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Comment by megous | Hacker News Reader

Use slightly more expensive other source of the same substance? It's like killing whales for oil just to burn it instead of using olive oil, or that stuff pumped from the ground and refined, or whatever. (as was done at various points in history)

Kinda annoying how many people take this issue to mean "kill sharks or humans will die" when it's just about money.

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> Use slightly more expensive other source of the same substance?

You're assuming money is the only issue here. If we throw money at the problem, will we be able to produce a similar solution on a similar schedule?

There's also the concern of immediate availability, i.e. if shark-derived squalene is available today and the plant-derived version takes time to scale, we can't just start using that if we want to mass-produce a vaccine very quickly.

Possibly. It's hard to know without having a detailed insight into how this works. Presumably, there's some process involved in extracting it from both animals and plant sources. (You don't just put shark liver into a vaccine.)

Someone in the know would have to provide a comparison.

Would that make it too expensive for some? So inoculate just those that can afford it?

There isn't a way out to this mess that doesn't involve rethinking wealth redistribution.

Animal expoitation vs the poor... I imagine some "intellectual" will come up with a new sort intersectionalism for this... or is this just one of those externalities we keep hearing about, but of the animal rights movement instead?

Well, we all suffer if a segment of the population isn't innoculated. Suffering, disease spread, cost. And putting "intellectual" in quotes is what, and attempt to make resorting-to-science look wrong?

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