Even under stricter rules, we’d still hasten horseshoe crabs’ demise

We should applaud Massachusetts regulators for finally moving to protect horseshoe crabs when they are spawning (“Horseshoe crabs get new state protections,” Metro, March 20). But this action alone will not save the crabs from the risk of extinction. Even if the regulations are approved, as expected, each year Massachusetts will still allow 140,000 horseshoe crabs to be killed for use as bait and 200,000 more to be bled for use in laboratories, with an estimated 15 to 29 percent of them dying after being released back into the wild.

Two commercial enterprises threaten horseshoe crab survival, which is already severely threatened by climate change — whelk and eel fisheries that use them as bait and biomedical companies that use their blood to isolate a sensitive natural substance known for detecting bacterial endotoxins in vaccines, intravenous equipment, implants, and other agents or devices that enter our bodies. Yet highly effective alternatives to using the crabs exist for both of these industries — other plentiful natural baits and widely available synthetic endotoxin tests, already in use or being tested by Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and other companies.

If we do not stop the killing and bleeding of an organism that has been on Earth for 400 million years, 200 million years before dinosaurs, more than 1,000 times longer than we have been — one that has already survived all of our planet’s five mass extinction events — then we are needlessly contributing to its demise. To me and countless others, this is an unparalleled tragedy, if not an unforgivable sin.

ERIC CHIVIAN

Boston

The writer, a physician, is the founder and former director of what is now the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard University and co-editor and co-author of the book “Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity.”