this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Is an end to using imperiled horseshoe crabs for U.S. drug testing in sight? (www.science.org)
submitted 1 year ago by fry@fry.gs to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not everyone is ready to abandon the horseshoe crab protein. “We’re pleased to see that the USP is considering the proposal," <...> However, these alternatives “may not be suitable for all products produced by the biopharmaceutical industry.”

Well I'd best check who said this to make sure they're not biased...

Nora Blair, a senior manager at Charles Rivers Laboratories, a leading source of LAL.

Of course...

You mean to tell me the only person they could find sceptical enough of the alternative drug tests to comment was a person who has direct ties to the manufacturing of the primary drug test?? It's almost like their job depends on them being sceptical!

[–] techingtenor@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Its not surprising. I used to work at one of these places and they would laugh at any viable alternative acting like it would never have a chance. They also were well aware of the fact that some of their distributors illegally kill the returned horshoe crabs and turn them into fertilizer. So any claims that they're not hurting the horshoe crabs are bullshit. They've just offloaded the hurt to contractors who are 50/50 on actually trying to protect the crabs and just using them as bait. Even if they didn't do that, I've always been suspect that the crabs do great in the wild after losing 60% of their blood.

[–] Th4tGuyII@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Considering that the article itself states that an estimated 30% of horseshoe crabs die during the procedure, before even accounting for post-release deaths due to any trauma, I think you might be onto something.

Who would've known draining ~60% of a horseshoe crab's blood would cause some of them to become fucked up. If you drained 60% of a person's blood, I'd reckon the same thing would happen.

[–] mockingben@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago

What an article. The picture of the bleeding process is archaic. It would be ideal to stop this immediately. TIL…

[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it’s funny that they call USP obscure, when they dictate so much about US Pharma standards. Maybe the average layperson doesn’t know about them, but they are ubiquitous in our drug world

[–] 1chemistdown@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago

What? You mean those silly monographs. Nah, those only control all the reference standards of US pharmacopoeia. It’s not like almost every supplement, generic otc, and prescription drug is beholden to USP.

[–] NuPNuA@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's such a badly worded headline, I thought they were using crabs to drug test people somehow in the US.

[–] PetDinosaurs@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's not poorly worded. It's just that language is ambiguous. Presumably all natural languages are.

Hell, even programming languages have these problems