News You Can't Use: Scientists Finally Discover The Function of the Human Appendix

Science is never allowed to admit it doesn't know the answer. Make up highly improbably post hoc explanations, lie like crazy, or just declare that the function of an organ is "nothing." Then when you're proven wrong, take a comical visit to a "Creation Museum" until the heat dies down. Might be time to go look at that "Old Testament Dinosaurs" exhibit again, guys.

It has long been regarded as a potentially troublesome, redundant organ, but American researchers say they have discovered the true function of the appendix.

Any criticisms about the dearth of scientific achievement produced by Big Brother Canada can now cease. We figured out that an organ in the human body does things, instead of being an internal hood ornament.

The researchers say it acts as a safe house for good bacteria, which can be used to effectively reboot the gut following a bout of dysentery or cholera.

Great news for anyone planning to write a noir about the immune system. "I was still leaking from my shoulder when I hit the alley, but considering I blasted that virus right in the groceries with my own heater and left it bleeding out like a sieve on some filthy sidewalk I ain't complaining. Pathogen died hard, bawling like a animal. That's how you reboot the gut, haw haw. Gotta get to the safety of the appendix, wait there until the cholera stops dog-tailing me."

The conventional wisdom is that the small pouch protruding from the first part of the large intestine is redundant and many people have their appendix removed and appear none the worse for it.

The science of gaps.

"Shocker: Lindsay unable to reboot gut."

Scientists from the Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina say following a severe bout of cholera or dysentery, which can purge the gut of bacteria essential for digestion, the reserve good bacteria emerge from the appendix to take up the role.

Nothing screams SCIENCE!!! like repeated references to the "gut." Perhaps the appendix also plays a role in "going with your gut" and so forth. I had it removed, destroying the male version of intuition, etc.

But Professor Bill Parker says the finding does not mean we should cling onto our appendices at all costs.

Forget you, professor. I'm going to keep bitterly clinging to my appendix, fearing the vibrant change out of ignorance.

“So it’s sort of a fun thing that we’ve found, but we don’t want it to cause any harm, we don’t want people to say, “oh, my appendix has a function”, so I’m not going to go to the doctor, I’m going to try to hang onto it.”

"I mean, I'm not some kind of monster. I'd feel a little bad if people started dying over this or something."

“As an idea it’s an attractive one, that perhaps it would be a nice place for these little bacteria to localise in, a little cul-de-sac away from everything else,” he said.

I like my immunological noir better than this guy's "Bridges of Immune System County."

“The thing is that if we observe what’s been happening through evolution, the higher on the evolutionary scale we are and the more omnivorous animals become, then the smaller and less important the appendix becomes and humans are a good example of that.

We now know it's a safe house for good bacteria and/or a special little tucked away community for them to share the rich pageant of life. We can stop with the lies.

Full Story.

Komment Korner

Melissa, don’t worry about GC. He’ll select himself out of the gene pool when he gets appendicitis and doesn’t get it removed.

And the media or someone taught ya’ll to have to say something negative about a scientist who is attempting to learn more?

That has nothing to do with her appendix, Rita.

LOL! you’re funny, like a child.

The next day, I felt worser


Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.