Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - How Horseshoe Crabs (Probably) Saved Your Life

Episode Date: September 25, 2020

Horses? Majestic. Frogs? Maybe royalty. But have you taken a moment to reflect on the humble, half-billion-year old horseshoe crab that almost certainly saved your life with its incredible blood? If not, THIS is that moment.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We saw through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow! for the mouth. Wow. Hello, everybody, and welcome to Saul Bones, Meryl Turf, Miss Guy and Medicine. I am your co-host, Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. Justin, you know how my dad likes to send me news articles a lot?

All dads like to send things. Of a certain age, all dads like to send things. My dad sends me new movie trailers and announcements that celebrities have died. Those are the two things that I get from my dad. Dad's love to tell you when anybody has died. When anybody has died. Especially celebrities. Yes. That's a big dad thing and I will say that along those lines usually the news stories that my dad sends me are not necessarily cheerful ones. Mm-hmm. Uh. More bad street.

Tell me some more. These are the things he usually likes to tell me about. And so when I got an email this past week for my dad with a news article in it, I was like, Dad, things are pretty heavy. I don't know if I can handle this. What have you brought me? Yeah, what fresh hell have you brought me? Yeah, what fresh hell of you for my doorstep. But what was inside was so, it was a nice little story, a nice little thing about the world and about medicine that I didn't know.

It was a pleasant little, mostly pleasant little story. And it made for a really good episode. And so I thought it would be something that I could then share from my dad to me to all of you So this one suggested like Tommy's Which I would be remiss if I didn't Tell everybody about his podcast here. Yeah, which is court appointed which he does with my uncle Michael Meadows Who is a lawyer and it sort of sort of saw bones like except for law? Yeah, so check that out Yeah, Sydney and I both been on episodes,

and every week they do a new one about law. It's like saw bones, but law. Yeah. Law bones. They should have called it that. They should have called it that. I don't know why they did. Everybody would have really known with that man, right?

Just from reading it. The article that my dad sent me is about horseshoe crabs. Didn't see that one come and did you, Listerer? No, I didn't. I have to say, when I think the subject line was, did you know this? I did not. And then I opened it and it was an article about horseshoe crabs. And I was like, dad, what is this?

And the reason that there are stories circulated about horseshoe crabs and we'll get to it is that there is a connection between the horseshoe crab and the COVID vaccines that are in development. I couldn't fathom it. That is where that is where this eventually is headed now it takes us a while to get there. So first of all here's what you need to know about horseshoe crabs. They're not crabs. That's a really wild start of all the places I thought you'd start. That was not are they horseshoe?

We should get the glue of those. They're neither. They're actually, they're arthropods. They're not crustaceans. They're arthropods, which are, so they're more closely related to spiders than they are crabs. My sibling Taylor referred to them when I was learning about all this, I was so fascinated, I was sharing these facts with people.

And Taylor said, oh yeah, those are tactical spiders because they were tanks. And if you haven't seen one, if you're sitting there thinking, how I see one of these things, I'm not sure, maybe Google it up real quick. Google it up and look at a horseshoe crab while you're listening. They do kind of look like spiders and tanks. They do look like tactical spiders, I would say. And make sure you look at the flip them over too. Yeah.

Look at both sides. How do you do that with a glossy JPEG? Well, they're pictures of both sides. Flip your monitor upside down. Just Google both sides of... Both sides of horseshoe crab. But that's when you get the Google both sides of... Both sides of Horseshoe crap. That's when you get the detractors and the people who are saying nice stuff about them.

Fair and balanced Horseshoe crap coverage. They're wild looking. They're cool looking. It's one of those things where I know I had seen them, but then in my head when I heard the word Horseshoe crap, that image did not appear. So I don't know that I had connected that that's what this thing was.

So they have been around for like half a billion years, almost half a billion years. That's so many. Like before dinosaurs, there were horseshoe crabs and they're still here. So I guess they won in that sense. That's it. In that sense. I tell you what's weird to think about is like in the existence of this animal, we are a blip. We are a blink in the eye in this animal. And we show up and we're like, in the existence of this animal, we are but a blip. We are a blink in the eye of the animal. And we show up and we're like, your crabs.

Like, oh no, we're not, but we'll be here long after your gun. And we've been here while, so you go ahead and call us whatever you like, there, you sat a little organism. We call them, one phrase I found a lot was walking fossils, which is kind of mean. I mean, they're still here.

Old, they ain't crabs. There are fossils that aren't walking. Those are fossils. No, like my dad is a walking fossil. These are arthropods. There are currently four species of them in various parts of the world, but we're gonna focus mainly on ones

that live along the Atlantic coast of the US, as well as in the Gulf of Mexico, called the Limulus Polyphemus. Mm. Shriptop the tongue. Yeah, I kind of like it. So why are we gonna talk about these limulus organisms? What's limulus?

That's a limulus polyphemus. That's the scientific name of the horseshoe crab. crab, which is not a crab or a horseshoe. You can call them tactical spiders if you prefer. It's actually more accurate. It is. So like I alluded to, they play a really important role in the development of a lot of drugs and vaccines and we'll do so eventually when the time comes in the COVID vaccine because the blood of the limitless, the horseshoe crab is very important in this development. Now, before I tell you why, I need you to know that the blood of the horseshoe crab is blue. Okay.

A wall. Like a fawk. Like a fawk. It's a light blue. It contains, it's because, you know, how we have hemoglobin that carries oxygen in our bodies. Yes, I do. They have hemosionin, which contains copper. That's what the cyanin indicates.

There's copper in there and it makes it blue. Okay. So, their blood is blue. That's cool. It's a really light blue. When I was watching videos of them like taking blood from horseshoe crabs, it looks sort of like, you know the smurf ice cream,

you can get it King's Island. Yes, I do. When it's melted, like that. Okay, like melted, smurf ice cream. Right. It's like light blue. Light blue. Yeah.

Other than being blue, because that's not really the helpful part. It's just, it's just wild. Other than being blue, the blood has a factor in it that makes it very useful in checking for the safety of a vaccine or a drug that we're going to inject in a human. Okay. Okay. So let's go back to talk about how how do we figure this out with doctor? Yes, that is where I am at currently. Yes, I know. This is like who in the world, right?

Yeah. How did we? Okay. Dr. Same guy looked at a horse and it's like I don't make glue out of that. Dr. Frederick Bang discovered it. Okay. Good name. Fred Bang. Dr. Bang attended John Topkin School of Medicine, got back in like the 30s. He went on to focus on medical research largely, got his MD, and then decided he wanted to do the research end of things, more so than the direct patient care into things. He specialized in some specific areas of like parasitology, virology, pathology, and he had a very specific interest in studying marine life and the way that you could apply things that we learn from marine life to medical science. That was his like, he was, from descriptions, he sounds like a cool dude. From descriptions, he was a very creative kind of out of the box thinker and looked at like the whole big picture and was able to find, as we'll see, find answers to

like medical problems for humans in the marine world by studying the marine world. He also worked in public health and studied things like tropical diseases like malaria and that kind of thing. things like tropical diseases, like malaria and that kind of thing. Anyway, so he wanted to look at the circulatory systems of marine animals, because in some marine creatures, like horseshoe crabs, you can actually study their circulatory system while they're still alive, which is like harder to do in us, for instance, especially back then. Like nowadays we can inject dye and take pictures of you and things like that, but, and we

can learn some things. But, to, to investigate an entire circulatory system while an animal was still alive was still hard to do. And so he was doing this in horseshoe crabs as a way to try to understand how our circulatory system works. It's good to know that there's a little different in so in humans ours is fairly closed, right? So like we have little capillaries tiny little blood vessels. We have veins we have arteries and the blood Goes through all those things and it doesn't just like collect in big giant open spaces in our body Intentionally. Yeah. Anyway, well in horseshoe crabs. It's different. So

The blood goes from these vessels into like these big what are called sinuses where it can have direct contact with different tissues within the horseshoe Crab. Now the reason that this is important to know is that if a bacteria invader gets in us, us humans, it has to go through like all these little blood vessels, right? Probably like a capillary first, before it's going to get anywhere to do any damage. And what do we have in our blood? Hemoglobin. Well, that and white blood cells. Oh, yes. We have an army to protect us. So hopefully, because that's the way invaders into our body, we can stop them.

Obviously, we don't always, we get infections, but like, that's why it works that way. In horseshoe crabs, because they have a more open, only a partially closed, partially open circulatory system. If one of those little invaders gets in, it can get into one of these big pooled areas of blood directly in contact with a tissue really easily. So that's bad, right? And they have these big shells to protect them, but all you need is a teeny, teeny little crack for a bacteria to get in,

and it can instantly have access to the whole horseshoe crab. Bad for the crab. Very vulnerable. Very vulnerable. So they rely on a different kind of mechanism to defend them from invaders. And this is where Bang comes in, Dr. Bang. He noticed that in a particular crab that had died, all of its blue blood had clotted into like a jelly mass, a big blue jello. Got it. Okay. And he examined the crab and he found that it had been infected

with a strain of vibrio bacteria, which is in the cholera, genus, related to cholera. All right. So this crab had been infected withrio bacteria, which is in the cholera genus related to cholera. All right. So this crab had been infected with this bacteria and all of its blood had clotted. And he found that that wasn't usually what happened when crabs died. And that didn't happen with every bacteria. And that didn't even happen with... He was still trying to figure out why in this particular crab, what triggered this in

this? You know what I mean? Yeah, so something weird about the mug that it had gotten, trigger this response. Triggered this response. And so what he was eventually able to deduce is that it seemed like it only happened with gram-negative bacteria, which the important thing to know here is that we use a stain, called a gram stain, that turns some things pink and some things purple, and it helps us figure out what kind of germ it is. That's really all you need to know. These are lab definitions. So, he figured out that gram-negative bacteria are the problem, right? And even when he

would like, heat kill gram-negative bacteria and then introduce them to the crab blood, it's still clotted. Huh. So even dead gram-negative bacteria were causing this. Weird. Which you really didn't understand. So it has something to do with the, something that's in the blood, more than something that's in the, something that it's doing.

Well, it's definitely the, the bacteria, but it's not just the bacteria. Got it. This is where Dr definitely the bacteria, but it's not just the bacteria. Got it. This is where Dr. Jack Levin comes in. So, and this is one of these like, happy coincidences. So, Dr. Bang needs somebody, he's doing these investigations and he needs some help.

And so he talks to somebody, one of his colleagues, that he's working with and he's like, I need another person to help me with all this work. I think I'm on to something, but. And this guy's like, you gotta get Jack. He's like, I need another person to help me with all this work. I think I'm on to something but. And this guy's like, you gotta get Jack. He's like, well, you need a hematologist. You need somebody who understands blood. I know this other guy, Dr. Jack Levin,

he's a hematologist, why don't you get him to work with you? Well, just so happens, the Dr. Jack Levin had been investigating something called endotoxin, which is a toxin produced. Are you about to say he owned a bunch of horseshoe crabs? No, it would be quite a thing. No, he was investigating endotoxin, which is produced by gram-negative bacteria. And he thought, and by the way, it should just to give you a point of reference, endotoxins

and human bodies can wreak a lot of havoc. They cause a lot of what we think of as sepsis and septic shock come from these Indotoxins released by gram-negative bacteria. They can make your blood pressure drop really low. They can give you a really high fever. They can make you really sick. So he's investigating Indotoxins. He happens to get contacted by Dr. Bang to say, will you come help me understand what is happening in these clotted, you know, crabs, so to speak.

And Dr. 11 says, oh my gosh, it's an Indotoxin. It must be an Indotoxin because even if you kill the bacteria, the Indotoxins still there. So. So he'd been investigating endotoxin and humans and rabbits. The two minds come together and they say, okay, there is something in the crab blood that when it comes in contact with an endotoxin from a gram negative bacteria that makes it clot, right? Right, okay. So they're very excited. I'm excited. Are you right? Right, okay.

So they're very excited. I'm excited. Are you excited? I'm excited. So the crabs, I keep calling them crabs. I know they're not crabs, but like what else am I gonna do? We all have our little friends here. The limelace.

The limelace. The limelace. They have amoeba sites, which are like their white blood cells basically, and they do all the like their white blood cells, basically. And they do all the stuff that white blood cells do. They engulf stuff and they repair damage and they carry things around. They're filled with these little granules. And these granules contain something called coagulogen.

And what they discovered is that when a bacterial endotoxin is sensed in the environment, then these little amoebasites will change shape and release all of this coagulogen, and they will instantly clot all the blood right around it, trapping whatever is in it, including bacteria and their endotoxins. Oh, trapped. It's sort of like remember in French when they would amber something, when there was a rift between the universes and the only way to stop it is just to like throw the amber in and freeze everything there Trappit forever. Yeah What no, I just I think that French references are are ones that everybody's gonna enjoy and I think that there's probably at least a few people who are like

Yes, yes, yes, yes, more French talk. Please, please talk more about French. I would devote a whole podcast to French if you would let me. I have a question, does it, is it able to have this reaction without killing the crab? It doesn't kill the crab, it's just localized. It's just in that one area.

If that would have you feel good though, like, oh, some of blood just went to gummy. Oh, no, my blood's just localized. It's just in that one area. If that would have you feel good though, like, aw, some of my blood just went to gummy. Oh, no, my blood's gone gummy. Well, if you think about where it's, think about this though. Okay. When bacteria, when a germ gets in you, that doesn't happen much anymore, but go on.

Like, I remember a germ exposure. Let's say that a germ gets in you through your skin. It happens like at a point where you've had an abrasion, a cut, something, right? Like your skin has been disrupted. The layer has been disrupted. So the germ gets in there. That is where the reaction would take place in the crab. So like there's a little break in the shell, right at that place, the bacteria gets in,

right there, the blood is present, bam, it gets clotted. So it makes sense, it actually is good in the sense that not only does it trap the bacteria gets in, right there, the blood is present, bam, it gets clotted. So it makes sense, it actually is good in the sense that not only does it trap the bacteria, but also, it clots off the place where the abrasion is taking place. That's the same thing that happens in our bodies. That's why when you get a cut, you clot so that it doesn't continue to bleed. So it makes total sense.

It's how the horseshoe crabs defend themselves from bacterial invaders. And it's this really cool system that banging 11 did all their studies in their lab and figured out. It's all cool. My only question is like, why do we care? That's exactly what I'm going to address after we go to the building. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God for the mouth.

Okay, that's enough waiting. I waited through that entire great ad. I hope everybody is enjoying that sponsor and now you're going to help me. Why I care about horse your crap blood. It is so human that your first question is, but how does this apply to me? Yeah. I adore humanity that we observe these fascinating things in the natural world around us. And our inclination is, okay, but how does that help me? I'm not a horse you crap. I don't have eons to ponder over this stuff. I gotta get better now.

Well, when we make something that we intend to put inside a human body, like a drug, like a vaccine, a medicine, huh? A pickle. Okay, we don't use this on pickles, I should say. I'm gonna catch. Okay. Or Captain Crutch. This is for like medicine, not for... You could have said medicine.

It would have been more accurate language. Although, to be fair, if you are going to make pickles and sell them to humans, you want to make sure that they don't have infectious bacteria in them either. Unless that's what you want, and that's hot and spicy and infectious, you ever have those, the little circles. It's a real caveat, I'm tore there. I mean, it says, does what it says in the same folks, it says it's right there on the pickles.

So we want to make sure, they slip it in in the middle. So it's hot and spicy and infectious and... And says, you'd fall for that because of all the adjectives. Look at all these adjectives. It's new and proved. So anyway, we want to make things better and not worse.

And so we want to make sure that there aren't bacteria in whatever we're putting in your body. Because then they would cause an infection. And that would make things worse. This is also true for all the equipment that is used for that. So like if you think about an IV, like the tubing and all that kind of stuff, we want to make sure all that stuff is sterile, right? No bacteria, no germs, no, nothing on it so that we make you better.

The way that we have figured this out, prior to this amazing horseshoe crab discovery that we have just begun to uncover. The way that we used to figure this out was called the rabbit pyrogen test. And to be fair, this test is still in use today. So when I say use to figure things out, it is still used today, although not nearly as often as it used to figure things out. It is still used today, although not nearly as often as it used to be used. But back in the early 1900s, when we first started making drugs that we could inject in people, first started making these things and wanted to make sure that they were safe and not contaminated, it was really hard to figure that out. We didn't have a lot of great methods to know.

I mean, germs are really small. So small. like, I mean, germs are really small. So small. And you can't see them. And so how do we figure out if we, you know, it's really easy to accidentally get a germ in there. We have learned this very recently in many ways, no matter how careful you are, sometimes germs get in.

So, and they knew at that point to heat things up to kill the bacteria, but that even after that, sometimes there was something in there in detoxing that could make people sick. So they started doing the rabbit pyrogen test, which was basically, we will, once we've made it all up and we think it's all sterile, we'll inject it into a rabbit and see if they get a fever. That's not very nice. Pyrogen fever causing. I don't know.

So a test to cause a fever in a rabbit is what they would do. And if they did, maybe there's a bacteria there, so let's not use this. If the rabbit was fine, great. We can use this. And the test would become standardized, of course. And like not just as simple as, hey, inject this in the bunny and see how the bunny does. What's the scale of something like this? Like are we having to do this like for every dose? Once per like injection, like how are we? I mean, is this like a test? For the batch. For a batch. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know when they first developed the test in 19, whatever, 14 or whatever, I don't know when they first developed the test in 19, whatever 14 or whatever, I don't

know what they were doing, but like by today's standards, it would be like a batch. You wouldn't do this. And again, this test is not done very often today, but I will tell you, it is still used in some very specific cases today. But the problem, you can imagine there are a ton of difficulties with this. First of all, you need a lot of rabbits. Yeah. Lots of them.

And they're not loving it. No. Second, you have to test each drug on multiple rabbits, because one could be a fluke. So like, you got to do it three times. Maybe that one rabbit is just sick. Well, that's the other thing. You got to make sure the rabbits aren't sick. So you have to measure their temperatures for like a couple of weeks beforehand and make sure that they're staying normal.

And after, I mean, like it's a whole thing to make sure that this fever is actually caused, if the rabbit gets a fever, is actually caused by whatever you put in the rabbit. Also, the rabbits don't necessarily survive this encounter, which is bad. We don't like that. And it can take up to 48 hours for the whole process. So it takes a long time. It's not a great test.

By early 1900 standards, yes. But by today's standards, we could probably do something better. What Bang and Levin had found was another way of detecting bacterial endotoxin that could contaminate a drug. That's what they've just found, right? Because that's what the Horseshoe crab stuff does. Well, why don't we just use this in humans? Wouldn't that be better? Sure, let's remember the rabbits. Yes. So by the 70s, they had produced the limulus amoeba site lysate. And what this means, do you wanna know? Mm-hmm. You look like you're about to ask.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Lysate is the stuff that comes out of cells when they're broken apart or liced. Okay. That's what when a cell is split, it's liced. And so the lysate is the stuff inside. Right. So basically you take some blood from one of these crabs, you spin it in a centrifuge,

you separate out of the cells, they like form a little pellet. Those are just the cell parts, not the plasma part, just the cell parts. You put these pellets in a solution, you add some sterile water. The water make the cells will, when you put theets in a solution, you add some sterile water, the water, make the cells, when you put the water in there, they'll try to absorb it all and they'll explode. Cool. They'll suck it all up and explode. And that releases all of this coagulogen stuff

right into the water. You filter it all until you just get the coagulogen and you freeze dry that. And then you've got a powder that you can reconstitute and add to whatever you are testing for the presence of endotoxin. If it congeals, then you got a problem. And if it doesn't, you don't.

Okay. There you go. It was really simple. All you had to do is like you put it in there 45 minutes later, you flip the tube upside down. If it has clotted, you'll have a clot stuck to the top of the tube. Easy. Yeah. So this test that they developed was way faster and easier and better for the rabbits to use on any number of pharmaceuticals that were being developed or vaccines that were being developed. And the other part you're probably wondering is the horseshoe crabs.

Because this test is a lot easier for humans to do and the storage and all these other things. But the crabs are like, can we get a boat? Right. So here's the truth. It is not intrinsic to the process that the horseshoe crab dies. In fact, the attempt is not process that the horseshoe crab dies. In fact, the attempt is not to kill the horseshoe crab. It's fantastic. It just drawing blood from the, they don't draw all the blood out of the horseshoe crab. So just taking blood from the horseshoe crab does not kill the horseshoe crab. Now, because of the whole process, just taking them out of the

water and putting them in the thing and putting the catheter in. I'm the whole, and then having to put them back in the water within a certain amount of time. Because of all that, some do die. I mean, it would be a lie to say that they'll make it. And the numbers, it's hard to find out. Like, some will say, a few is 5% of the horseshoe crabs do not survive the process. Some say 30% don't.

I'll get into there are some newer methods that have 100% survival rates. But they have better odds in the rabbits. I would say. What's your cuter? I don't know. I think that's a matter of opinion. I have ordered... I have shared mine. Because of all this that I've read, I've actually ordered a plush horseshoe crab that should be here tomorrow. My kids will love them. I'm very excited. It's for me.

I know, but I was trying to be generous. And that's not a joke I really did. Sorry. No, well, of course you're supposed to run all purchases by me, your husband, for approval, our agreement that we put in our vows. When you see the plush horseshoe crab arrive on the doorstep, that is me. Oh, yeah, because if you hadn't told me, I would have seen a plush horseshoe crab show up and be like, who in our household?

So the LAL test, the horseshoe crab test, took off and was soon used in most cases instead of the rabbit pyrogen test. Like I said, there's still specific few reasons why the rabbit pyrogen test is in use, but for the most part, it is fallen out of favor. Probably because it sounds like rapid, so people think it's fast. I could get into why, but it would take a step. It would be a whole. It would be so boring, probably, too. I don't know that it is of particular interest to the,

you can research it if you're interested in it, but there are reasons why this test doesn't work for everything. So the labs that make this stuff have been interviewed now recently by various members of the media to talk about like, hey, so you're gonna have tests this COVID vaccine. Do we have enough crabs? Are you ready?

And so far, everybody's been like, yeah, it actually doesn't take a lot to. It's more fine. So far, everybody seems fine to test the COVID vaccines. In the background, you see a whole shoe crabs, are you hearing that? So far, it seems like we're gonna be okay. They do not seem upset or worried about it, but it has turned the spotlight on this kind of strange little part

of like medical drug development that I think a lot of us probably aren't familiar with. And you're probably, if you're like me, when you read these kinds of stories, because I mean, I have lived in the science world for a long time. And so I am used to the idea of like feeling sad and bad about the animals that are used in these. I am used to that ethical quandary. But so for me, when I hear this, I'm like, well, I think rabbits are great. And I would rather us not do this if there's something else we could do, please. And I would rather us not do this to horseshoe crabs if there's something

else we could do, please. Isn't there something we, isn't there a better way? There's got to be a better way. So there are other tests, there are new tests that have been developed to try to not do these things in order to make sure that the drugs and vaccines that we're putting in our human bodies are not contaminated. There's one that's called a monocyte activation test and it looks for the release of certain substances and the presence of contamination.

And there's another one that is basically it's genetic engineering. They just took the gene from the horseshoe crab that does this, plugged it into the DNA of like a yeast cell or something, you can grow those in petri dishes and it makes the collagen. So there you go. You just produce it in your lab.

No animals are harmed in that process. Didn't need those capsules. Like the yeast, I guess, or whatever microorganism, you can use whatever microorganism. And then they've even used things from other animals. Like it doesn't even have to be the horseshoe crab at that point.

If you can just find something that clots in the present of endotoxin There you go. You just need to add that in there So they have found ways since 2003 they've developed one of these Recombinant ones basically synthetic ones made in a lab kind of thing Synthetic in the sense that they're made in a lab, but it is still the real stuff We're just using different organisms to produce it, which is a cool thing about genetic engineering.

Same basic idea. They have made other ones since then. They've been approved for use in Europe as recently as this past June, like just a couple months ago. In the US, they're still not fully approved for use as like equal to the rabbit pyrogen test or the LAL, the Lemueless and Mibisite lysate test. Reason for that is tough. I'm not sure. I've been trying

to, this is the part that I've been trying to untangle the mystery and all this for me. So this test seems to work for, you would have no reason to think it wouldn't work just as well, right? And Europe has decided it does. In the US, we're still saying like, look, labs can use it, but before they use it, they have to go through a lot of hoops to prove that it's going to be sufficient, which is for most of these labs, they're just saying, well, we'll stick with the crabs. Right. We're not going to do all this.

We'll stick with the crabs. And the crabs are like, actually doesn't sound that bad. You guys should try it honestly. We'll fill out the forums if that's the concern. This is where things get really complicated. And when we get into this, and I have said, I try to be really clear on the show about what I'm not an expert in. And when it comes to like marine life management and ecosystems and the ecology of this, obviously I am not. I don't have a degree in any of those things. I understand, though, that there are a lot of different pressures here.

So, harvesting blood from horseshoe crabs to continue to test our drugs and vaccines and keep us safe is maybe the pressure that is keeping them alive, but is also a reason that their populations are declining. They've been somewhat steady in the last few years, but overall, they've declined. And the reason is that they're used throughout the world, horseshoe crabs, as like bait and I think in some places as food and then also for these

tests. And so because of all those reasons, they've been threatened before as like we could accidentally destroy all the horseshoe crabs on the planet, which seems right, bad. That's bad. But at the same time, the thought that like, well, let's not do this anymore. Let's not bleed them. Let's do these other things and leave them alone.

A lot of the preservation efforts are only because of that. And so there's a fear that if they're not necessary for human use anymore. Well, just forget about them. We won't work so hard to preserve them and then perhaps they could vanish, which is, it's crappy. If you're thinking, well, that's crappy.

Because they're good to us, we'll keep them alive, but as soon as they stop being good for us, we won't keep them. Yeah, it's crappy. I mean, I agree. It's really crappy. I don't know what the answer is. I know I found at least one place where they're trying to farm them, where they like. And that's when I said there was a place that claimed 100% survival rate.

There was at least one place where they've been able to like let them live and keep captivity. They feed them, they care for them. They claim that the products that come out of these horseshoe crabs are actually superior because these crabs are healthier and better off. They've said that the crabs will actually lay eggs, which that was the big question, would they even reproduce in that kind of scenario? They've said that they can and that 100% of them survive the process because there's so much better cared for and healthier in the interim. So, would it be possible to do that on a large scale? I don't know. I don't know. And then if this recombinant test gets approved,

will anybody want to do that, or will they prefer to just do their recombinant test? I don't know. A lot of questions I suddenly care great deal about horseshoe crabs, I need to protect them. Well, yeah, I mean, they've been around since, like, 450 million years. Yeah, we don't want to mess that up We don't mess that streak up you can

There are videos if this is your thing. There are lots of videos of them mating On beaches good news for perverse. No along the Atlantic coast because when they they all come out and made it the same time So like the the one the female will like lay her eggs along the Atlantic coast, because when they all come out and made it the same time, so like the female will lay her eggs along the beach, she'll scoot through the wet sand and lay eggs, tons of eggs, lots and lots of eggs. And then the males will come in fertilizing, but a bunch will come. Anyway, you can look in the beaches, they're just blank at it and horseshoe crabs at a certain time of the year. It's a big event.

People come out to see all the horseshoe crabs. All the horseshoe crabs at a certain time of the year. It's a big event. People come out to see all the horseshoe crabs. All the horseshoe crabs doing it, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Anyway, and I also would say, just on that last note, this is probably a very important industry for very specific parts of the world. This horseshoe crab blood harvesting industry.

I know that sounds really horrible to put it like that. Blood harvesting industry. But I mean, I would say that there's also like some pressures of like, hey, but we need this business to survive. These are our jobs, this is our livelihood. So it's a complicated thing, you know? I want to save the horseshoe crabs. Obviously, I want us to keep testing our vaccines

and medications as rigorously as we always have for contamination. I want people to have jobs. And meanwhile, rabbits are like, I don't know, choosing between these two options, which are your only two options that you have is tough. I don't know, let us know what you figure out. We're gonna go back to the Warren.

I would prefer we not do that to bunnies either. I am on board with all these things. List the animals you wanna take their blood, go. I believe that science when applied through a lens of morality can do all these things. We can achieve all these goals. Here's how it been. But we're not quite there yet, obviously.

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast, Solbons. If you wanna share the show with people, that's the only way pretty much that we grow. And in these times, I feel like it's a really good kind of show to listen to. Just, you know, send them a link. We're on all the platforms, solbonainshow.com. I think is our website if you're not sure what they are, wherever it's all good.

If you see a horseshoe crab, look, but don't touch. Leave them be. There are some places where I think it's illegal to pick them up. Thanks so much to the taxpayers for the use of their song medicines, which is the intro and outro of our program. And thanks to you for listening. I really appreciate you. We are hanging in there. Thank you, Dad, for this article. Thank you, Tommy Smirl. That is going to do it for us. But be sure to join us again next week for Saul Bones.

But until then, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. As always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Yeah! Maximumfun.org. Comedy and culture. Artists don't? Audience supported. Hey, you like movies? Without coming up?

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