Mastodawn

Sheril Kirshenbaum Sep 13, 2023

With the new #COVID vaccine approved, a reminder that we’re all indebted to the ancient & wondrous horseshoe crab.

Their blue blood contains Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL) which clumps at contact with bacterial toxins. They are caught for their blood to test sterility of medical equipment & injections.

Unfortunately the harvest is unsustainable & populations are in decline. An effective synthetic substitute has been around for 2 decades & we just need the biomedical industry to switch.

Show thread

Raina

@Sheril there are quite a few ‘humans are the worst species’ posts/vibes in the comments here. This take is wrong and unhelpful. It deflects accountability, and erases lots of people to whom it does not apply. We cannot lump all humans in with the gross and destructive stuff that is very much a product of our own culture and our own economic system. Instead of the whole species, call out one of the intertwined systems of supremacist thinking that enable this kind of exploitation.