IIPM - ARTICLE AND PUBLICATION: Swallow this

Thursday, August 09, 2012

Swallow this – H1N1 kills sharks too!

...All for a little compound called squalene used in the making of adjuvant vaccine

From global warming to now swine flu, all have been a result of man’s experiments and overindulgence with nature. The world is finding it hard to cope with the global outbreak of the H1N1 virus, which was apparently transferred from animals to human beings, later turning out to be deadly enough to spread from one person to another. And as though the outbreak itself was not tragic enough, in trying to find a cure, we’ve created ripples in the deep seas too. Apparently, the adjuvant vaccine for swine flu comprises squalene, which is available in deep sea sharks. The fact remains that sharks are perhaps bigger victims of swine flu than humans. Fishermen around the world are going trawling in order to slaughter these sharks, for their worth could be weighed in gold in these times.

In order to solve a crisis, we end up creating another one. In this case as well, out of 360 species of shark, 126 feature in the red list of endangered species generated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN); and a compound called squalene (also used in cosmetic products) is extracted from the livers of sharks in general, and gulper sharks in particular. Pharmaceutical companies often avoid getting questioned for such issues, but according to certain reports it was found that GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK’s) vaccine containing adjuvant had squalene extracted from shark liver. Considering the enormity of the situation and the volume of the vaccine required for curbing the affect of this worldwide epidemic, it was assessed that if around 440 million vaccines are prepared, then roughly 4,400 kilogram of shark oil would be needed. One can only imagine how many sharks also would lose their lives to the swine flu pandemic. The current approximate worldwide human death toll due to swine flu is 14,160. If we add to that a few more thousand sharks, then the death toll rises enormously.

“Sharks are the predators of the aquatic world and just like vultures, they clean the marine environment so as to keep it balanced,” says Environmentalist and Green Oscar recipient, Mike Pandey. If sharks are fished out of the deep seas then their prey such as the cownose rays would upset the ecological balance of the oceans by decimating the bay scallops and other smaller preys, like they have in North Carolina. Fishermen are already flouting the rules by using fishnets, which are as closely knit as sweaters. This doesn’t allow the young ones to swim past, killing millions of little ones, which would only sell as chicken food and rose manure.

But just as is the case with most things, shark squalene is not without substitutes. It has been reported that cosmetics manufacturers (after receiving flak from conservationists) are looking at switching over to other less harmful but obviously more-hard-to-find substitutes to squalene. GSK meanwhile has said that it is looking at alternative sources of squalene such as olive oil, but has so far failed to find a high enough grade.