Marine biology clearly has much to offer medical research. Yet discourse between these two fields has been all too infrequent. It should not remain so.
Medical researchers typically use mammals, such as monkeys, rabbits, and mice, in their investigations. Marine animals, representing the largest and most diverse assemblage of creatures on earth, are rarely used, despite common fundamental processes (immunity, metabolism, inflammation, to name only a few) that they share with humans. In many instances, marine animals offer a far simpler and clearer model of biological phenomena than mammals do.
Consider the normally high blood urea levels in sharks. Sharks, therefore, may be an ideal model for the study of uremia in humans. And the absence of an inflammatory response by the sea cucumber peritoneum to bathing in microbiologically contaminated and even more grossly polluted seawater suggests an opportunity to study protective mechanisms against peritonitis.
Despite a spriniding of such ...
