Horseshoe Crabs Are Life-Saving Medical Miracle

The horseshoe crabs’ blue blood has been called a “medical miracle,” and the “biomedical equivalent of gold.” One quart of horseshoe crab blood is reportedly worth $15,000.

Horseshoe Crabs, The True Blue Bloods

For those who spend time at the seashore, beachcombing is a favorite ritual, looking for shells and everything else the ocean has sent ashore. You’ve walked casually past them on the beach, these odd-looking arthropods, horseshoe crabs. Or, more likely, you’ve seen the shells the crabs molted in order to grow, washed up along the shoreline.

Horseshoe crabs have survived an estimated 450 million years, an amazing feat in itself. They lived before the dinosaurs.

However, this so-called “living fossil” is extraordinary in another way, too. They have blue blood with amazing properties unique to the species, considered a “medical miracle” that helps save lives.

Ever had an injection (vaccines or drugs)? Horseshoe crabs have helped just about everyone, but who knew? Few — certainly not the public at large.

Horseshoe Crabs, A “Medical Miracle”

Horseshoe crabs have a remarkable blood-clotting agent (LAL), that clots if certain bacterial toxins are present. All injectable and intravenous drugs produced in the USA are required by the FDA to be tested using LAL. This is a screening process to make sure they are free from bacterial contamination.

The crabs’ blue blood has been called the “biomedical equivalent of gold.” One quart of horseshoe crab blood is reportedly worth $15,000 in the medical marketplace, according to the PBS video below. Horseshoe crabs are literally “borrowed” to harvest their blue blood. The crabs are collected and delivered to LAL labs, they are bled (up to about one-third of their blood is taken), and they are then returned to the sea. There are only four labs in the entire world that produce the derivative of horseshoe crab blood, Limulus Amebocyte Lysate (LAL).

Watch this brief 3-minute PBS video to learn more about this fascinating ancient sea critter, a true wonder of nature.

The next time you walk by a horseshoe crab at the beach, you may have a new appreciation of their remarkable contribution to mankind. If you ever find a living horseshoe crab stranded upside down, simply give it a helping hand by flipping it over (they are harmless, won’t bite). Learn lots more about horseshoe crabs from the Ecological Research & Development Group (ERDG).