Doctors press for nonanimal vaccine safety testing method

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a national nonprofit of physicians and scientists, is calling for the replacement of horseshoe crab blood with a nonanimal reagent for vaccine safety testing, with billboards near the Delaware Bay and in Times Square, and a corresponding informative video.

At present, testing vaccines for bacterial contamination typically uses reagents sourced from the blood of horseshoe crabs; many crabs die following the extraction process. A nonanimal, synthetic option called recombinant factor C, or rFC, is shown to be scientifically superior.

Horseshoe crab spawning season on the Atlantic coast peaks this month, with thousands of crabs – threatened or endangered in many of their habitats – flocking to the sandy beaches of Delaware Bay to lay 100,000 or more eggs per crab. Two billboards from the physicians committee, located in Milford near the bay, feature a peaceful image of a crab on a beach and direct readers to PCRM.org/HorseshoeCrab. The ads point out why the synthetic vaccine safety-testing option surpasses the reagent derived from horseshoe crab blood: It’s safe, effective, animal-free and reliably available.

At the same time, in New York City’s Times Square, an animated, wraparound ad five stories above the intersection of West 43rd Street and Broadway shows horseshoe crabs in their natural environment, with gentle waves washing over them. The text reports that many horseshoe crabs die after their blood is extracted for vaccine safety testing but there is a synthetic option, and it’s better.

The organization has also released an informative two-minute video further explaining the details of the issue, noting that reliance on the blood of an animal species for vaccine and injectable therapy production goes along with the risk of supply disruption and that the FDA-approved rFC reagent has already been successfully employed to test injectable therapies, but outdated regulatory policies make it difficult to use.

Elizabeth Baker, Esq., regulatory policy director for the physicians committee, said, “rFC holds advantages over the horseshoe crab blood test that can help safeguard vaccine supply. It is time to bring policy in line with science by removing regulatory hurdles to its use.”

For more information, go to pcrm.org.

To speak with Baker, or to see the video or ads, contact Reina Pohl at 202-527-7326 or rpohl@pcrm.org.