than to judge the bigger picture.
So, while the outcome may be the same (whether you believe the pain of animals doesn't matter or that you accept there isn't a better solution at the moment) the way people react is influenced by their moral compass.
I don't understand the point you're trying to make above.
In this case specifically, the outcome isn't unclear. Let's call the crab's pain one unit of pain. Assume that unit can directly alleviate 20 units of pain across a handful of other beings. The utilitarian ought to prefer avoiding 19 units of net pain, than allowing 19 units of net pain to occur.
I read your initial post to be some sort of utilitarian moral argument, roughly, that less pain is better. Or something like that. That argument, in this case in particular, leads in the opposite direction than I think you want.
"If I shot a couple of your fingers off, who cares, you're not me. I only care about me."
That's called not being a cunt.
I'd rather see a dead human than a dead non-human, to be honest... (with the exception of insects, those buggers freak me out).
Would you tell that to your spouse when the dead human was your kid?
In that fictional universe, do I get superpowers?
Not quite sure how this answer is relevant. Childfree, or just too young to have kids yourself? The question stands for your mother, a sibling, a niece/nephew, a girlfriend, or whatever makes no stop and consider for a second that you just said you're okay with random, innocent people suffering and dying.
Do I get superpowers in those universes?
(reading post history)
Ah. I understand now. Enjoy the block.
Because we HAVE to kill a crab to eat it, we shouldnt be killing or harming other animals unless we "need" to. If theres a way to harvest blood without killing the animal, that is the ethically cleanest option. I do think we should prioritize helping our own species over others, but that doesnt mean ignoring the suffering or harm of other species