Horseshoe 

 Crabs 

 Become 

 Blue Blood 

 F Donors 



Up north it's been touted as 

 "New England's original blue 

 blood." But the horseshoe crab- 

 medically important as it is— 

 hasn't always been held in royal 

 esteem. 



With its voracious appetite for 

 shellfish and tendency to tangle 

 with fish-filled nets, the horseshoe 

 crab is considered a pest by many 

 shrimpers and shellfishermen. 



In response to a 1950s bounty 

 on the animals, Cape Cod chil- 

 dren earned five cents apiece 

 from the Commonwealth for every 

 crab tail turned in. Along the 

 Delaware Bay, crabs were slaugh- 

 tered by the hundreds of thou- 

 sands and ground up for fertilizer. 



During this same time, a scien- 

 tist was quietly discovering how 

 the animal's blue blood clots to kill 

 invading bacteria. 



Frederik Bang's discovery would 

 eventually lead to a superior test 

 for deadly impurities in pharma- 

 ceuticals and an important new 

 medical industry. Today, no drugs 



BY CARLA BURGESS 



leave a pharmaceutical company 

 without this standard test. 



Limulus amoebocyte lysate, the 

 star of this industry, is a derivative 

 of the horseshoe crab's blood, 

 which can be extracted with no 

 apparent harm to the animal. 



"We take a sample of their 

 blood, give them a little donut and 

 a glass of orange juice and they 

 go back in the water," Jim Finn 

 says jokingly. 



Finn, owner of Finn-Tech Indus- 

 tries Inc., bleeds 200 to 300 of the 

 larger female crabs per week at 

 the Delaware Bay laboratory. 



The horseshoe crab is placed 

 in a rack, flexed by the hinge join- 

 ing its abdomen and head. A 

 hypodermic needle is then inserted 

 into the animal's heart chamber 

 for the donation, which can com- 

 prise up to 30 percent of its 

 blood. 



The blood— bluish in color be- 

 cause of a copper-containing pig- 

 ment that functions in respiration— 



