200 Man and Shark 



Instead, the diamond-shaped ones are polished to a dazzHng gloss. Though 

 difRcult to stitch because of its armor, this hide— called boroso—h2iS 

 been made into such fashion accessories as evening slippers. It may be 

 the world's most expensive leather since it sells for $1 a square inch. 



The denticles are also left in an industrial type of sharkskin, whose 

 abrasive qualities are put to such unusual tasks as the fluffing of nap 

 in the felt used to make men's hats. In Italy it is used for polishing 

 marble. Another type of industrial sharkskin is used in looms, where a 

 flexible yet indestructible material is needed for the straps that control 

 the darting shuttle. 



Modern science has resurrected the shark as the bearer of a strange 

 chemical which the ancients once beheved was a potent potion. The 

 drug is called squalene (the name comes from the Latin word for shark, 

 squalus), an organic chemical that is today still only an oddity in the 

 medical researcher's laboratory. 



Several years ago, a chemical company bought a large supply of 

 squalene distilled from the liver oil of the Basking shark. The firm made 

 the purchase mostly out of scientific curiosity since the shark-originated 

 chemical intrigued some researchers, who began tinkering with it. 



One of the tinkerers was Dr. John H. Heller, director of the New 

 England Institute for Medical Research and one of the nation's out- 

 standing research scientists in organic chemistry. Convinced that squal- 

 ene would be a valuable research tool in the study of heart disease, 

 Heller wanted to use "marked" squalene as a tracer in observing 

 chemical activity in animals. The tracer Heller used was radioactivity. 

 He proposed injecting radioactive material directly into live sharks to 

 obtain his squalene tracer, since squalene was elusive and was produced 

 in relatively minute amounts in every other known creature except the 

 shark. 



With the help of Dr. Eugenie Clark, the marine biologist, Heller 

 caught and injected sharks, often getting into the water with them. 

 Though the sharks were snared, with hooks and lines, there was always 

 danger. The hazardous experiments proved to be a failure. But some 

 researchers are still tinkering with squalene, in the hope that radioactive- 

 tagged squalene may some day be used as a research tool in the study of 

 both heart disease and cancer. 



Squalene from shark liver oil once was profitably put to work— but 

 by crooks, not scientists. They put out an alleged vegetable oil for cook- 

 ing and on the label they stated, "20 per cent olive oil." But experts 

 who snifi^ed and sampled this oil said it was obviously not a blend of 

 olive oil and another vegetable oil, as claimed. Further, these experts- 

 legitimate olive oil merchants— strongly suspected that the olive oil 

 racketeers were back in business again. It was not too long after the 

 end of World War II when olive oil from Europe was still scarce. 



