The Antidepressant Trap: The Story We Weren’t Told

The Blue Blood That Saves Lives — But At What Cost?

Following the lead of New Jersey and other Eastern states, New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul recently signed legislation to ban the catching of horseshoe crabs for medical use.

Growing up on the shore in New England, I spent countless hours walking beaches, often running into horseshoe crabs that came up to spawn. I'd grab their long, spiky tail and drag these brown, prehistoric-looking creatures with dome-shaped shells back to the water, hoping they'd survive. These animals — biologists tell us they are not technically crabs but more related to ticks, scorpions, and spiders — have existed in our oceans for 450 million years, making them older than dinosaurs.

We know mammals play vital roles in medical research, but horseshoe crabs? Their contribution is extraordinary yet invisible to most of us.

Horseshoe crabs have blue blood containing special cells called amebocytes that clot when exposed to bacterial toxins. Since the early 1970s, this property has made them invaluable to medicine. Every injectable drug, vaccine, and medical device that touches human blood or spinal fluid must be tested for bacterial contamination using a product derived from horseshoe crab blood. If you've ever received a vaccine or IV medication, a horseshoe crab likely helped keep you safe.

Here's how it impacts the crab population. Crabs are collected through hand-picking, trawling, dredging, or trapping. About 30% of their blood is extracted, then most are returned to the ocean. Independent studies suggest about 25% die from the process. Survivors often struggle with disorientation, reduced spawning ability, and vulnerability to predators.

Captive breeding could reduce pressure on wild populations, but it's proven challenging at a commercial scale. The crabs need precise water temperature, salinity, tidal cycles, and sandy beaches — and they take nine years to reach maturity. Wild populations remain the primary source.

The good news? A synthetic alternative called recombinant Factor C doesn't require any crabs. It's approved in the US, but rollout has been slow; the actual crab-derived product remains the regulatory standard.

Horseshoe crab populations have declined due to biomedical harvesting, use as fishing bait, habitat loss, and coastal development. The Atlantic horseshoe crab is listed as "Vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Their decline matters beyond the species itself — shorebirds like the red knot depend on crab eggs as crucial fuel during migration.

New York's ban recognizes what we should have acknowledged long ago: We can't take animal lives for granted simply because they've been useful to us. The animal kingdom has provided important advances in human medical science, but we have a responsibility to reduce our dependence on animals whenever possible. It's time for the U.S. to follow Europe's lead and embrace the synthetic alternative. These living fossils have survived for 450 million years — they deserve better from us.

— Dr. Michael Wilkes with a Second Opinion

The Blue Blood That Saves Lives — But At What Cost?

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