“Everything you do in life comes from horseshoe crab blood," says fisherman George Topping. Vaccines and antibiotics just wouldn't be the same without it.
The headline left out something important from the article and posed a false dichotomy, a minority of harvested crabs are being used to develop medicines, and most of those are released and survive. The vast majority that are killed are being harvested for use as bait in commercial fishing. Seems like that’s the obvious thing to cut back on to save the humans, the crabs, and the birds.
Also, it looks more like climate change is what’s fucking over the spawning of horseshoe crabs. Not blood harvesting. Eggs need a specific temperature to survive.
The headline left out something important from the article and posed a false dichotomy, a minority of harvested crabs are being used to develop medicines, and most of those are released and survive. The vast majority that are killed are being harvested for use as bait in commercial fishing. Seems like that’s the obvious thing to cut back on to save the humans, the crabs, and the birds.
Even worse, there is already a synthetic available, which is approved in Europe
So basically we’re choosing to kill a bird because we can’t rely on corporations to cut back?
Yep. Can’t cut into profits. What would our investors think?
Obviously, that’s the one that’s off the table. The choice is strictly between developing medicine or saving a species.
And I think we all know the birds are the ones who will have to go.
- Capitalism
Besides urging companies to stop this practice, stop eating fish.
Also, it looks more like climate change is what’s fucking over the spawning of horseshoe crabs. Not blood harvesting. Eggs need a specific temperature to survive.