Clean needles depend on the blue blood of horseshoe crabs

By MEG KINNARD

August 20, 2021

 

 

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, right, listens as Foster Jordan of Charles River Labs, left, talks about the properties of horseshoe crab blood, which is a vital component in the contamination testing of injectable medicines - including the coronavirus vaccines - at Charles River Labs on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Charleston, S.C. McMaster says the South Carolina company that bleeds horseshoe crabs for a component crucial to contamination testing of injectable medications is vital to development of a domestic medical supply chain. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

1 of 5

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, right, listens as Foster Jordan of Charles River Labs, left, talks about the properties of horseshoe crab blood, which is a vital component in the contamination testing of injectable medicines - including the coronavirus vaccines - at Charles River Labs on Friday, Aug. 6, 2021, in Charleston, S.C. McMaster says the South Carolina company that bleeds horseshoe crabs for a component crucial to contamination testing of injectable medications is vital to development of a domestic medical supply chain. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — It’s one of the stranger, lesser-known aspects of U.S. health care — the striking, milky-blue blood of horseshoe crabs is a critical component of tests to ensure injectable medications such as coronavirus vaccines aren’t contaminated.

To obtain it, harvesters bring many thousands of the creatures to laboratories to be bled each year, and then return them to the sea — a practice that has drawn criticism from conservationists because some don’t survive the process.

The blood, which is blue due to its copper content, is coveted for proteins used to create the LAL test, a process used to screen medical products for bacteria. Synthetic alternatives aren’t widely accepted by the health care industry and haven’t been approved federally, leaving the crabs as the only domestic source of this key ingredient.

Many of these crabs are harvested along the coast of South Carolina, where Gov. Henry McMaster promoted the niche industry as key to the development of a domestic medical supply chain, while also noting that environmental concerns should be explored.

 

“We don’t want to have to depend on foreign countries for a lot of reasons, including national security, so it’s good to see this company thriving in the United States,” McMaster told The Associated Press. He spoke this month during a visit to Charles River Laboratories at its Charleston facilities, to which AP was granted rare access. “We want to do everything we can to onshore all of these critical operations.”

Horseshoe crabs — aquatic arthropods shaped like helmets with long tails — are more akin to scorpions than crabs, and older than dinosaurs. They’ve been scurrying along the brackish floors of coastal waters for hundreds of millions of years. Their eggs are considered a primary fat source for more than a dozen species of migratory shore birds, according to South Carolina’s Department of Natural Resources.

Their value to avoiding infection emerged after scientists researching their immune response injected bacteria into horseshoe crabs in the 1950s. They ultimately developed the LAL test, and the technique has been used since the 1970s to keep medical materials and supplies free of bacteria.

Their biomedical use has been on the rise, with 464,482 crabs brought to biomedical facilities in 2018, according to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

In South Carolina, that’s done only by Charles River, a Massachusetts-based company that tests 55% of the world’s injectables and medical devices — like IV bags, dialysis solutions and even surgical cleaning wipes, according to company officials.

ADVERTISEMENT

 

“We are almost the last line of defense before these drugs leave the manufacturing area and make it to a patient,” senior vice president Foster Jordan told McMaster. “If it touches your blood, it’s been tested by LAL. And, more than likely, it’s been tested by us.”

Charles River employs local fishermen to harvest the crabs by hand, a process governed by wildlife officials that can only happen during a small annual window, when the creatures come ashore to spawn.

Contractors bring them to the company’s bleeding facilities, then return them to the waters from which they came. During a year, Jordan said his harvesters can bring in 100,000 to 150,000 horseshoe crabs, and still can’t satisfy the growing demand.

“We need more, though,” Jordan told McMaster, adding that his company is working with the state to open up more harvesting areas. “The population’s steady. ... We need access to more beaches, to get more crabs.”

The practice is not without its critics, some of whom have argued that bleeding the crabs and hauling them back and forth is harmful. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 10% to 15% of harvested crabs die during the process.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the species overall as “vulnerable,” noting decreasing numbers as of a 2016 assessment. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission listed 2019 stock as “good” in the Southeast, but “poor” in areas around New York.

Conservationists sued last year, accusing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of shirking its duty to protect areas including South Carolina’s Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge by allowing horseshoe crab harvesting. They argued that taking out the crabs affects other species in the protected area. A federal judge temporarily halted the harvest, but was reversed following Charles River’s appeal.

The environmental groups asked to withdraw their complaint this month after federal officials imposed a permitting process for any commercial activity in the refuge, including horseshoe harvesting, beginning Aug. 15. Even if such permits are denied, Jordan told McMaster that only 20% of its harvest came from the refuge, with most coming from further down the South Carolina coast.

There is a synthetic alternative to the horseshoe crab blood, but it hasn’t been widely accepted in the U.S., and meanwhile, Charles River’s international competitors are making synthetics and also pressing for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, which Jordan said could hamper domestic efforts like his own.

“My mission is to make sure that any competitor that comes into the United States, from China or any of these other producers, has to go through the same regulatory process that we had to go through, to make sure that it’s safe,” Jordan said. “If all these synthetics start coming in from other countries, we’re going to lose the protection that we’ve had for all these years, and the safety, and the control of the drug supply.”

“We want to have as much stuff made here as we can,” McMaster said in response.

As for the environmental concerns, the governor said maintaining a healthy balance between scientific demands and the state’s ecosystems, which bolster a significant portion of South Carolina’s tourism economy, is paramount.

“It’s like a house of cards. You pull out one part, and the rest of it will fall,” McMaster said. “So I think we have to be very careful, and be sure that any company, any business, any activity, whether it’s commercial or otherwise, meets whatever requirements are there to protect the species — birds, horseshoe crabs, any sort of life.”

___

 

Tomorrow has arrived…! However, We Can Still Recover! #VoteResponsibly to Drive the Marxist Socialist Democratic Cancer from our Nation!!!

Now it is clear why the media hardly mentioned Pearl Harbor this past year. When I was a kid, I couldn't understand why Eisenhower was so popular. Maybe this will explain why General Eisenhower Warned Us. It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead. He did this because he said in words to this effect: 'Get it all on record now - get the films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened'. This week, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it. It is now more than 70 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the, six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests Who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, beaten, experimented on and humiliated' while many in the world looked the other way! Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets. This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people! Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world. How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center 'NEVER HAPPENED', Because it offends some Muslims??? Do not just delete this message; it will take only a minute to pass this along. Remember when all classrooms had an American flag in them? Do they even teach our children about the World Trade Center attacks in 1993 and 2001, or did it go the way of Pearl Harbor and Veterans Day? Don't even mention Christmas or Hanukkah or prayers in school. Many schools no longer recite the Pledge of Allegiance and many children do not know the words to our National Anthem, or that we even have one! Do not just delete this message; it will take only a minute to pass this along.

Truly a Sad State of Affairs…America’s Slide into this Marxist Socialist Democratic Swamp Spawned Regime Currently Occupying Our Nation’s Capital.

If you don’t believe that this state of affairs is happening in this great nation…you’re kidding yourself.

Sorry…just an opinion.

 

From:  

 

“Men, like nations, think they’re eternal. What man in his 20s or 30s doesn’t believe, at least subconsciously, that he’ll live forever? In the springtime of youth, an endless summer beckons.  As you pass 70, it’s harder to hide from reality.

Nations also have seasons: Imagine a Roman of the 2nd century contemplating an empire that stretched from Britain to the Near East, thinking: This will endure forever…. Forever was about 500 years, give or take.

France was pivotal in the 17th and 18th centuries; now the land of Charles Martel is on its way to becoming part of the Muslim ummah.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sun never set on the British empire; now Albion (another name for Great Britain) exists in perpetual twilight. Its 95-year-old sovereign is a fitting symbol for a nation in terminal decline.

In the 1980s, Japan seemed poised to buy the world. Business schools taught Japanese management techniques. Today, its birth rate is so low and its population aging so rapidly that an industry has sprung up to remove the remains of elderly Japanese who die alone.

I was born in 1944 almost at the midpoint of the 20th century – the American century. America’s prestige and influence were never greater. Thanks to the ‘Greatest Generation,’ we won a World War fought throughout most of Europe, Asia, and the Pacific. We reduced Germany to rubble and put the rising sun to bed. It set the stage for almost half a century of unprecedented prosperity.

We stopped the spread of communism in Europe and Asia and fought international terrorism. We rebuilt our enemies and lavished foreign aid on much of the world. We built skyscrapers and rockets to the moon. We conquered Polio and now fighting to conquer COVID. We explored the mysteries of the Universe and the wonders of DNA…the blueprint of life.

But where is the glory that once was Rome? America has moved from a relatively free economy to socialism – which has worked so well NOWHERE in the world.

We’ve gone from a republican government guided by a constitution to a regime of revolving elites. We have less freedom with each passing year. As a signpost to the coming reign of terror, the cancel culture is everywhere. We’ve traded the American Revolution for the Cultural Revolution.

At the G-7 Summit, ‘Dr. Jill’ had to lead the president like a child. In 1961, when we were young and vigorous, our leader was too. Now a feeble nation is technically led by the oldest man to ever serve in the presidency.

We can’t defend our borders, our history (including monuments to past greatness), or our streets. Our cities have become anarchist playgrounds. We are a nation of dependents, mendicants, and misplaced charity. Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegal aliens are put up in hotels.

The president of the United States can’t even quote the beginning of the Declaration of Independence (‘You know - The Thing’) correctly. Ivy League graduates routinely fail history tests that 5th graders could pass a generation ago. Crime rates soar and we blame the 2nd Amendment and slash police budgets.

Our culture is certifiably insane. Men who think they’re women. People who fight racism by seeking to convince members of one race that they’re inherently evil, and others that they are perpetual victims. A psychiatrist lecturing at Yale said she fantasizes about ‘unloading a revolver into the head of any white person.’

We slaughter the unborn in the name of freedom, while our birth rate dips lower year by year. Our national debt is so high that we can no longer even pretend that we will repay it one day. It’s a $28-trillion monument to our improvidence and refusal to confront reality. Our ‘entertainment is sadistic, nihilistic, and as enduring as a candy bar wrapper thrown in the trash. Our music is the noise that spans the spectrum from annoying to repulsive.

Patriotism is called an insurrection, treason celebrated, and perversion sanctified. A man in blue gets less respect than a man in a dress. We’re asking soldiers to fight for a nation our leaders no longer believe in.

How meekly most of us submitted to Fauci-ism (the regime of face masks, lockdowns, and hand sanitizers) shows the impending death of the American spirit.

How do nations slip from greatness to obscurity? 

Fighting endless wars, they can’t or won’t win • Accumulating massive debt far beyond their ability to repay • Refusing to guard their borders, allowing the nation to be inundated by an alien horde • Surrendering control of their cities to mob rule • Allowing indoctrination of the young • Moving from a republican form of government to an oligarchy • Losing national identity • Indulging indolence • Abandoning faith and family – the bulwarks of social order.

In America, every one of these symptoms is pronounced, indicating an advanced stage of the disease. Even if the cause seems hopeless, do we not have an obligation to those who sacrificed so much to give us what we had? I’m surrounded by ghosts urging me on the Union soldiers who held Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, the battered bastards of Bastogne, those who served in the Cold Hell of Korea, the guys who went to the jungles of Southeast Asia and came home to be reviled or neglected.

This is the nation that took in my immigrant grandparents, whose uniform my father wore in the Second World War and my brother and I wore during the Vietnam conflict. I don’t want to imagine a world without America, even though it becomes increasingly likely.

During Britain’s darkest hour, when its professional army was trapped at Dunkirk and a German invasion seemed imminent, Churchill reminded his countrymen, "Nations that go down fighting rise again, and those that surrender tamely are finished."

The same might be said of causes. If we let America slip through our fingers if we lose without a fight, what will posterity say of us?  While the prognosis is far from good, only God knows if America’s day in the sun is over or not.

Next Time You Dine Out…

Restaurant Protocol

Hello.

Hi, table for two, please.
Sure, and your name.

Ron Smith

Great. And do you and your guest have your vaccination cards?

We do. Can you tell us who our server will be?

Um, looks like Brad will be your server tonight.

Great. Can you show us Brad's vaccination card?

Um...

And also, can you provide me with proof that Brad is not a carrier of HIV, Hepatitis A or B, or any other communicable diseases?

Um...

Also, we would prefer not to be served by someone who is on or uses recreational drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, meth, fentanyl, etc, so if you could provide us with Brad's most recent tox screen, that would be great.

Um... Let me get the manager for you.

That would be great, thanks.

This is a note from a Brother-in-Arms, I removed names to ensure privacy…

On Afghanistan

Hi. ……,

Yesterday morning,  I spoke with a friend whose husband is a retired CIA agent, and she and her husband lived in Afghanistan for quite some time several years back. They currently live in Chicago, and I met them because they had built a retirement home on .......... Island and frequented the  ..... ...coffee shop.

……said that, what we need to understand is the people in Afghanistan are a very tribal and family oriented culture, and their tribe, and the support they give to it and receive from it, is the ultimate/dominate important thing in their lives. It\"s also a very mountainous and difficult to navigate country, and is populated all over by little pockets of tribes that, are for the most part isolated from each other due to the terrain.

 

 Because of that structure, Afghans identify hardly at all with a central government and have little to no sense of patriotism or deep feelings for any form of government beyond their own tribe. They also gain much of their guidance from the Koran, a very old book that even seems to discourage safe public practices like boiling unsafe water. All of this is why the Afghan army didn\"t fight to uphold their government in the past week. They just took off their uniforms and headed back to their tribes, whose tribal leaders they think may protect them.

In the end, there was never any real hope that we\"d succeed beyond taking out Bin Laden, which, ….feels, is where we probably should have stopped.  She did acknowledge that they lived in Afghanistan prior to current cell phone technology, which many in Afghanistan have picked up on, just like the rest of the world.  That has allowed some a larger world view, and did give many Afghans reason to try to put trust in their government and do things like allow women to comfortably attend schools and be more out in public.  One news story I saw reported on a day or two ago was of the Taliban taking cell phones away from people now. Due to the tribal nature of the country, and the related isolation, it\"s a relatively small percentage of the folks in the country who were willing and able to have this technology and be open to change, and recent developments have probably destroyed the likelihood that they\"ll ever again/soon put their trust in government.

 

So, where did we go wrong?  One statement that Joe Biden made last week was that our purpose there wasn\"t nation building.  However, why were we there for 20 years, handing over something like three trillion dollars to the Afghan government, if we weren\"t at all participating in nation building?  It appears that his statement on that is in denial of the real, though somewhat hidden, goals and hopes of our country.  Where it appears to me we were short sighted is not acknowledging offering nation building assistance is what we were doing,isn\"t necessarily a bad thing, and not placing earmarks on the money we gave them. Along with the funding, we should have been establishing goals and providing advice and assistance to the country\"s government.  It was just a free floating situation for much of the 20 years we were there, with little guidance given to the Afghan government and no enforceable goals set for continued assistance.  It really looks like poor management of our resources and relationship with an allied government.

 

Enough said.  Being a Vietnam veteran, who was very disappointed with the outcome of that war, I have been really disappointed that Afghanistan feels like a repeat performance of our failure in Vietnam and have been trying to make sense of it all. My guess is that you may have had the same thoughts, so I decided to send this along in hopes that it might help gain perspective. I promise to do my best to keep these mailings few in number,  but strongly feel that we\"re at a pivotal point in the future of our nation and the world.  Pretty important stuff, especially for generations who follow us and have to exist in the world our generation bore huge influence on.

 

All the best

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

How Biden Broke NATO

Remember when candidate Joe Biden said America “needs a leader the world respects”? Apparently President Biden forgot. Of the many consequences of his misbegotten Afghanistan withdrawal, one of the more serious is the way it has damaged America’s relationships with its allies, especially in Europe.

Afghanistan was an operation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and America’s NATO allies have invested significant blood and treasure in the conflict. That includes tens of thousands of troops over 20 years, more than 1,100 of whom were killed, and billions of dollars spent on the military operation and reconstruction effort.

This was a fulfillment of their obligations after the Sept. 11 terror attack led to the first invocation of the mutual self-defense clause in NATO’s founding treaty. European allies also have a stake in preventing a nation of nearly 40 million people from collapsing into a failed state that could trigger more mass migration to Europe, or become a new breeding ground for terrorism.

Yet everything about Mr. Biden’s Afghan withdrawal has been a slap to those allies. They didn’t want the U.S. to leave, but he did. The botched execution has left them scrambling to airlift out thousands of their citizens and thousands more Afghan translators and others who assisted each nation’s war effort.

And the snubs keep coming from Washington. In his Monday speech, Mr. Biden made only a glancing reference to NATO and none to America’s European allies in his account of the conflict. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson reportedly had to wait a day and a half after requesting a call with the President to get Mr. Biden on the phone.

No wonder European leaders are apoplectic. U.K. Defense Minister Ben Wallace called the Trump-Biden agreement with the Taliban “a rotten deal,” in an interview this month after the Taliban started capturing chunks of the country. In Parliament on Wednesday, Tom Tugendhat— chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee who served in the British forces in Afghanistan—called Mr. Biden “shameful” for blaming the retreat on a supposedly pusillanimous Afghan military. Former Prime Minister Theresa May criticized Mr. Biden for following President Trump’s lead in a “unilateral” negotiation with the Taliban. Press reports say German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her conservative party she believed Mr. Biden withdrew “for domestic political reasons.” Her potential successor, head of the Christian Democratic Union Armin Laschet, called the Afghan withdrawal “the biggest debacle that NATO has suffered since its founding, and we’re standing before an epochal change.”

French President Emmanuel Macron took considerable flak in 2019 for saying NATO is experiencing “brain death.” He warned that with or without President Trump in office, the U.S. was becoming a less reliable ally and argued that Europe would need to “reassess the reality of what NATO is in light of the commitment of the United States.” Mr. Biden has made him seem prescient, and the wonder is that Mr. Macron has been too polite this week to point it out. French leaders are now planning for the refugee crisis Paris fears Mr. Biden has unleashed on Europe.

European leaders have never demanded an open-ended U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. But NATO allies were justified in expecting that if the U.S. were to withdraw, it would do so in consultation with its partners. Mr. Biden’s failure here, and it’s a NATO-endangering one, is to offer stark proof that America’s supposedly grown-up liberal internationalists are as much in global retreat as some Trump Republicans.

Other allies are noticing. Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen warned this week that in light of the U.S. retreat, “Taiwan’s only option is to grow stronger and become more united, strengthening our determination to protect ourselves.” It’s a telling remark because Mr. Biden says he has withdrawn from Afghanistan in part to devote more resources to East Asia. Instead his chaotic, almost callous withdrawal is casting doubt on U.S. credibility.

A President who understood foreign affairs as well as Mr. Biden claims he does would grasp the damage his disgraceful Afghanistan exit has inflicted on America’s alliances and reputation. He will never be trusted the same way again.

 

The chaotic Afghan withdrawal has shocked and angered U.S. allies.

 

UsefulIdiotBiden at work against US!

Cliff Kincaid column

Biden arms America’s enemies

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid
August 19, 2021

“More than three in four Afghans today are under 25: too young to remember the Taliban’s reign of fear and, especially in cities, too accustomed to freedoms to be eager to relinquish them,” reports National Geographic. “These Afghans, shaped by the post-2001 reality, are unwilling to revert to a reactionary and repressive past.”

. . . [Click for more]