Book Review, NationalJournal.com
As this week's other review makes clear, managing a common resource for the greater good is no easy task. And as William Sargent shows in "Crab Wars," these shared commodities can take on surprising (and smelly) forms.
Sargent, a science writer and Cape Cod native, chronicles the long history -- as in 300 million years -- of the horseshoe crab, and how its vital contribution to pharmaceutical testing has recently decimated the species. As the author puts it, this is "a little-known story that affects people, endangered species, and human health worldwide."
Horseshoe crabs -- or at least an occasional carcass -- are familiar to anyone who's visited the Eastern Shore, and they are harvested by the ton to be ground up and used for bait by commercial fishermen. As Sargent explains, however, these creatures are also a vital link in the testing required for every pharmaceutical seeking Food and Drug Administration approval. Their blood contains a compound called lysate, which is used to test for gram-negative bacteria -- the cause of meningitis, typhoid, toxic shock syndrome and countless other diseases.
Because the lysate test is quick, simple and reliable, Sargent writes, "over a million lives have been saved by the horseshoe crab test" since it was instituted in the late 1970s. And a quart of processed horseshoe crab blood sells for more than $15,000.
That would seem to be a win-win situation, especially since crab collectors (including Sargent himself) quickly learned that horseshoe crabs could be gathered, bled and then returned to the wild to recuperate and be harvested again. Demand soon outstripped the sustainable supply, however, while corporate ventures and patchwork government regulations compounded the problem. As a result, by the late 1990s the horseshoe crab population (along with migratory birds that feed on crab eggs) was plummeting, raising the spectre of extinction for the world's sole source of lysate.
"Crab Wars" even puts a new twist on the Bush administration's push for smallpox vaccinations. Sargent devotes an entire chapter to "Flugate," the 1976 debacle in which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (then serving President Gerald Ford) pushed an agressive campaign to inoculate "every man, woman and child" against an influenza strain that was thought to be especially virulent.
"Unfortunately," Sargent writes, "what makes for good politics does not always make for good medicine." The much-feared "swine flu" never materialized, but 52 people died from contaminated vaccines, 600 suffered paralysis or other neurological problems, "and the government faced $1.7 billion in lawsuits." The next year, the FDA moved to implement lysate tests for new drugs.
"Crab Wars" hasn't exactly topped the best-seller lists since it was published last November, and would-be readers could be forgiven for packing other books to the beach this summer. Even in an era when nonfiction like "Cod" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel" gain popularity, a book subtitled "A Tale of Horseshoe Crabs, Bioterrorism, and Human Health" is destined to catch the eye of a select few.
Sargent, however, has crafted a surprisingly engaging tale. He has been a part of this story for decades, and the anecdotes and personal narratives bring life to a topic that could have come off like a "Saturday Night Live" spoof of Al Gore's "Earth in the Balance." The issues in question are vitally important, but not always easy to grasp. "Crab Wars" makes for a helpful -- and entertaining -- case study.
Crab Wars
By William Sargent
ISBN 1-58465-168-7
University Press of New England
122 pp.
