160 Sharks: The Animal Answer Guide
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Are any medicines made from sharks?
Sharks have been and continue to be a direct source of some important
medicines used to treat human ailments, although some of these medicines
are more effective than others. Shark body parts used include cartilage
tissues from skeleton and fin supports, oil and a chemical called squalene
from shark livers, eyeballs (especially corneas), and various internal organs.
Ancient Greeks and Romans used the electric discharges of torpedo rays
to treat a variety of ailments. Scribonius Largus, the court physician to the
Roman emperor Claudius (who adopted Nero), recorded using torpedo
ray discharges to treat headache and gout. The ancient Greeks used such
shock therapy as an anesthetic during operations and childbirth, the elec-
tricity functioning to numb the pain. The word “narcotic” has its roots in
the Greek name for torpedo rays, narke.
Today, sharks are killed for chondroitin, a structural part of cartilage that
is used as a dietary supplement for treating joint problems such as osteoar-
thritis. However, chondroitin can come from many sources, including from
cows and pigs that are already at a slaughterhouse. It can also be made syn-
thetically in laboratories. Sharks don’t need to be killed to get chondroitin.
Some specialized types of eye surgery use chondroitin sulfate extracted
from Blue Shark fins as a sort of glue that binds tissues together during cataract
extractions, glaucoma procedures, and corneal transplants. The cartilage-
derived “viscoelastic” has the right stickiness properties to work under
these conditions. The manufacturers admit they could also use chondroitin
sulfate from cow tracheas but don’t because of concerns about transmitting
mad cow disease. Another use of shark chondroitin sulfate from sharks is
in skin grafts for burn victims. The chondroitin is combined with collagen
from cow tendons and formed into an artificial “shark skin” called Integra.
Shark cartilage has also been promoted as a cancer cure. Because cancer
in sharks is supposedly rare, shark cartilage was thought to prevent cancer
in people. But sharks do get cancer, including cartilage cancers as well as
melanomas and cutaneous fibrosarcomas (skin and connective tissue can-
cers). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) filed injunctions against companies that made
anticancer claims for shark cartilage products because clinical trials indi-
cated that cartilage pills have little effect on cancerous cells.
Until recently, elasmobranchs were not used extensively in traditional
Asian medicines, unlike bears (for their gall bladders) and tigers (testicles).
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