“The Blood Harvest.”

“‘Every drug certified by the FDA must be tested using LAL,’ PBS’s Nature documentary noted, ‘as do surgical implants such as pacemakers and prosthetic devices.’ I don’t know about you, but the idea that every single person in America who has ever had an injection has been protected because we harvest the blood of a forgettable sea creature with a hidden chemical superpower makes me feel a little bit crazy. This scenario is not even sci-fi, it’s postmodern technology.”

In The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal unearths the amazing secrets, and industry, surrounding horseshoe crab blood. “The thing about the blood that everyone notices first: It’s blue, baby blue…The iron-based, oxygen-carrying hemoglobin molecules in our blood give it that red color; the copper-based, oxygen-carrying hemocyanin molecules in theirs make it baby blue.”

Paean to Djarum.

“Anything that doesn’t taste like tobacco, other than menthol, is out. If you thought you could get around the ban by rolling your own cigs with flavored paper, sorry, that’s banned too.” The FDA ban on clove cigarettes goes into effect today. [Official statement.] Somewhere amid the stoops, corridors, and crannies of Adams House, the Djarum-stained ghost of my college self is now that much more disaffected.

Kibbles ‘n poison.

If you have a pet, I presume you’ve already been following this story rather closely. Nevertheless, here’s the current list of pet foods recalled as a result of high levels of aminopterin discovered therein. (The current death toll is 16 cats and dogs, with many more expected.) I was somewhat concerned to notice on Friday that Berk‘s brand (Science Diet) had been added to the list, but apparently the outbreak seems to be confined to their wet food line (and the cat line at that.)

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

“This is certainly not the first time that politics has trumped science at the FDA. Another recent example: the agency’s decision to block over-the-counter availability for emergency contraceptives in the face of overwhelming evidence that the treatment is safe and effective…From my standpoint as a doctor, the question is this: What do you do when federal agencies become so politicized that their recommendations can’t necessarily be trusted?” In Slate, pediatrician Sydney Spiesel begins to doubt the FDA’s credibility these days, particularly after their recent and apparently blatantly political decision against medicinal marijuana. “Marijuana as a medicine — whatever its risk and benefits are eventually determined to be — may turn out to be much less important than the question of whether we can count on agencies like the FDA to be honest in their dealings.”