Purpose of human appendix believed found

[Prrkitty]

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/10/05/appendix.purpose.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Quote: -- Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for your gut.

That's the theory from surgeons and immunologists at Duke University Medical School, published online in a scientific journal this week.

For generations the appendix has been dismissed as superfluous. Doctors figured it had no function. Surgeons removed them routinely. People live fine without them.

And when infected the appendix can turn deadly. It gets inflamed quickly and some people die if it isn't removed in time. Two years ago, 321,000 Americans were hospitalized with appendicitis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

-----

Scientists think the tonsils also had a purpose at one time... but now-a-days isn't needed.

I had my appendix removed many years ago. How many of y'all still do?

[The_Amaster]

Wait... The appendix wasn't believed to have a purpose?

News to me. I mean, with our modern medicine, you think you'd be able to track the functions of an organ.

[MasterSwordUltima]

I've still got mine, safe and snug. Strangely enough, I have trouble digesting food [or perhaps I digest it too fast, its something like that], .

I also still have my tonsils [s]and my baby teeth.

[Russ]

I thought docters already had determined what the appendix did. I think I read it produces more white and red blood cells when you are still a kid to prevent sickness from interfering from growth.



News to me. I mean, with our modern medicine, you think you'd be able to track the functions of an organ


Actually, there are a lot of organs that we have no idea of the purpose for.

[The_Amaster]

You can't just look at the tube leading out of it, and see what comes out that didn't go in?

[GamerMan]

Wait... The appendix wasn't believed to have a purpose?

News to me. I mean, with our modern medicine, you think you'd be able to track the functions of an organ.Know wonder people loose it
I hope I keep mine.
Also whats the point of having something we don't
need,Thats like a bike with no weels.

[Jenny]

i was always told it let you eat raw meat... i guess not :o

[Masamune]

I still got all my shit packed away. Even my broken kidneys. :)

[MasterSwordUltima]

You have broken kidneys inside of you Pat!? You win.

[Masamune]

Yeah dude. My kidneys used to have trouble filtering protein from my urine. So I would basically piss out the protein my kidneys were supposed to keeping. It's cool though, I came through it with minimal scarring, and now Pat's all better. :P

[Pineconn]

When in doubt... Wikipedia it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appendix_(organ))!

I have every organ, thank you very much. Basically, I'm currently 100% biologically healthy. It's pretty sweet.

[phattonez]

i was always told it let you eat raw meat... i guess not :o


I had heard that and also that it digested seeds. Anyone?

[Jenny]

seeds? dunno if i heard that but ive also heard someone say that it was like a tootzi pop. the world may never know

[Daarkseid]

I had heard that and also that it digested seeds. Anyone?

Until this new theory has come along, the only use they could come up with previously was that it was a vestigial organ, left over from primate ancestors who consumed more cellulose rich vegetation(the extremely rigid cell wall structures found on most plants we cannot digest).

Ironically, this scientific research scores a slight point for those creationist Answers in Genesis types who maintain every organ has a purpose because we were designed by an intelligent creator(God).

[AtmaWeapon]

You can't just look at the tube leading out of it, and see what comes out that didn't go in?When I encounter a computer program that is misbehaving, I'm able to use a tool called a debugger to view the internals of the program and diagnose what is wrong. So long as the problem is not a "This CPU is defective" problem, the debugger will show me what is going wrong so long as I fully understand what the programmer wants the program to be doing vs. what the debugger tells me the program is doing. Electrical engineers can do similar tasks with multimeters and oscilloscopes.

Unfortunately, living organisms are not so simple to monitor. Finding out what "the tube leading out of it" (one of your intestines) is getting from the appendix requires some form of surgery to collect chemicals. Even simple surgery is dangerous and life-threatening, and doctors are not allowed to perform surgery for research without very good cause. "What does the appendix do" is not tinting every consumable in the nation pink for its 7 "support this cause" months out of the year, therefore there isn't really much invasive research into the topic as far as I know. It probably helps to do some cursory research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiform_appendix) into the topic.

Complicating the problem is the fact that this is not a car. The appendix is not a part bolted to the frame with an obvious inlet and outlet; it is literally part of the small intestine and it is connected via lots of tiny vessels.

It looks like enough research has been done to determine that the appendix is full of cells that are important to the immune system, but its removal does not significantly alter people's ability to fight off illness. Therefore, I tend to agree with the notion that the appendix's role has probably changed over time: it probably played some role in digestion and had a secondary task of fighting infection in early man's development, but as the digestive tract advanced its digestion role became less important and its immune system role became its sole purpose.

Also I take offense to "every organ has a purpose" -> Intelligent Design. I have seen plenty of computer applications where a particular function served a purpose but its implementation did nothing to support any form of intelligent design. This suggests that implication is faulty. I've seen plenty of debate on the topic and I'm pretty certain that ID can only be supported from a faith-based argument.

[Russ]

Ironically, this scientific research scores a slight point for those creationist Answers in Genesis types who maintain every organ has a purpose because we were designed by an intelligent creator(God).


He has a point. So many organs that were deemed evolutionary leftovers have been found to have a purpose. It all points to intelligent design rather than randomly evolving.



Also I take offense to "every organ has a purpose" -> Intelligent Design. I have seen plenty of computer applications where a particular function served a purpose but its implementation did nothing to support any form of intelligent design. This suggests that implication is faulty. I've seen plenty of debate on the topic and I'm pretty certain that ID can only be supported from a faith-based argument.


Good arguement. But were not talking about computers, were talking about the human body.

[DarkDragoonX]

He has a point. So many organs that were deemed evolutionary leftovers have been found to have a purpose. It all points to intelligent design rather than randomly evolving.

... No, no it doesn't. That is some extremely warped logic. So, since we thought something was vestigal, and it turns out it actually does serve a minor purpose, it means god did it? Wrong. All it means is that we didn't know what it did yet. Biology is one area of science where there is a hell of a lot we don't know about, which makes sense, because it's really, really hard to study something's insides while it's still alive.

Thinking something was a vestigal organ and discovering it actually isn't completely vestigal (yet) does not in any way, shape or form point to intelligent design. It just means that until now science didn't have the means to figure out exactly what it did.

[AtmaWeapon]

Good arguement. But were not talking about computers, were talking about the human body.One must take care to spell "argument" properly if one wishes to enter into debate.

I was making an analogy to illustrate a point: one cannot present this argument:

X was previously thought to be useless.
X has been discovered to serve Y purpose.
________________________________________
X exists because some intelligent being planned it as so.

The problem with this argument is that it assumes "Since something has a purpose, it was designed to exist". Such an argument is based on shaky logic, because it presumes the existence of a creator which is still in question. See the watchmaker's fallacy below for a more in-depth explanation.

My faith leads me to believe in Intelligent Design, but I cannot bring myself to support it as a counterargument to evolution. The weakness of ID: the watchmaker's fallacy.

The fallacy is illustrated as follows. Suppose you are walking through a field, and you stumble upon a watch. After examination of the mechanisms that drive the watch, you assume that nature is not capable of randomly producing such complexity and declare there must be a watchmaker that made the watch. While this seems perfectly logical, you can prove a key piece of information that does not exist in ID: you can prove that watchmakers exist and that no watch has ever been produced by nature alone.

When it comes to using ID to prove God's existence, there's a bit of a problem. ID states that since nature could not possibly produce humanity by chance, God must have created humanity. Unfortunately it commits the fallacy of begging the question twice. For the reasoning behind ID to be sound, one must prove both that human evolution is an incorrect theory and that God exists. Without concrete proof of these points, ID proves nothing.

In short, ID makes an argument of the form, "If you are wrong, I am right.", but does nothing to prove that its opponents are wrong.

One could of course say the same thing about evolution theory, but when it comes to logical debate scientific theories have the advantage of compelling evidence whereas faith-based arguments have very little to work with. The key difference between the two is this: Evolution theory must find a chain of ancestry that links Homo Sapiens Sapiens to some apelike ancestor. If it does so, all other theories are invalidated because evolution has been proven. ID must prove that God exists and that there is absolutely no link between humanlike apes and Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The first is impossible unless God decides to reveal Himself. The second is very difficult, as it requires solid proof that all possible places where fossils could be found have been examined and the evidence has not been produced, combined with proof that there is no way the fossils could have decayed or been destroyed by some other natural cause.

I don't think ID is going to make much progress towards scientific proof. Based on what I have studied, it seems much more likely to me that if man was created by God, evolution was the process by which God created man.

[copsgotguns]

well thats settles it, the appendix has a purpose which means all scientific proof that the earth is billions of years old and life started as single celled organisms is WRONG!

so all you who dont believe in god are going to hell...even though the technical definition of hell in the bible is eternal separation from god, not the fire and brimstone brought about in the middle ages by the church to scare people into believing when the plague was wiping out europe.


..but uh, anyway...cool to know my appendix produces good germs. sounds like an oxymoron.

[Pineconn]

Germs are not at all bad, though some are. Heck, one of the stages of [human] reproduction is germ cell, so at one point you were all "germs."

[mrz84]

An interesting piece of news. I still have both my appendix and my tonsils. And a few baby teeth to boot. :kitty:

[ZTC]

Nice article.
Still have my Appendix; but I don't have my tonscils, adnoids, or wisdom teeth.
Kinda hard to type with a busted up shoulder...

[phattonez]

Germs are not at all bad, though some are. Heck, one of the stages of [human] reproduction is germ cell, so at one point you were all "germs."

Even E. Coli is good for you, it's in your colon.