Blue Blood In Your Vaccine?

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/10/1180761446/coastal-biomedical-labs-are-bleeding-more-horseshoe-crabs-with-little-accountabi

“Horseshoe crabs used to be everywhere. Millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the planet, each spring, the hard-shelled creatures gathered to mate in massive mounds along the beaches of the Atlantic coast.

Later, migratory shorebirds like the robin-size red knot learned to fly up from South America to join them for a feast.

The crabs' eggs gave the birds the energy they needed to keep flying north to breed in the Arctic.

But humans began to want something from the crabs, too — their blood. In the 1960s, scientists discovered that the sky blue blood inside horseshoe crabs would clot when it detected bacterial toxins.

Vaccines, drugs and medical devices have to be sterile before they're put inside people.

A better toxin-detection system meant less contamination risk for patients, so fishermen soon started collecting and selling the prehistoric animals to be bled.

A synthetic alternative was later invented and has since been approved in Europe as an equivalent to the ingredient that requires horseshoe crabs. But in the U.S., the blood harvest isn't shrinking. It's growing.

Five companies along the East Coast — with operations in South Carolina, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Virginia and Maryland — drained over 700,000 crabs in 2021.

That's more than any other year since officials started keeping track in 2004. Since then, the number of crabs bled by the industry has more than doubled.

At least 80 million tests are performed each year around the world using the blood-derived ingredient”.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/covid-vaccine-needs-horseshoe-crab-blood

“Horseshoe crab blood: the miracle vaccine ingredient that's saved millions of lives”…

“If you have ever had a vaccine, chances are that it was tested for safety using horseshoe crab blood. And they are presumed to save even more lives, because they're playing their part in the creation of a Covid-19 injection”.

“Horseshoe crab blood is key to making a COVID-19 vaccine—but the ecosystem may suffer”.

Are they injecting this toxin as well in COVID-19 vaccines…Here’s a interesting story :

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/horseshoe-crab-blood-miracle-vaccine-ingredient.html

Horseshoe crabs and Covid

“The world is rushing to find a safe vaccine to fight Covid-19, the viral lung disease which has swept the planet.

More than 100 different vaccines have been tested in the hope that they will work. The successful jabs will have to be carefully checked before they are rolled out.

In many parts of the world, researchers relied on horseshoe crab blood in those important tests. And since we'll want to vaccinate millions of people in a short space of time, horseshoe crabs could play a big part”!

This will have deleterious consequences !

“Why we should care”

“There are four species of horseshoe crab. Three of them live in Asia, around the coasts of India, Vietnam, China, Borneo and southern Japan.

These are the tri-spine horseshoe crab (Tachypleus tridentatus), the coastal horseshoe crab (Tachypleus gigas) and the mangrove horseshoe crab (Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda).

The fourth is the American horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) which lives along the east coast of North America, with a particularly large number going to the beaches of the Delaware Bay to mate each year.”

What exactly is Horseshoe Crab Blood?

Horseshoe crabs, particularly the Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus), play a crucial role in the pharmaceutical and vaccine industry due to their unique blue blood.

Their blood contains a substance called Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL), which is used to test for bacterial contamination in vaccines, medical devices, and intravenous drugs.

The process of bleeding horseshoe crabs for vaccines involves the following steps:

1. Collection: Horseshoe crabs are collected from their natural habitat, typically in shallow waters along the Atlantic coast of North America.

2. Blood extraction: The crabs are transported to a laboratory, where they are placed in a specific position to access their blood.

A needle is inserted into the pericardial cavity near the hinge of the crab's exoskeleton, and blood is drawn from the crab's heart. The process usually extracts around 30% of the crab's blood.

3. LAL extraction: The collected blood is processed to extract the LAL, a clotting agent that reacts to the presence of endotoxins from Gram-negative bacteria.

This reaction makes LAL a valuable resource for testing the safety and sterility of vaccines, medical devices, and drugs.

4. Release: After the bleeding process, the horseshoe crabs are returned to their natural habitat. However, the bleeding process can be stressful for the crabs, and mortality rates can range from 10% to 30%.

5. Sterility testing: LAL is used in laboratories to test vaccine samples, medical equipment, and drugs for bacterial contamination.

If the sample is contaminated with Gram-negative bacteria, the LAL will react and form a gel-like clot, indicating the presence of endotoxins.

It's important to note that there is a synthetic alternative called recombinant Factor C (rFC), derived from the genetic code of horseshoe crabs, which can be used for endotoxin testing.

This alternative helps reduce the reliance on horseshoe crabs and has a lower environmental impact, but it has not been universally adopted by the pharmaceutical industry.

https://www.boston.com/news/environment/2023/07/31/blue-blood-horseshoe-crabs-medicine-declining-bird-needs/#:~:text=“There's%20very%20clear%20linkage%20between,medicines%20such%20as%20injectable%20antibiotics.

“The harvest of horseshoe crabs, which are also caught for bait in the commercial fishing industry, has emerged as a critical issue for conservationists in recent years because of the creature’s role in coastal ecosystems.

The crabs’ eggs are vitally important food for a declining subspecies of a bird called the red knot — a rust-colored, migratory shorebird listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

There's very clear linkage between horseshoe crabs and the survival of the red knot in the coming decades”.

“Will horseshoe crabs go extinct?”

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/horseshoe-crab-blood-miracle-vaccine-ingredient.html

“The American horseshoe crab is not considered endangered (although it is classified as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) and the number of crabs caught is monitored.

American regulators and manufacturers also created guidance on how to reduce the number of crabs killed during the bleeding process, which is helping. Some crab populations are now increasing, although others are still struggling.

Some medicine companies have started sustainability programmes that rescue eggs from crabs that have been caught for bait. The eggs are fertilized, raised in a hatchery and released back into the ocean to try to keep population numbers stable.

The story in Asia is less promising. Crab mating grounds are being destroyed more quickly by rising sea levels and building work. The tri-spine horseshoe crab is classified as endangered. It is locally extinct in Taiwan, and may soon disappear from Hong Kong. The other two Asian horseshoe crab species are not thriving either.

In 2019 the IUCN and other conservation groups around the world called for stronger rules to protect horseshoe crabs, more scientific research, and better protections for their coastal habitat.

There is hope yet - and it perhaps won't be long until we can phase out the use of crab blood for good.”

Think before you take the shot and understand what’s been injected in your system!

Credits:,Information sourced from Grok 2