Major New Function Discovered For the Spleen

circletimessquare writes "The spleen doesn't get much respect — as one researcher put it, 'the spleen lacks the gravitas of neighboring organs.' Those undergoing a splenectomy seem to be able to carry on without any consequences. However, some studies have suggested an enhanced risk of early death for those who have undergone splenectomies. Now researchers have discovered why: the spleen apparently serves as a vast reservoir for monocytes, the largest of the white blood cells, the wrecking crew of the immune system. After major trauma, such as a heart attack, the monocytes are disgorged into the blood stream and immediately get to work repairing the damage. '"The parallel in military terms is a standing army," said Matthias Nahrendorf, an author of the report. "You don't want to have to recruit an entire fighting force from the ground up every time you need it."'"

Comments

First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

So how long are their deployments?

-US Army soldier.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

So how long are their deployments?

-US Army soldier.

Not very long but after 4 or 5 heart attacks the spleen has a much higher chance of committing suicide.

Re:First Post

[ArsonSmith]

You fight disease with the spleen you have. Not the spleen you want.

Re:First Post

[Mister_Stoopid]

This is unacceptable. The founding fathers were wary of standing armies in times of good health, and for good reason. Beware the power of the spleen-industrial complex!

Re:First Post

[value_added]

You fight disease with the spleen you have. Not the spleen you want.

Or if you prefer something more highbrow, All The Bard's Spleens.

For fun, be sure to check out the alt.spleen FAQ.

Re:First Post

[plnix0]

I was born in the US and I deserve free medical care.

You have a spleen for that, don't you?

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that an iPhone spoof?

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly off topic but the metaphor in summery is poor. You do not have to raise a fighting force from the ground up every time if you don't have a standing army. That is the entire premise of a militia.

How could the miss that?

[13bPower]

How could they miss that? I'm sure someone cut open a spleen before and looked at it through a microscope. Wouldn't you see an unusually high concentration of the monocytes?

Re:How could the miss that?

[JCSoRocks]

It's no different than the appendix. Apparently, unless its function is obvious, we're not too good at figuring these things out.

Re:How could the miss that?

[blahplusplus]

"How could they miss that?"

Biologies obsession with vestigal organs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiform_appendix#Vestigiality

Early evolution theorists figured the body would have a lot of "vestigal" organs that did nothing, the same goes for junk dna

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_dna

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Both are the sorts of organs we needed a long time ago, when infections and food poisoning would have been everyday occurrences, but not so much anymore. So it's no surprise that their functions aren't that obvious.

Re:How could the miss that?

[spydabyte]

No, despite popular belief from sci-fi films and tv shows, you cannot just cut something open and look at it with the human eye or any amount of visual enhancements to get an understanding of a complex system such as the human body.

Re:How could the miss that?

[ground.zero.612]

I remember reading recently that the Appendix kick starts beneficial bacterial growth in the digestive track. I just can't remember the details nor the source zine.

Re:How could the miss that?

[Freeside1]

Obviously, the appendix is a useful place for storing things like paperclips, fingernail clippings, and loose tooth fillings

Re:How could the miss that?

[sakdoctor]

If you persist with your LIES, you will be hearing from our lawyers.

Yours sincerely,
Yakult Honsha Co. Ltd

Re:How could the miss that?

[R.Mo_Robert]

But this doesn't explain why the spleen was so difficult: what would I see if I looked at a slide of spleen under the microscope (or if more advanced equipment than my eye and a microscope did the same thing)? If not a noticeably larger proportion of white blood cells than elsewhere, why not (e.g., did preparation destroy them, are the hidden or stored elsewhere, etc.)?

Clearly, something must have been going on for us not to have realized this sooner. (Or, perhaps, we've discovered only part of the story--it's happened a lot over history and still happens today, as much as we like to pride ourselves with our knowledge and technology.)

Re:How could the miss that?

[Inda]

Yeah but they're talking about blood cells here. I've had my white cells counted under a microscope, so I know it can be done.

Re:How could the miss that?

[hedwards]

Not really, it's only in a relatively small part of the world where the appendix isn't that useful. Curiously, that's the developed world where there's also relatively easy access to apendectomies. But by population, the vast majority of people still need and use it. And even in the developed world, people do use it, it's just not as important with the easy access to probiotics.

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the appendix also stored good bacteria, so that after you wipe all yours out with antibiotics, it can replenish some of the stuff you need?

Re:How could the miss that?

[severoon]

So...you're saying it was a bad idea to get all the organs I didn't understand removed, then? Uh oh...

Re:How could the miss that?

[hedwards]

The obsession, is relatively reasonable. What isn't reasonable is the tendency to relegate still useful things into that category.

The ability to wiggle ones ears is a pretty good example, unless you can do it, you'd never appreciate the help that is in figuring out where sounds are coming from. Sure it's not as useful as it was. Well, scratch that, with all the randomly beeping things we have in the modern era it helps one figure out where they are hiding.

Re:How could the miss that?

[spectro]

Chronic fatigue?, brain fog?

You probably got your appendix removed years ago, got antibiotics and eat a high carb diet... recipe for Candida overgrowth. It sucks and takes a while to get back in control.

Without appendix there is no way to repopulate your intestinal bacteria to its natural levels so Candida (also naturally living there) grows out of control.

Re:How could the miss that?

[kheldan]

In the grand view of things, medical science is still in it's infancy, even if it's late infancy; there are still more things that are NOT understood than that ARE understood. From my layman's perspective it seems to me like trying to work on an automobile's engine while it's running, but unlike that engine, if you shut down and dismantle the human engine, you can't just put it back together again, pour gas and oil in it, and expect it to run ever again. It seems that since we have developed better and better imaging technologies this situation has begun to improve, but I think it'll take even bigger leaps in that technology before we can really start getting a handle on "the basics".

Re:How could the miss that?

[PReDiToR]

That ability probably wouldn't help if you were looking for one of these.

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat shit?

Re:How could the miss that?

[Shin-LaC]

I can wiggle my ears (curiously, the left more than the right), but I don't think that helps me detect the origin of sounds. I just move my head like everyone else.

I wear glasses, btw, and moving my ears also affects them. That means it's unlikely that I subconsciously move my ears to improve listening, because I'd certainly feel my glasses moving. OTOH, it might also mean that I've gotten used to not moving my ears precisely to avoid moving my glasses.

To sum up, glasses are more useful than wiggly ears.

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Food poisoning? Have you ever lived in Britain? Losing your appendix here is akin to a death sentence.

So's keeping it. Damn mass market fast food imported from the states.

Re:How could the miss that?

[sabernet]

While you're being a troll, you're close to the mark. People who have to take such severe antibiotics in emergency situations that, as a result, wipe out their good little critters sometimes need to have foreign feces inserted into the intestinal tract(not from the mouth...). This introduces the good bugs again.

Re:How could the miss that?

[BigDukeSix]

The important discovery here is not that the spleen has monocytes in it, because you do in fact see a ton of them when you look at splenic tissue under the microscope. The interesting thing about this discovery is that the spleen can (evidently) release a bunch of those cells in response to an injury. The bone marrow does this too, but the WBCs it releases are immature, and we know that there are changes in the way WBCs function as they age. It would appear that "spleen" WBCs are optimized for their tissue repair properties, while "bone marrow" WBCs are better for fighting infection.

It will be interesting to see if this holds true in humans. Lots of animals have spleens that seem more functional than ours. Cats and dogs, for example, can "transfuse" themselves with the blood from their spleen in response to bleeding, but this does not hold true for humans.

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

You jest... when my spleen was removed to treat an autoimmune disorder, the surgeon also suggested yanking the gall bladder, just "while we're in there... it'll prevent ever getting gallstones." Being young and naive, I didn't question it at all. Maybe that's just standard procedure, but I wish I had at least questioned it and obtained a second opinion.

This was about 15 years ago, and I was told it would be prudent to take extra care in maintaining my immunizations, which seems consistent with this finding.

Re:How could the miss that?

[poopdeville]

Feces eating happens naturally and instinctively during birth, and is the how intestinal flora first reaches our bowels. It otherwise takes several months to occur (for example, after Caesareans).

Re:How could the miss that?

[interkin3tic]

I'm sure someone cut open a spleen before and looked at it through a microscope. Wouldn't you see an unusually high concentration of the monocytes?

For one thing, compared to what? As the article points out

Its such a vascularized organ, and the risk of big-time hemorrhaging is so great, that if the spleen ruptures, itâ(TM)s a surgical emergency,â said James N. George, a hematologist with the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

It's full of blood, if you thought you noticed a high amount of monocytes, you'd probably think: they're blood cells and the spleen is full of blood cells. The finding is, as I understand it, that BLOOD from the spleen is higher in monocytes. You'd have to compare blood from the spleen to blood circulating in other organs.

The other issue is that monocytes would be hard to specifically identify, and probably impossible to count in tissue slices. This page has some examples of what monocytes look like when they're specifically stained (with hematoxylin and eosin I think), and what other blood cells look like. That's when they're stained just right and drawn out of an organ. If you're looking at slices of a spleen under a microscope, that's not going to jump out at you even if you were staining with H&E. The article used antibodies to specifically identify only monocytes. Antibodies recognize and can label specific proteins, they chose proteins that would be specific to monocytes. That's not something you do unless you're looking for monocytes specifically.

So you wouldn't notice monocytes unless you stained with antibodies specific to them, and even then, you wouldn't be able to compare them accurately in microscope sections.

  In the real article, the authors seem to have used fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) on spleen isolated blood to compare to circulating blood from other organs.

FACS as I understand it (never done it myself, only heard about, and I'm not reading the real article too closely either) is where isolated cells one at a time are sprayed through a laser. If the cell has a fluroescent tag on it, that makes it deviate from the path it would take if it doesn't. You can collect cells that deviate and cells that don't, the machine counts them, and you can then compare the ratios (easier than counting in a microscope.) So they were able to use that to show it had a higher ratio.

Collecting blood from isolated tissues, prepping it with the antibodies for monocytes, prepping that for FACS and then actually doing FACS is not trivial, you're not going to be doing it unless you're specifically testing a hypothesis like the ones the authors had.

(disclaimer: I'm not an expert in spleens, immunology, or FACS and I didn't read either article in depth.)

Re:How could the miss that?

[DrVomact]

It's no different than the appendix. Apparently, unless its function is obvious, we're not too good at figuring these things out.

That's unfair. At least we've figured out that the brain is useful for cooling blood. All those folds...it's obviously a heat exchanger.

Re:How could the miss that?

[Abreu]

That's unfair. At least we've figured out that the brain is useful for cooling blood. All those folds...it's obviously a heat exchanger.

But you don't really need it for the afterlife, so its ok to ask the priests to remove it with tongs through the nose once youre dead...

Re:How could the miss that?

[Abreu]

+1, Car analogy

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Medical science is firmly in it's toddler years. Running noses snot on sleeve, picking our green gold with pride and glee, running around, pooping in training pants, popsicles covered in ants, dumping cereal, milk, froot, bowl and all on our heads, and promptly wetting the beds, writing with crayon on the wall, eat up your Elmer's it's good for y'all!

Or at least that's whatever I think about the state of modern medicine whenever I hear Dipstick Chopra or some other "alternative medicine" nutbag. Quantum chiropractor chakra chi, homeopathic acupuncture replace denture cream, refreshing high colonic cures you of gin and tonic. Woo woo whoop-di-doo-doo.

Re:How could the miss that?

[jenn_13]

If you are referring to the meconium, this doesn't actually happen with most babies. About 10 to 15% of babies pass meconium before or during birth, and about 2 to 5% of those aspirate/ingest it. It is more typical to pass meconium about 12 hours after birth, and minimal diaper changing skill will prevent any of it from being consumed :)

Re:How could the miss that?

[Foobar of Borg]

Running noses snot on sleeve,
picking our green gold with pride and glee,
running around, pooping in training pants,
popsicles covered in ants,
dumping cereal, milk, froot, bowl and all on our heads,
and promptly wetting the beds,
writing with crayon on the wall,
eat up your Elmer's it's good for y'all!

You could have at least had the decency to put this in poem form!

Re:How could the miss that?

[juancnuno]

30% of a horse's red blood cells are stored in its spleen, for release when needed. Like for extra blood oxygen capacity under strenuous exercise. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spleen See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_doping

Re:How could the miss that?

[MedBob]

The process that you are speaking of is called Flow Cytometry.
It's used often on peripheral blood.

Re:How could the miss that?

[argorg]

It is "How could theY miss that?" and you could answer that question by reading the actual article. The article has some of what they surmised before this finding and even suggests why it was a good theory to test for: the known functions of the spleen, dealing with red blood cells that aren't too functional, recovery of iron and (the important clue for the researchers) the suggestive results of mortality of spleenectomy patients versus others. It was known that it did not have blood enter the normal way (smaller and smaller vessels) but instead just dumped in it (hence, hard to look at since its like a tank rather than a process-like filter or processional transport through some cells) and so, if you studied it you'd likely look at the in and out and not its holding volume. Apparently, it gets all the blood, fixes bad red cells and/or recovers the bad red cell's hemoglobin and lets that go through but also holds on to its emergency white blood cell troopers until called forth. Signals and discerning doors for the latter are not known (yet).

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not much of a surprise that something like the function of an organ must be obvious for medical science to understand it.

Re:How could the miss that?

[interkin3tic]

I was about to say something like "ha ha, I made a link to the FACS section on that page" when I actually -read- the section on FACS and saw

While many immunologists use this term frequently for all types of sorting and non-sorting applications, it is not a generic term for flow cytometry

And indeed, the science article talks about flow cytometry, not FACS.

I also spotted another error I made, a bit more ridiculous though. I think I should have said the cells are "sprayed through a laser beam," not "sprayed through a laser."

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is a physician (general practitioner --- graduated in the 80's). She says this has been known for ages. Is this supposed to be new?

Re:How could the miss that?

[teh kurisu]

Wiggly ears are quite useful for pulling your glasses back up your nose when they slip down though.

Re:How could the miss that?

[BigDukeSix]

With respect, your assertion about the difficulty of identifying different WBC types in the blood is also incorrect. It's done by looking at the characteristics of the nuclei. Categorizing and counting the different WBC types is now routinely done by automated systems (google "blood analyzer").

Re:How could the miss that?

[plague3106]

Given that the researchers indicate those without a spleen die earlier, I'd say we still need said organs.

Re:How could the miss that?

[plague3106]

IIRC, they also now belive it works in conjuction with the gail bladder to help break down fats.

Re:How could the miss that?

[MedBob]

I did not really dig too deep into it, but I remember that the process of quantifying populations of cells using laser light scatter is the integral process of Flow Cytometry. You can get fancy with antibodies and tagging, but that technology is sometimes imbedded in some of the simpler cell counters like the CellDyn. (I know, I'm dating myself.)

Re:How could the miss that?

[MedBob]

While it might not be difficult to do the task, when's the last time you thought about squeezing a spleen like an orange and thought "I wonder what would happen if I squirted this juice thru my $150000 cell counter....?"

Re:How could the miss that?

[PDX]

In Egypt they used to remove mummy brains because they served no purpose. The heart got its very own jar. The soul was safe as long as the body remained intact. Does anyone know what happened to Walt Disney's frozen head?

Re:How could the miss that?

[Anonymous Coward]

They figured the appendix out a couple years ago, quite a similar function actually.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008102334.htm

Re:How could the miss that?

[HalifaxRage]

His head was cremated with the rest of the body. It was not frozen.

Re:How could the miss that?

[BigDukeSix]

After I got through laughing I realized that I can and will ask the lab to do exactly that on the next shattered spleen I take out word

Re:How could the miss that?

[interkin3tic]

Yes, that profelis page had a few examples, but I was answering the question "Why didn't anyone see this when they looked at spleens under microscopes before now?" If you're not looking specifically at WBCs, the nuclei probably aren't going to jump out at you from tissue sections. If you were running splenic blood through a blood analyzer that measured monocytes I guess that would jump out at you, but that's not what he/she asked.

The paper also asserts that these are undifferentiated monocytes, and the first figure talks about Ly-6C high and Ly-6C low monocytes. They have an example of a Ly-6C high cell and a Ly-6C low monocyte stained (is that H&E staining?). Both look to me indistinguishable. Again, I am not an immunologist, so Ly-6C high or low doesn't ring a bell, and I wouldn't know a monocyte nuclei from a neutrophil nuclei, but it sounds like they're getting better resolution of their cell population with the antibody and flow cytometry method. What the distinction is I don't know, I'd guess without doing the background reading that it might have something to do with differentiation states of monocytes, showing that these weren't monocytes that were turning into dendritic cells or macrophages in the spleen but were actual undifferentiated monocytes. Which sounds to me like something you wouldn't be able to tell by blood analyzer.

Re:How could the miss that?

[BigDukeSix]

The spleen is composed of blood and a thin filigree of tissue that separates this blood from the main circulation. The WBCs are about the only interesting thing on a tissue slice of spleen. I agree with everything you say in the second paragraph. They use flow because it's super sensitive and high throughput- the guy in our lab can sort/count 15 different antigens from a 100 microliter sample. If this discovery turns out to be useful they would tie their antibody to a fluorophore so that a blood analyzer could see it.

so just do like europe does then...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when there's trouble you call the US. Or get a monocyte injection.

Re:so just do like europe does then...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, thanks for waiting until 1941....

Makes Sense

[S7urm]

Anyone ever wonder why the human body seems to have organs that we don't "need". I wonder if studies had ever been done to correlate any other "useless" organs, to early death/higher risk of disease.

You can lose a kidney, gall bladder, tonsils, etc. and they MUST have either had a use at one point or are meant for a very specific, yet seldom used task, i.e the Spleen being a repository for big white blood cells

This is quite interesting!

Re:Makes Sense

[schon]

You can lose a kidney [...] and they MUST have either had a use at one point or are meant for a very specific, yet seldom used task

Umm, I'm thinking you need to drink more fluids.

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

he should add 'brain' to the list, no one needs that anymore.

Re:Makes Sense

[goltzc]

From an evolutionary perspective its easier to leave no longer needed biological features in tact than it is to completely remove them. That is why creatures like snakes and whales have small remnants of legs.

Re:Makes Sense

[schon]

From an evolutionary perspective its easier to leave no longer needed biological features in tact than it is to completely remove them.

And what does that have to do with the kidney? Are you also suggesting that kidneys are "no longer needed"?

Re:Makes Sense

[PotatoFarmer]

If those small remnants of legs impacted reproductive fitness, you can bet they'd be gone. It's not a question of easier or harder to keep vestigial elements, it's a question of whether or not those elements affect the organism's ability to reproduce in relation to its competition.

Re:Makes Sense

[maxume]

You have two kidneys because they are very necessary and prone to failure.

Re:Makes Sense

[Chris Burke]

You can lose a kidney, gall bladder, tonsils, etc. and they MUST have either had a use at one point or are meant for a very specific, yet seldom used task, i.e the Spleen being a repository for big white blood cells

Uh as pointed out kidneys have a rather important, crucial, and well-known use. The reason you can lose one is because the function the kidneys provide is so important that you evolved two so you have a backup.

The gall bladder does not provide a crucial function so it can be removed but this is not without consequence. Especially before your digestive system adjusts, you will have some quite noticeable side effects. Read: You don't want to be very far from a bathroom.

Tonsils are part of the lymphatic system. You can afford to lose them, but you are more likely to get upper respiratory infections.

These have all been known for a long time.

A better example of something thought to be useless which turned out not to be would be the appendix, which was thought to be a holdover from our purely herbivorous ancestors. But then recently they discovered it had another use -- as a reserve pocket of digestive bacteria that can be used to "reboot" the digestive system if something wipes out the microbes in the intestines.

Re:Makes Sense

[nonsequitor]

Kidney's are redundant and vital, you cannot lose both and still live unassisted.
The Gall Bladder is the liver's side kick. It's a bile reservoir, the liver produces bile, and if you lose it, you'll have no fun eating for a while since your liver needs time to adjust to producing more bile.
The tonsils are part of the lymphatic system of the body, and if you lose them, the body can make do.

Lymph nodes are found all through the body, and act as filters or traps for foreign particles. They contain white blood cells that use oxygen to process. Thus they are important in the proper functioning of the immune system.

(from Wikipedia)
The only vestigal organ I can think of is the appendix, now that the spleen has had its purpose explained more fully.

Re:Makes Sense

[S7urm]

I understand that, my point is that our bodies have some tendency to have organs perform functions that in today's world are overkill, i.e the fact that you can survive with only ONE kidney.

I wasn't implying I didn't understand their function, or that I thought I could EASILY live without one of my kidneys, however I was commenting on how I find it interesting, that due in large part to modern medicine, and our diets, we can function, in some cases thrive, while missing entire ORGANS, I think that is "neat" and also makes me curious on how contaminated things like our blood and urine must have been to require 2 kidneys and other "non-essential" organs

Re:Makes Sense

[pixelpusher220]

it can also be that an unrelated 'positive' adaptation kept them in the gene pool. If they have a negative effect on reproduction/survival they will disappear, but if there's a competing positive effect it can override the negative emphasis.

Re:Makes Sense

[Fallen Kell]

You can lose "a" kidney because you have 2. If you lose both, you are dead... We have two because without one we are dead, and they are in a fairly unprotected part of the human body, so our ancestors/predictors who developed two tended to survive to procreate better then the ones without two.

The tonsils are part of the lymphatic system and also help our immune system (like the spleen) mainly by being the mechanism where the ducts for our immune system to access the upper repritory system (i.e. mouth, throat). You can "live" without tosils, but you are more prone to respritory infections, which is manageable in this post-penicillin medical world.

The gall bladder is actually something that is very important to the digestive system. It isn't a "vital" organ (again, meaning you can live without it), but fatty foods will possibly not be handled properly by the body. The gall bladder stores up and concentrates the bile (produced in your kidneys) and regulates when to release it into the digestive tract properly. Without the gall bladder, the kidneys are directly releasing the gall into the tract whenever the kidney produces it. The trigger to produce bile is fat in the blood stream, which happens by absorption in the digestive tract as well as from other sources as well. One possible major drawback to not having a gall bladder is that you might be running to the closest bathroom almost immediately after eating a meal which contained lots of fats because your kidney just dumped a ton of bile into your digestive tract and you have automatic diarrhea from that much gall.

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

You can add foreskin to that list.

Re:Makes Sense

[Chris Burke]

or that I thought I could EASILY live without one of my kidneys

You can live pretty easily without one of your kidneys, as long as the other one is working fine. But therein lies the rub...

how contaminated things like our blood and urine must have been to require 2 kidneys and other "non-essential" organs

Not necessarily any more. But since you'll die quickly if you have no working kidneys, and they are prone to failure, it made evolutionary "sense" to have a backup.

Re:Makes Sense

[Fallen Kell]

Sorry, in my gall bladder paragraph, I meant to say liver, not kidney as to where the bile is produced. I still had kidneys on my mind from earlier in the post.

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know that extra bit about the appendix. That's pretty cool. I wonder if there are any people who are born without appendices, like those people who are missing some or all of their wisdom teeth, or if this secondary appendix use is beneficial enough to make that an unlikely adaptation.

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

omg lol me 2

Re:Makes Sense

[hedwards]

Technically speaking, the appendix isn't vestigial, it's whole purpose is to be teeming with bacteria. Basically a safe guard to make it less likely that you die should your intestines be depopulated of bacteria. Which is also why appendicitis is one of the few things that's significantly less common in the developing world than the developed world.

Re:Makes Sense

[shentino]

Having two kidneys is the biological version of RAID 1

Re:Makes Sense

[Chris Burke]

Yeah that one is a recent discovery. I think I read about it on /. last year, and the WP gives links to research papers written between 2004 and 2007.

The WP article also says some people have congenital defects where they don't have an appendix. If their theory is right, then I'm guessing it's like a lot of other things: Not vital to survival like a major organ, but still advantageous enough that having one is fairly strongly selected for.

Re:Makes Sense

[Grishnakh]

Tonsils are part of the lymphatic system. You can afford to lose them, but you are more likely to get upper respiratory infections.

Great, that probably explains why I've always had sinus trouble. I had my tonsils (and adenoids) removed as an infant, for no reason at all.

Re:Makes Sense

[Chris Burke]

Great, that probably explains why I've always had sinus trouble. I had my tonsils (and adenoids) removed as an infant, for no reason at all.

Yeah, that was something they used to remove whenever they found the excuse as a preventative. Up until recently they did the same thing with the appendix. If they were already cutting you open, they'd remove the appendix 'just in case'. Apparently they don't do this as much anymore because they have found the appendix tissue makes a useful substitute for other things so now they keep it around 'just in case'. Now that they think it has an actual use, then they probably won't remove it at all unless it's infected (or whatever they're going to use the appendix for, which apparently includes replacement bladders, is more important).

If it makes you feel any better, I still have my tonsils and have tons of sinus problems anyway. :)

Re:Makes Sense

[CrackedButter]

I would argue the heart is more important and therefore we should have 2 of them instead. Since most people die of heart failure than kidney failure.

Re:Makes Sense

[sqrt(2)]

Some people even have more than two. My grandfather has a third, smaller kidney that is fully functional.

Re:Makes Sense

[Chris Burke]

I would argue the heart is more important and therefore we should have 2 of them instead. Since most people die of heart failure than kidney failure.

Sure the heart is more important. But I should think that the heart is an "expensive" organ and so any benefit has to be weighed against that. Plus I see a lot of practical engineering problems in trying to hook up two hearts in parallel. It may be that once you've already evolved an organ as strong and robust as the heart that it's too big a move from the local maximum to get to a two-heart situation, vs simply continuing to evolve the single heart towards more robustness.

One the other hand, we have two lungs. But one diaphragm.

Re:Makes Sense

[The_mad_linguist]

Well, duh. We have backup kidneys, but no backup hearts. Of course more people die from heart failure.

Re:Makes Sense

[gzunk]

Yeah, I had my gall bladder removed a couple of years ago. I have to remember to be careful when I fart...

Re:Makes Sense

[fernandolbastos]

Uh as pointed out kidneys have a rather important, crucial, and well-known use. The reason you can lose one is because the function the kidneys provide is so important that you evolved two so you have a backup.

so, kinda like klingon's redundant organs?
Nature sure is wise...

Re:Makes Sense

[Overzeetop]

Seems reasonable from an evolutionary standpoint, I suppose. Better function comes from two kidneys, but two hearts are probably more prone to cause problems. Not sure how often a single kidney fails in the under-30 crowd, but with heart failure so rare during prime reproductive years there would be little advantage to having two even presuming that they worked in unison.

Re:Makes Sense

[SBrach]

Is it common for people to have a single kidney fail and survive without advanced medical treatment? I'm just trying to wrap my head around the idea that there was enough evolutionary pressure on humans with 2 kidneys surviving to reproducing age over humans with a single kidney doing the same.

Re:Makes Sense

[Chris Burke]

I gotta say, that's pretty awesome.

Re:Makes Sense

[Midnight Thunder]

From an evolutionary perspective its easier to leave no longer needed biological features in tact than it is to completely remove them. That is why creatures like snakes and whales have small remnants of legs.

In many ways the DNA doesn't drop the coding and instead simply expresses a characteristic less. There might subtle behaviour where while something doesn't seem to be used, something else in the DNA coding depends on it being there in some form. In computer terms this would be like a jump instruction only being valid if the offset of the destination doesn't change (dropping a function could mean corruption elsewhere), and instead it is simpler simply to change the value of a variable to make that block used less.

Re:Makes Sense

[CorporateSuit]

Quaid, start the reactor. Save Mars!

Re:Makes Sense

[taucross]

Snakes and whales had legs once?

Re:Makes Sense

[taucross]

This is implicative of nature's broader plan, in that further down the track we will evolve our environment in order to replace the need for our entire bodies.

Re:Makes Sense

[maxume]

It isn't just humans, it is all vertebrates and some invertebrates.

It looks like direct physical damage and a kidney stone blocking one kidney would be the most common causes of one kidney failing.

Re:Makes Sense

[ejasons]

Some people even have more than two. My grandfather has a third, smaller kidney that is fully functional.

Yeah, that tends to happen in the South... :-)

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

You can lose a kidney, gall bladder, tonsils, etc. and they MUST have either had a use at one point or are meant for a very specific, yet seldom used task, i.e the Spleen being a repository for big white blood cells

Uh as pointed out kidneys have a rather important, crucial, and well-known use. The reason you can lose one is because the function the kidneys provide is so important that you evolved two so you have a backup.

The gall bladder does not provide a crucial function so it can be removed but this is not without consequence. Especially before your digestive system adjusts, you will have some quite noticeable side effects. Read: You don't want to be very far from a bathroom.

Tonsils are part of the lymphatic system. You can afford to lose them, but you are more likely to get upper respiratory infections.

These have all been known for a long time.

A better example of something thought to be useless which turned out not to be would be the appendix, which was thought to be a holdover from our purely herbivorous ancestors. But then recently they discovered it had another use -- as a reserve pocket of digestive bacteria that can be used to "reboot" the digestive system if something wipes out the microbes in the intestines.

I have never heard a night of white castle hamburgers described as a digestive system reboot before

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a damn good analogy.

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

[The reason you can lose one is because the function the kidneys provide is so important that you evolved two so you have a backup.]

Thought evolution was about randomness.... not "importantness".... if being important means need backup (of course trying to explain randomness using logical design might lead one to insanity while at the same time trying to explain there can't possibility be a designer because of the randomness....), anyhow, why not two hearts, two brains, or two mouths (after all, we gotta eat)...

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

You can lose the whole penis and still survive, so the question isn't so much what survival advantage a foreskin provides as what reproductive advantage it provides.

Re:Makes Sense

[QuoteMstr]

Why not...

Two hearts? difficult to coordinate two hearts. Also, chances are that if damage is extreme enough to destroy the heart, chances are that a backup heart wouldn't significantly boost the chance of reproductive success after that point. (Heart disease is irrelevant as it occurs after reproductive age.)

Two brains? first of all, it'd be impossible to coordinate the actions of two brains. Second, the brain already has quite a bit of internal redundancy. Sufficiently young children with entire hemispheres removed can grow up normally. People who suffer multiple concussions can still switch in spare circuitry and return to normal capacity (at least until later in life.)

Two mouths? Where would you put the second one, and what structure would you develop into it? Evolution doesn't allow an organism to develop a structure wherever it would be convenient, but only to modify existing ones to suit a new purpose.

The kidney is a simple organ prone to infection and mounted in a vulnerable position in the body. I can definitely see how having a spare would increase the odds of reproductive success at minimum cost.

Re:Makes Sense

[steelfood]

Considering that kidney-like structures are present in fish and likely present in primitive fish as well, I think it's the other way around. It's far more likely that because we have two kidneys, we never evolved the ability to continue to live without it.

Re:Makes Sense

[BluBrick]

Supporting evidence was not requested.

Re:Makes Sense

[dissy]

And what does that have to do with the kidney? Are you also suggesting that kidneys are "no longer needed"?

Whew, thank science! Nothing is quite as annoying as having to stop for a bathroom break in the middle of a coding or gaming season. I am relived to see we no longer need kidneys! :D

Is there anything science can't do?

Re:Makes Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

ENGAGE TROLLING

How 'bout them foreskins?

Re:Makes Sense

[Chris Burke]

Thought evolution was about randomness.... not "importantness".... if being important means need backup (of course trying to explain randomness using logical design might lead one to insanity while at the same time trying to explain there can't possibility be a designer because of the randomness....), anyhow, why not two hearts, two brains, or two mouths (after all, we gotta eat)...

You IDers are so cute with your simple misconceptions. You've heard of "natural selection" right? :)

Mutations are random, and in sexual reproduction which genes from each parent get passed on to the offspring are random. Which changes provide benefit to the organism and make it more likely to survive to mate and pass on its genes are decidedly not random -- excepting that survival always involves an element of chance. A random change that damages kidney function would result in a weaker organism and would be strongly selected against. A random change that improved kidney function, or a mutation that resulted in two kidneys, would enhance the survival potential of that organism and would be strongly selected for. So you have two random changes, but one is propagated and the other isn't because of "importantness", and there's no insanity-inducing contradiction there at all.

Re:Makes Sense

[Chris Burke]

How 'bout them foreskins?

Personally I don't think the Foreskins have a chance against my fav team, the New England Labia.

What we don't know

[MozeeToby]

Somehow, I always find it amazing the things we don't know about. We know the makeup of the universe down to a couple of percentage points. We know what subatomic particles do what, and have theories to predict other ones that have virtually no effect on our universe. We know when the sun is going to run out of fuel and have pretty accurate theories about what will happen to the solar system when that happens.

Yet, somehow, we don't know the basic workings of our own bodies.

Re:What we don't know

[T Murphy]

Yet, somehow, we don't know the basic workings of our own bodies.

Proof that God is male- he ignores the concept of an instruction manual.

Re:What we don't know

[rho]

Little advertised fact about science is nearly everything should be appended with "... according to current models," but isn't. Because then it sounds like scientists don't know anything. Which they do know something, at least according to current models, but the truth is complicated and sells poorly.

Unfortunately, not enough scientists on the TV are this honest. Or they're not allowed to be. Whichever, it makes them look like chumps when they assuredly aren't.

Re:What we don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow, I always find it amazing the things we don't know about. We think we know the makeup of the universe down to a couple of percentage points. We think we know what subatomic particles do what, and have theories to predict other ones that have theoretically virtually no effect on our universe. We think know when the sun is going to run out of fuel and have theoretically pretty accurate theories about what will happen to the solar system when that happens.

Yet, somehow, we don't know the basic workings of our own bodies.

Pardon the triteness, but "FTFY". We have no perception of anything on a cosmic scale, and we learn new information about what we think are the simplest things all the time.

Re:What we don't know

[jollyreaper]

Somehow, I always find it amazing the things we don't know about. We know the makeup of the universe down to a couple of percentage points. We know what subatomic particles do what, and have theories to predict other ones that have virtually no effect on our universe. We know when the sun is going to run out of fuel and have pretty accurate theories about what will happen to the solar system when that happens.

Yet, somehow, we don't know the basic workings of our own bodies.

At first blush I'd want to question our supposed knowledge of those other heady areas of knowledge. Of course, that's not entirely the case. I'm partial to the book a Short History of Nearly Everything. If nothing else, it will help you appreciate how we came by certain bits of knowledge while missing other things.

Re:What we don't know

[steelfood]

What we know are generalities. We know the Earth revolves around the sun and the moon revolves around the Earth via a mechanism called "gravity." Our knowledge of specifics is incomplete, to unstate the matter. We don't know what "gravity" actually is.

This is a good example of why, when people scoff at alternative medicine as junk because there's no scientific proof, I can only think that they are short-sighted and closed-minded. Certainly, there's a lot of mystical fluff, and it's generally less reliable than scientific medicine (but it's equally as reliable in the hands of a skilled practitioner). But there's a whole body of real, actual knowledge that's being marginalized, and for what? Ignorance. Instead of saying, "we don't know how it works, but we accept that there's something behind it," people say, "we don't know how it works, so it must not work."

I apologize for ranting, but it always bothers me when certain knowledge is hailed as being "new" and a "discovery" or "breakthrough" when it's been around for centuries, just not in the accepted, scientific form.

Re:What we don't know

[Sannish]

Yet, somehow, we don't know the basic workings of our own bodies.

Part of the problem is that it is very hard to do systematic tests on people the same way it is done in the other branches of science. Slightly adjusting an experiment that involves semi-conductor impurities is easier then having someone's spleen removed (or added) bit by bit to examine the effects.

Re:What we don't know

[sakdoctor]

Scientific method. You've completely failed to understand it.

Now GTFO.

Re:What we don't know

[davester666]

There's a MANUAL?

Re:What we don't know

[Hurricane78]

Because frankly, the human body is a way more complex system than the sun. And we can predict one, two, or *mayybe* three elementary particles. But then it becomes next to impossible.
Our bodies in all its functions, are insanely complex. As complex as a continent perhaps. Or at least as a city. (If you know how to translate the complexity.)

Also, you always have to watch where the money is in. It's certainly not as much in healing people as in selling lies in pill form.

Re:What we don't know

[cshay]

Its because the human organism is designed as if it were software coded with a billion tiny hacks done in self modifying code, layered year upon year by piss poor code monkeys from India. If the human is still able to keep living and replicating despite the hacks, the hack is pronounced a success, and the next software release cycle is begun. Sometimes unforseen coincidences cause the code to crash, and the human to die, and some times they lead to big jumps in human capabilities. But most of the time, the hack does nothing excecpt for add one more layer of obfuscation about how the whole system really works.

Considering how random and crazy the "design" is, being simply a product of random GOTOs, forks, etc, with the only requirement being that it pass the test of selective evolution pressures over eons, it's not suprising whatsoever that it is difficult to understand this design...

Re:What we don't know

[Fallen Seraph]

What we know are generalities. We know the Earth revolves around the sun and the moon revolves around the Earth via a mechanism called "gravity." Our knowledge of specifics is incomplete, to unstate the matter. We don't know what "gravity" actually is.

Ummm, yeah, we kinda do. That's what General Relativity is all about, actually. Gravity is a product of the geometry of the universe (or more specifically, space-time) distorting around the presence of mass. This distortion can also occur in the presence of radiation and energy, due to mass-energy equivalency, as well as distorting due to linear momentum as well. It's really a remarkably elegant theory in my opinion, and it works fairly well, though we do encounter problems on the sub-atomic level, but that's why the unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity is such a lofty goal. It'd give us a model of the universe from the smallest components of matter, to the shape of the universe itself. Just because you don't understand, or bother to research something, doesn't make it an unknown. That being said, this is the working model for our concept of gravity. We may find it incomplete in the future, but it's held up remarkably well to experimental evidence thus far, despite many of it's predictions being counter-intuitive. So we know much more than "a few details" but we're not certain yet, because we're still learning

This is a good example of why, when people scoff at alternative medicine as junk because there's no scientific proof, I can only think that they are short-sighted and closed-minded. Certainly, there's a lot of mystical fluff, and it's generally less reliable than scientific medicine (but it's equally as reliable in the hands of a skilled practitioner).

I have to stop you there. No, no it is not. The VAST majority of alternative doctors are swindlers and con-artists, or simply ignorant. Alternative medicines are also commonly psychosomatic, which is where many of the claims of "It works!" originate from. That being said, many modern medicines come from nature, and if the FDA wasn't worthless, they'd regulate the supplement and alternative medicine markets, instead of failing to even regulate just the pharmaceutical market. The problem with alternative medicines though is when people turn down medical care or treatment in favor of alternatives. This can get people killed, or exacerbate their conditions.

Re:What we don't know

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yet, somehow, we don't know the basic workings of our own bodies.

If we didn't already know quite a bit about the basic workings of our own bodies, we wouldn't have been able to make the discovery discussed in TFA.

Be careful not to confuse "we don't know everything," which is clearly true, with "we don't know anything," which is a favorite propaganda technique of anti-science fanatics (and usually followed up with "... except for what my personal fairy tale tells us, which of course Explains Everything.")

Re:What we don't know

[Burning1]

Proof that god is a project manager. He wants us to develop instructions, but doesn't give us access to any engineering resources.

Re:What we don't know

[Mr. Slippery]

The VAST majority of alternative doctors are swindlers and con-artists, or simply ignorant.

Much of mainstream modern medicine is not evidence-based -- i.e., is based on ignorance. And for that which claims evidence, a lot of it is simply made up,

Alternative medicines are also commonly psychosomatic, which is where many of the claims of "It works!" originate from.

The fact that modern mainstream medicine remains rooted in a sort of Cartesian dualism that divides a human into "brain" and "everything else", is one of its greatest failings. The way that alternative medical systems like Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda inherently address psychosomatic issues is their strength.

The problem with alternative medicines though is when people turn down medical care or treatment in favor of alternatives. This can get people killed, or exacerbate their conditions.

Indeed it can, and and reputable CAM practitioner will advise a patient to not discontinue their medical care, and will refer a patient to a physician if there is evidence of a serious condition. As a shiatsu therapist, I take a more detailed health history than many physicians, and I've got my hands all over someone for an hour; several times I've noticed something that concerned me and suggested to folks, "You ought to see your doctor about that."

It's too bad that few physicians will do the same, that you almost never hear a surgeon say "Before we cut you open and see if we can do anything about that knee pain (and if we canit may well be a placebo effect, maybe you should try seeing an acupuncturist -- after all, we can always cut you open later."

Re:What we don't know

[OneTrueGod]

You were supposed to write one. Where is it? Get busy, my son.

Re:What we don't know

[Chosen Reject]

Of course there is. Most of us on slashdot have a stick shift.

Re:What we don't know

[HeronBlademaster]

Alternative medicines are also commonly psychosomatic, which is where many of the claims of "It works!" originate from.

Just because it's psychosomatic doesn't mean we should get rid of it. Personally, I'd rather feel good than feel bad, even if it's just in my head.

However, I agree with you:

The problem with alternative medicines though is when people turn down medical care or treatment in favor of alternatives. This can get people killed, or exacerbate their conditions.

People should go to "real" (non-alternative) doctors first, and then go to alternative medicine when doctors can't figure it out. In my case, I've spent a year (and thousands of dollars that the insurance company won't cover) trying to track down the cause of my constant nausea; last month my doctor said "I dunno. Try acupuncture?" I think that's a valid course of action (though I can't seem to remember to make the appointment).

Re:What we don't know

[escay]

There's a MANUAL?

There's a GOD?

Re:What we don't know

[Attila Dimedici]

Proof that God is male- he ignores the concept of an instruction manual.

There is a manual, but since it tells people not to do things they want to do they say it is inaccurate, contradictory, and ambiguous.

Re:What we don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

God is the grown man's Santa Claus. Sorry to break it to you like that.

Re:What we don't know

[N1ck0]

Dude what do you expect humans are still in an alpha release...If you want to know how it works your just going to have to read the code. They run pretty crappie because they are mainly a few hacks wrapped around bits and pieces cobbled together from other projects. The betas and the QA lab are still billions of years away. But trust me the new interface that's coming out is going to be sweet.

Unfortunately at the next major release they wipe the dev systems to clean out any faulty data. Sorry.

Re:What we don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude what do you expect humans are still in an alpha release...If you want to know how it works your just going to have to read the code..

Free and Open Source. A copy of the source was distributed with the executable. Also if you make changes and distribute binary copies you must include the source code or a written offer to so, at no other cost other then the price of media, valid for at least 3 years.

Re:What we don't know

[taucross]

Our bodies in all its functions, are insanely complex. As complex as a continent perhaps. Or at least as a city.

I'll go you one further and say that our bodies are as complex as the entire universe because in their senses, they contain it.

Re:What we don't know

[Rich0]

I have to agree with this one. Sure, the body is complex, but so are lots of other things. I think the real problem is that you simply can't experiment on it.

People argue about the latest fad diets. Well, if you wanted to use the scientific method the solution would be simple - lock 10000 randomly selected people into individual cages and assign them to various diets. They would be fed a steady diet of whatever you want to treat, and you would measure the health outcomes. Ideally you'd make those 10,000 people identical twins (not outside the realm of possibility today - just start dicing early blastulas). Or, at the very least start breeding cousins to get some strains that breed true.

Want to know what the spleen does? Take those 10,000 people and start removing spleens at various points of development. Expose groups to various maladies (diseases, feed them carcinogens, stuff them with pasta until they have heart disease and diabetes, etc). Sacrifice a few at various points and see how things are going.

Of course, doing any of that would be horrible for any number of reasons, so we rely on fairly poorly controlled trials and get glimmers of answers. Despite the HUGE amount of spending on medical research we know more about mice...

Re:What we don't know

[db32]

scientists on the TV

What scientists on TV? I suspect that if there were more scientists on TV we wouldn't be having half of the anti-intellectualism fueled debates that rage these days.

Re:What we don't know

[drawfour]

If you haven't already, go to a neck doctor and have them look for pressure on your spinal cord. Your spine being out of place in that area can cause all sorts of side effects, one of them being constant nausea.

IANAD, this is not medical advice, etc...

Re:What we don't know

[hclewk]

We know when the sun is going to run out of fuel and have pretty accurate theories about what will happen to the solar system when that happens.

Are you from the future?

Re:What we don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

> We know the makeup of the universe down to a couple of percentage points.

Sometimes I wonder if all we see is a tiny, tiny fraction of what might be.

Re:What we don't know

[dissy]

What scientists on TV? I suspect that if there were more scientists on TV we wouldn't be having half of the anti-intellectualism fueled debates that rage these days.

No u!!1

*cough*

Sorry, I meant to say, Brian Cox seems to have done quite a few documentaries on BBC and Horizon. At least pertaining to theoretical physics.

But yes, while there have been some other big scientists that have had appearances in documentaries, that is about the extent of real science on TV.
The only other thing I can think of is Myth Busters, and that is sad. Not that it is a bad show or anything, just that it actually seems to fall in the list of real science at all because nothing else even comes to mind...

Re:What we don't know

[dissy]

What we know are generalities. We know the Earth revolves around the sun and the moon revolves around the Earth via a mechanism called "gravity." Our knowledge of specifics is incomplete, to unstate the matter. We don't know what "gravity" actually is.

A good computer analogy for our level of understanding gravity.

Knowing the inputs a person makes to a program, we can, with pretty damn close to 100% (But not quite 100% in all cases) predict exactly what the output of the program will be.

However, we do not have the source code to see how the program Actually functions. We basically 'black box' reverse engineered it.
Not only do we not know how the software works, but we don't understand the hardware it is running on, nor why the entire system and program exist in the first place to be able to make output that we can predict.

Re:What we don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

"We know the makeup of the universe down to a couple of percentage points. We know what subatomic particles do what, and have theories to predict other ones that have virtually no effect on our universe."

I don't think you know what you are talking about. We may know with reasonable certainty how the sun will behave until it died in about 4 billion years, but we have no idea when that will happen. The error on that 4 billion years is rather large. Furthermore, there is only guesses what will happen in the mean time.

Your entire analogy is like saying "We know that exact probabilities of people getting cancer and their life expectancy to within few years. Yet we don't even know the basic workings of gravity."

The statement above is just as accurate as your analogy.

PS. Spleen is also vital so you don't get diabetes. People with removed spleens almost always get diabetes 4 years after spleen removal as the islet cells are not replaced (they originate in spleen). So, spleen does more than what is said in TFA.

Re:What we don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

This is often done because pseudoscientists and cranks are always 100% positive of what they believe. Always; whether talking to the public or not. It's hard to combat someone that certain and assertive with words like "may" and "probably" and "according to the available data".

Re:What we don't know

[Fallen Seraph]

Your analogy is flawed for two reasons:

First of all, all of science is 'black box reverse engineering' nature, practically by definition. Mapping the 'inputs' and 'outputs' is the whole experimentation and observation segment of it.

And second, you imply that we only know how to calculate and predict gravity, but lack understanding of how or why it works. Again, this is simply untrue. As I pointed out in my reply to the parent, Einstein's theory of General Relativity is just that, an explanation of what gravity is, and why it behaves the way it does. It works mathematically, makes several observable and testable predictions, many of which are counter-intuitive, but which have proven to be correct, and is amazingly elegant once you understand it to boot. It only begins to fail on the sub-atomic level, but frankly, all sorts of rules fail at that level, and we're really only beginning to understand how the rules change there.

The cliff notes version of what I wrote above is that gravity is a byproduct of the way the universe (or more accurately, space-time), distorts when in the presence of matter/radiation. An analogy which just came to me would be as follows:
Imagine you're watching the surface of a still pond, and you throw a large stone into it. The ripples this creates distorts the shape of the pond's surface, from a flat surface to a wave form, and this distortion on the surface makes objects floating in the water moves as the surface of the water changes shape. Gravity is very similar, but the shape is different and causes objects to move toward the disturbance, rather than move up and down. In fact, if you want to imagine a black hole, just imagine opening the stopper in your bathtub. The water, and the objects in the water, swirl around the drain, in part, because the geometry of the water is altered into a funnel shape, and changing the shape of the surface you're on changes the definition of a straight line (a straight line on a sphere is in fact curved, for instance).

This is what gravity is.

Re:What we don't know

[teh kurisu]

Patrick Moore is somehow still on the go, presenting The Sky At Night along with Chris Lintott. There are usually a good few astronomers and astrophysicists on as guests.

Richard Dawkins made an appearance, albeit brief, on Inside Nature's Giants.

Brian Cox has already been mentioned... I can't think of any more.

It really annoys me that the vast majority of documentaries these days are people-oriented, at the expense of science documentaries. I'm not saying that women are ruining the BBC, but I'm certainly thinking it loudly...

Re:What we don't know

[T Murphy]

I'll second that book reccommendation. It is entertainingly written and very informative. I've read it twice and listened to the book on tape. Not only do you learn how we came to know what we know, but you learn more about the people invovled. For example, few people know Newton performed an experiment where he simply stared into the sun as long as he possibly could. Science textbooks rarely do justice to how interesting science really can be.

Re:What we don't know

[Tangent128]

But why does mass cause these ripples in the first place?

Re:What we don't know

[intheshelter]

My personal belief is we don't know as much about those things as we think we do. This phenomenon has been seen time and time again for hundreds if not thousands of years. Mankind is sure it is so enlightened throughout the ages only to find out we weren't as smart as we thought.

HIV/AIDS

[DoofusOfDeath]

So what happens when someone has AIDS?

Are those monocytes sitting around doing nothing? Are they depleted? Something else?

Re:HIV/AIDS

[Kligat]

AIDS is like a zombie virus, but for white blood cells, DoofusOfDeath. Unlike most viruses, it doesn't spread when the white blood cell explodes. The zombie white blood cell piles onto the healthy one and turns it into another of the infected. For more information, please direct the creators of Osmosis Jones to create an R-rated sequel.

Re:HIV/AIDS

[Midnight Thunder]

HIV causes AIDS, but only the majority of cases (there are some cases where AIDS does not develop, but the people just end up being carriers). AIDS (Acquired immune deficiency syndrome) is essentially a disease that effects your immune system, so for this reason your body has a harder time dealing with all the other infections that eventually take it down.

No problem.

[T Murphy]

However, some studies have suggested an enhanced risk of early death for those who have undergone splenectomies

I don't see how this is a problem. This is a new discovery- those old spleens didn't have this functionality yet.

Re:No problem.

[napalmfires]

what idiot modded this insightful? it's a joke!

Re:No problem.

[spydabyte]

However, some studies have suggested an enhanced risk of early death for those who have undergone splenectomies

No, it's the possibility of some tests that think this may lead to a slightly larger possibility of DEATH to a very small percentage of the human population. Very concrete facts. This is a major problem. A matter of national security.

Re:No problem.

[oneirophrenos]

what idiot modded this insightful? it's a joke!

Modding jokes insightful is a subtle way for the mods to reward the poster of a clever joke with karma.

Re:No problem.

[inamorty]

Either an idiot with a mod point affliction or, more likely, one with an urge to share karma.

Re:No problem.

[i_liek_turtles]

It's official: Steve Jobs is God.

Re:No problem.

[T Murphy]

I appreciate the karma but tbh I'd rather people just mod me funny. I don't know if a +5 insightful will take mod points from people trying to shift it to funny (thus wasting mod points), but at the very least it is an unnecessary practice. Yes, I have had my fair share of jokes modded troll, but funny could be modified to "pardon" negative karma without giving positive karma. If there is a problem funny should be changed, not avoided. Most of my +5 comments are jokes, but I don't mind earning my karma the hard way.

Re:No problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it's a new feature, but mother nature does back porting very quickly.

Re:No problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Modding jokes insightful is a subtle way for the mods to reward the poster of a clever joke with karma.

It's not subtle. It's simply marketing astroturfers using jokes to get mod points to mod up/down posts they like/dislike. And they need a lot of mod points to spam everywhere.

Mod funny, not insightful, as appropriate, and ignore attempts to manipulate.

original article

[CrazeeCracker]

link to what I believe is the original article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/325/5940/612

...needs a Science subscription though :\

Splenectomy Patients

[sp1nl0ck]

My Dad had his spleen removed when he was a kid, and a number of years ago (10) was told he had to carry a card around with him that said something like

"I have had my spleen removed and may be subject to overwhelming infection."

Seriously. We told him he shouldn't use that as his opening gambit when talking to girls :-)

Re:Splenectomy Patients

[Em Emalb]

Change two letters in that sentence and he might get some play:

"I have had my spleen removed and may be subject to overwhelming affection."

C'mon, that's ancient Pimp right there.

(Or just really really cheesy and creepy, I haven't figured it out yet.)

Re:Splenectomy Patients

[Tynin]

Exactly, my sister-in-law had her spleen removed when she was 9 as it was enlarging itself beyond the ability for her body to continue to house it. One of the first things they told the family was that she would be more likely to suffer from infections. Perhaps I am not understanding the meaning of this "major new function" as it seemed like we already understood this. Can anyone clear this up?

Re:Splenectomy Patients

[Anonymous Coward]

My father had his spleen removed just before radiation therapy to treat Hodgekin's Disease. He died a few years later after a heart attack, but it wasn't really the heart attack that killed him.

At the time of the attack, he had a throat infection that just wouln't go away. The ER doctors intubated him, and this pushed the infection down into his lungs (or at least down his trachea and much closer to his lungs). His body was unable to fight off the lung infection, and this is what actually killed him.

Not data, just another anecdote.

Re:Splenectomy Patients

[Choad Namath]

I had my spleen removed 10 years ago, but I was just told to get yearly flu shots and to get a pneumonia shot every 5 years.

Re:Splenectomy Patients

[hedwards]

Well for one thing, you don't have to know what a spleen does to notice a statistical increase in serious complications from infection. Yeah, yeah, correlation... causation, but the principle of erring on the side of caution frequently comes into play in medicine.

Re:Splenectomy Patients

[Tynin]

Thanks for clearing this up, it just didn't sit well with me that this was being called a major new function, when we already knew of the function, just not the mechanics behind how it supports the immune system. After all my sister-in-law had this operation almost 20 years ago now and they knew any further surgeries or injuries she has in life were a major risk due to an infection.

I guess I assumed that if we knew removing it could cause bad infections should any infection arise, that it shouldn't be that hard to further track down what in the spleen was facilitating our recovery, at least over almost 20 years. But I imagine I assumed that because I'm rather ignorant to what goes on with human biology research.

Awesome...

[Em Emalb]

I knew it! The spleen is the home of Ninjas. That's why you never see a Ninja...they live in your spleen.

i would imagine why the spleen seems useless

[circletimessquare]

is because in modern life, we just don't get beat up that much

that is, early, more primitive man was probably getting the shit kicked out of him a lot, from the environment, and other humans. such that you needed a repository of monocytes at the ready for immediate damage repair a lot more often, as a survival advantage

civilized more sedentary life, meanwhile, with all of the medical support that affords, means we could not easily see why removing the spleen had any jeopardy attached to it

we can survive just fine, even without this organic built-in trauma preparedness kit, as long as we have trauma inpatient units at the hospital close by

Re:i would imagine why the spleen seems useless

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you're not invading countries, you don't really need a standing army? Sounds like heresy...

Re:i would imagine why the spleen seems useless

[BJ_Covert_Action]

With the way things tend to be handled in trauma units at hospitals (at least the ones I've been to) I will fight for my built in organic trauma preparedness kit any day of the week.....

And in Related News..

[AtomicSnarl]

Lovely! This goes along with a recent discovery that the Appendix serves as reservoir for the gastrointestinal system's supply of friendly microbes which help digest our food.

No news yet on earlobes.

Re:And in Related News..

[The_mad_linguist]

Earlobes serve as a reservoir for gems and precious metals, in case of emergency financial distress.

Re:And in Related News..

[Em Emalb]

Paul Reubens serves as a reservoir for SBDs:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/584770/mystery_men_the_spleen/

Re:And in Related News..

[twosat]

I read somewhere that sailors used to have gold earrings so that if they drowned at sea and were washed up on land their discoverers would take their earrings for payment and give them a decent burial.

Venting your spleen

[MosesJones]

Now becomes a positive phrase aimed at solving your problems

"Had a really tough problem today but I vented my spleen and just worked it out"

Raise an army ab initio for every war?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

"The parallel in military terms is a standing army," said Matthias Nahrendorf, an author of the report. "You don't want to have to recruit an entire fighting force from the ground up every time you need it."

One of the first thing the US Government did after defeating England in the Revolutionary War is to dismantle and demobilize the army. Curiously most Americans today who support strict and original interpretation of the constitution are also enthusiastic support of military adventurism. Just saying.

Male Nipples...

[swanzilla]

...maybe they'll figure these things out next.

Re:Male Nipples...

[KermodeBear]

They're for male lactation.

Re:Male Nipples...

[Mursk]

Just in case. Just in case.

Re:Male Nipples...

[Shin-LaC]

I instinctively braced myself before clicking, but fortunately, there are no pictures on that page. I'm surprised some wikifreak hasn't put up a picture of his own manboobs lactating yet. I'm sure it's just a matter of time, though.

Re:Male Nipples...

[Opyros]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-do-men-have-nipples

Center of the Immune System

[lobiusmoop]

Funny, I always believed that the spleen was the center of the immune system. I got lymphoma (the AIDS of cancers) ten years ago, and I gave thanks that it was caught early enough that I didn't need to have my spleen removed, only a tumorous lymph node in my neck, followed by some radiotherapy.

Re:Center of the Immune System

[93,000]

My father had his spleen removed around 20 years ago due to cancer. The spleen itself didn't have cancer, but they took it out as a precaution. He died of complications from heart disease this year at age 65. It's only one instance, of course, but it supports what I've read about this so far.

Glad you got to keep yours.. :)

Re:Center of the Immune System

[JayAitch]

Good for you that you beat it early. Just curious what led to you getting checked out in the first place to find it early.

Re:Center of the Immune System

[lobiusmoop]

It was the classic 'Oh shit, I've found a lump' moment. Actually it was 2 lumps, one in my neck, which I foolishly ignored for a month, then a lump in my armpit, on the same side, which combined with a bad night-sweat (waking up to soaked sheets at 4am) got the alarm bells going. (These are classic Hodgkins Lymphoma signs, it turns out).
  The nasty thing about Hodgkins is that it is most prevalent in men in their mid 20's, just the age when you are least expecting out-of-the-blue health problems usually. It's pretty rare though at least, which is something. Plus I'm in the UK, free healthcare for all via the NHS, which encourages getting things checked out anyway I think.

Re:Center of the Immune System

[Anonymous Coward]

Not the poster you're asking, but I had Hodgkins Lymphoma and to be honest all I did was go to the doctor asking why I had these permanently swollen lymph nodes. They did some tests which came back negative and I figured they'd shrug and say "Who knows?" but instead they referred me. I'm told by people who work on this stuff that by then they'd have guessed "Lymphoma" but since they had no official diagnosis they didn't tell me (I didn't ask). So I went to the referral appointment and they pretty much told me before they cut me open that if I didn't have cancer I was one in a million. Sure enough, it was cancer.

I was just obeying the rule of thumb I was told by a doctor years earlier that you should report anything that seems odd and doesn't go away after a week or two. Most things are self-limiting. I see a problem that I'd be willing to report maybe once a month on average. But they go away. This didn't go away so I reported it.

Another guy getting similar appointment times for chemo had waited until he literally couldn't walk. He'd toughed it out until the weakness and multiple cancer sites meant he fell down and couldn't get up. His prognosis wasn't good. For someone like me, under 30* and otherwise healthy with no symptoms beyond the lump, the specialist assigned to me said he'd never lost one and he doubted I'd be the first. Officially the statistic is 95% survival to 5 years but it seems like getting hit by a car counts as non-survival for those stats, so...

* This would be rare for most types of cancer, but 20-something men get Lymphomas all the time. I don't think anyone knows why yet.

Re:Center of the Immune System

[sqrt(2)]

That's rubbish! You're lying and we all know it. What really happened was you were put on a waiting list to receive your rationed treatment options or more likely told you were too old and would need to be euthanized. If you were in the US you'd be alive and in debt, just like God intended.

Re:Center of the Immune System

[lobiusmoop]

Perhaps I'm feeding a troll, I don't care.
I watched Sicko a while back, scared the crap out of me, made me appreciate what we've got in the UK. I'd recommend watching it.

Re:No such thing as a Vestigial Organ.

[Anonymous Coward]

i find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Wow

[RichardJenkins]

Of all the grand phenomenon we've discovered, evolution's got to be the most incredible thing ever realised by man.

And to think - enough of the basics to build a simple model for transforming self replicating chemicals into to this elegance are within reach of simple lay-folks like me.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep it in your pants!

(And no, we are not interested in thinking about it, thank you very much!)

Re:Wow

[JerRocks]

I don't understand what this have to do with World of Warcraft?

Isn't it spleendiferous...

[thewiz]

that we're learning more about the human body everyday!

That sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

For all those people who got splenectomies just because they said it has no function... I told you so.

I don't know about y'all, but

[JAZ]

My spleen just doesn't matter
Don't really care about my bladder
But I don't leave home without
My pancreas

There's somthing fishy

[xant]

I knew there was something fishy about the logic used in the summary. Could we not conclude that unhealthy spleens are a symptom of an overall attribute of unhealthiness for that person? The fact that they die early doesn't tell you very much about the spleen's role in the death. By analogy:

"However, some studies have suggested an enhanced risk of early death for those who have undergone bulletectomies after being shot with a bullet."

You would not draw from this statement the conclusion that bullets were somehow important for life. :-) Not that I disbelieve the rest of the findings, but I think this is probably another gross oversimplification about the reason why we were studying spleens.

Re:There's somthing fishy

[taucross]

Could we not conclude that unhealthy spleens are a symptom of an overall attribute of unhealthiness for that person?

Absolutely. In a closed system such as the human body, an unhealthy spleen is indicative that it is the strongest organ in the body. Any manifestation of internal imbalance is routed to the organ with the best chance for survival.

Re:There's somthing fishy

[QuoteMstr]

Absolutely. In a closed system such as the human body, an unhealthy spleen is indicative that it is the strongest organ in the body. Any manifestation of internal imbalance is routed to the organ with the best chance for survival.

Yep, and humors drain to the lowest point along equipotent Chi lines, facilitating the conservation of crystal energy according to Hubbard's Law.

See? Using big words doesn't suddenly transmute your idea from bullshit into science.

New?

[AP31R0N]

Did it just start doing this? That seems unlikely.

Re:New?

[LordKaT]

Yes, we finally saved up enough Evo points. The human species got upgraded yesterday.

Surgery

[Nidi62]

Wouldn't any sugery increase the likelihood of an early death, especially one in which the body cavity is opened and something rather large is removed?

Re:Surgery

[elrs3]

I would think in most cases you would suffer an earlier even death by *not* performing said surgery...

My spleen...

[Eric Smith]

My spleen attracts every other spleen in the universe with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the [square of the] distance between them. (to misquote Weird Al Yankovic)

Oblig Car Analogy

[purpleque]

The parallel in car terms is a company fleet of vehicles. You don't want to have to rent an entire fleet from the ground up every time you need it.

You gotta go to the rental agency and hope they have enough vehicles to meet your needs then you gotta return em all and hope they have enough the next time.

Bio 101 texts have this

[Anonymous Coward]

II thought that the immune function of spleen was common knowledge. My biology textbook (Principles of Anatomy & Physiology, by Tortora & Derrickson) explicity says that spleen is the largest lymphatic organ and plays an important role in immune response and that people who have their spleens removed at at a higher risk of death.

IAAMS

[xanthines-R-yummy]

I Am A Medical Student...

You need all of the things you listed to live a normal life. Sure, you can SURVIVE without those organs but medicine/science have known for quite awhile now that losing your spleen makes you vulnerable to infections, which is why you typically get vaccines galore before removing it (vaccines aren't a replacement for spleens, btw; it's better than nothing!). I think anyone's who's had their gall bladder removed will tell you they wish they had a functioning one. It helps make your stool a lot more pleasant! While you can live quite awhile with only one kidney, there's evidence out there that kidney donors may have shortened lifespans. Your tonsils are lymph nodes which house immune cells.

By your reasoning, it doesn't appear we need 5 fingers on each hand. We can surely survive with 4, 3, or even none. For that matter, might as well get rid of that pesky arm!

There's a difference between being necessary for life, and being really really REALLY useful.

/I kind of forgot what I was typing about.
//Going to bed...
///I dream of slashies

Re:IAAMS

[Anonymous Coward]

What's slashies?

Re:IAAMS

[Beardo the Bearded]

Farkism.

It used to be for a non-existent [sarcasm][/sarcasm] tag which then got shortened to just [/sarcasm], and then to /sarcasm.

Now a / is just the same as P.S. Each slash indicates a secondary or tertiary afterthought.

Re:IAAMS

[Dachannien]

I think anyone's who's had their gall bladder removed will tell you they wish they had a functioning one. It helps make your stool a lot more pleasant!

Where can I sign up for one or two extra ones? I'd like my stool to smell like roses, and I'd like it to play classic jazz whenever I fart.

Re:IAAMS

[dkleinsc]

Of course, the real advantage of having only 4 fingers on each hand is that it makes it far easier to count in octal.

Re:No such thing as a Vestigial Organ.

[interkin3tic]

It's about time that the earlier nazi/inquisition-style police-state presumptions are finally being burnt at the stake for making such dire assertions that there is such thing as a Vestigial Organ.

I see no reason to malign Nazis in particular as falsely thinking there were vestigal organs.

Complexity

[PleaseFearMe]

Our bodies are far more complex than a broad view of the universe. There are many interconnecting processes that all work together to use energy from our environment. The universe, ignoring the living things,can be described with far fewer vocabulary words than biology. While our bodies have a lower score on size than the universe, our bodies have a higher score on complexity, and it is complexity that makes a subject difficult. Once the GUT is found and fully understood, physics should be nothing but a small set of axioms. Biology is shaped through many many years of random events and chance encounters that cannot be quantified except with a vocabulary word.

and next, the brain

[purpleraison]

hey, it's totally possible that with the decline in intellect in modern civilization that one day people may be like, "he crushed his brain? No problem, we can just take it out, it has no use anyways.. people believe it may have been used for cushioning to protect the uvula...which as we all know is where mankind derives his 'intelligence'...".

Not that bad

[PleaseFearMe]

There must have been a pressing medical reason for removing the spleen. Weighed against the lack of a standing army, undergoing splenectomies may still be a good idea. What would be more interesting is if those optional surgeries such as breast implants and plastic surgery happen to hurt the patients.

Liar!

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when do medical students get any time at all for sleep?

Re:Liar!

[Anonymous Coward]

The summer?

Re:No such thing as a Vestigial Organ.

[Tynam]

Well, the Nazis did have a number of weird and stupid theories about biology. But nothing's as vestigial as the grammar checker on GP's final sentence. Clearly the AC's long since evolved past punctuation.

Wait a minute

[Well-Fed Troll]

I gave you a arms, hands, feet, ears, eyes, and most importantly a brain, and you want me to build your tools for you too?
- God

standing army huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you overlooked a standing army.
Hopefully our military guys are not of the same school.

Complicated Systems are hard to understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

so the spleen is more useful than previously understood, but that was according to previous models. Now, how is this complicated system any different than that of our climate models? Where is our collective spleen to save our collective butts located from the climate crisis?

The brain has the most obvious function

[electricprof]

In my observations, for a great many people the brain serves as a backup system for the colon. It acts a storage area for excrement prior to expulsion into the external environment. Often this occurs in conversations, or even in blogs.

Re:How could the miss that? Lies? Lies?

[davidsyes]

heheheh, when i first read, "Major New Function Discovered for ...." I laughed, and had to tell myself, SPLEEN, SPLEEN, not what else i was thinking, since that other tiny matter i thought of has only one apparent useful purpose... (Or, maybe, Mr. Threat, you know of other, undisclosed/"disclothesed" uses?)

New discoveries.

[Neanderthal Ninny]

Even all this time we thought spleen was a place for destruction of blood cells but now found that it is a reservoir for some types of white blood cells. We will continue to find new discoveries for what we think is already know.

$urgery

[Anonymous Coward]

As the owner of a vintage splenectomy (circa 1955) I can assure you that anyone missing a functioning spleen is at a great disadvantage combatting the normal toxins and viruses prevalent in modern life.

In my particular example, the spleen was removed because it was enlarged, although, as it turned out later, not diseased. The loss of this organ did nothing to aid in my recovery, but rather considerably retarded it. My liver was also slightly abnormal, but luckily for me, no one considered that it was advisable to remove that organ.

In the discussion of how undiscovered functions for minor organs are overlooked by hospitals and surgeons, one should not also overlook the profit motive.

Re:$urgery

[Kattspya]

What toxins?

Everything old is new again?

[northernboy]

No disrespect intended, but who said this was news? The spleen has been described as an overgrown lymph node (the place where white blood cells are born um, perhaps the whole 'lymphocyte' name thing comes to mind?) for decades. Maybe the discovery that they get mobilized when the body suffers major trauma is new, but I doubt it.

Everything old is news again?

Obligatory Futurama Reference

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Zoidberg: Now open your mouth and lets have a look at that brain.

[Fry opens his mouth]

Dr. Zoidberg: No, no, not that mouth.

Fry: I only have one.

Dr. Zoidberg: Really?

Fry: Uh... is there a human doctor around?

Dr. Zoidberg: Young lady, I am an expert on humans. Now pick a mouth, open it and say "brglgrglgrrr"!

Fry: Uh... brglgrglgrglgrrr!

Dr. Zoidberg: What? My mother was a saint! Get out!

New? Again?

[DynaSoar]

From PubMed, search terms 'spleen, function, monocyte, review' meaning it's only turn up review articles that cover collections of previous articles on the subject. Those research articles would be older, the reviews not so much. Still, 35 years is a fair bit of wallop to the "new discovery" claim, no?

Clin Haematol. 1975 Oct;4(3):685-703. Mononuclear phagocyte proliferation, maturation and function.
Territo MC, Cline MJ.

The mononuclear phagocytic system is a continuum of cells beginning with the bone marrow monoblast and promonocyte, through the monocyte to the larger tissue macrophages and multinucleate giant cells. This system of cells is widely distributed throughout the body in the blood and bone marrow; the pleural, peritoneal, and alveolar spaces; the lymph nodes, spleen, liver, and other parenchymal organs. The activity and composition of the cell varies with the level of maturation, changes in cellular environment, and with various cellular activities. The monocyte-macrophage group of cells plays an active role in defense reactions against certain microorganisms, and in the removal of dying cells and cell debris. They are an integral part of both the inductive phase of the immune response, and of cell-mediated immune reactions. In addition, they probably play a role in the defence against spontaneously arising tumours, in the control of granulopoiesis, and possibly in erythropoiesis.

Re:New? Again?

[haruchai]

Thank you. I knew that I'd heard this about the spleen many years ago.

Re:New? Again?

[Mr._Galt]

Actually, as mentioned above, the discovery is not about the monocytes exactly, but rather that the spleen hordes and dumps them when a trauma occurs. That abstract you quoted is talking about monocytes in general, and mentions the spleen in passing with the liver "and other parenchymal organs." We've known about the importance of monocytes for a long time and that the spleen was important to the immune system, just not exactly how it performed its function. So, yes, it's a new discovery.

Re:New? Again?

[mollusc]

You've completely missed the point of the article. It isn't some general statement about monocytes being important, or the spleen having monocytes in it.

Instead, it shows a) that there are far more monocytes in the spleen than in the circulation (novel), b) where in the spleen they hang out, using excellent microscopy (novel) and c) how they are released very rapidly in response to injury (also novel).
This ain't in your local newsweekly, either, this is in Science, and you don't get a research article in Science unless what you've got is both novel information and beautiful work.

Here's the abstract:
A current paradigm states that monocytes circulate freely and patrol blood vessels but differentiate irreversibly into dendritic cells (DCs) or macrophages upon tissue entry. Here we show that bona fide undifferentiated monocytes reside in the spleen and outnumber their equivalents in circulation. The reservoir monocytes assemble in clusters in the cords of the subcapsular red pulp and are distinct from macrophages and DCs. In response to ischemic myocardial injury, splenic monocytes increase their motility, exit the spleen en masse, accumulate in injured tissue, and participate in wound healing. These observations uncover a role for the spleen as a site for storage and rapid deployment of monocytes and identify splenic monocytes as a resource that the body exploits to regulate inflammation.

Re:New? Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I am not expert in immunology, spleen, or anything of that nature. However, I did have the pleasure of attending the pre-publication presentation (although it was 2 months ago and some details are fuzzy).

IIRC, the question wasn't whether or not the spleen had monocytes. The puzzle was that there is a relatively constant number of monocytes in the bloodstream, yet when a wound was inflicted, an enormous amount of monocytes would appear at the site of infection. This number was much, much larger than the number in the bloodstream, and the previous school of thought was that the bone marrow released more monocytes into the bloodstream, thus being responsible for the large number of monocytes.

However, it was shown that the bone marrow couldn't be responsible for the majority of the monocytes (I forget which assay they used, but I think it was a combination of staining monocytes in bone marrow and transplants). So the real discovery is that the spleen is responsible for the majority of the monocytes at the site of infection. It was also not clear on whether the spleen served as a reservoir for monocytes, or had some other role, but it was clear that without the spleen, the number of monocytes at the site of infection is greatly reduced.

I believe the authors also mentioned that the lung was another organ of interest(in terms of monocyte sources).

World of Warcraft?

[plnix0]

I thought he was praising his favorite email client.

Impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't be. The science is settled. We can simulate the human body, I saw it in the Final Fantasy movie.

Not so much contamination; water & salt retent

[interactive_civilian]

I think that is "neat" and also makes me curious on how contaminated things like our blood and urine must have been to require 2 kidneys and other "non-essential" organs

Remember that kidneys aren't only for filtering waste, their other primary functions are salt and bicarbonate recovery, pH balance (getting rid of excess H+ ions using phosphates and NH3 from the glutamine -> glutamate reaction), and water recovery. In fact, with the elongated Loop of Henle, one could argue that water retention in arid environments is one of the primary functions of the human kidney. They are very good at concentrating and getting rid of nitrogenous wastes while retaining important water, salts, and bicarbonate. This is probably a product of evolving in Eastern Africa. ;)

Point being, having two kidneys is probably less due to toxicity of blood and more due to efficient water and salt recovery as organisms moved from aquatic to terrestrial environments. Just sayin'. :)

Did someone send this to Tim Rickard?

[sbeckstead]

Oh my spleen!

what you said is fine and good

[circletimessquare]

but you meant to say "liver" instead of "kidney" everywhere in the third paragraph. the liver creates bile that empties into the gallbladder, not the kidneys

Shakespeare by Internal Organ

[QuoteMstr]

(Warning: original research)

I've measured the frequency of organs are referenced in Shakespeare's complete works, including sonnets and other poems. The corpus I used was the World Library version of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare available via Project Gutenberg. It doesn't mention whether these are folio or quarto versions, so the results are approximation. In each category, I included singular and plural forms as labeled below.

(I'm not even going to try to cover Shakespeare's references to sex organs.)

heart(s): 1208
brain(s): 139
womb(s): 56
stomach(s): 59
vein(s)/artery/arteries: 43
gall: 36
liver(s): 33
spleen(s): 30
lung(s): 19
intestine(s)/guts: 17
kidney(s): 2
bladder/bladders(s): 1 [some mentions of bladder don't refer to the organ]

Shakespeare thus appears to have had has anatomical priorities in order.

Hold on...

[Anonymous Coward]

the spleen apparently serves as a vast reservoir for monocytes

If you don't have a spleen, you can't become a Jedi?

Re:Not so much contamination; water & salt ret

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that kidneys aren't only for filtering waste

They are also awfully yummy!

Hatred

[evilviper]

I always thought it interesting how mythology gets distorted and passed down through time. The heart, for example, is the only organ with special, emotional status these days. Strange for an unseen hunk of ugly muscle.

Yet even a cursory look at some classic literature would find that others used to be special. The spleen is my favorite. Yes, "I hate you from the bottom of my spleen," is so terribly under-used these days. I slip it into casual conversations at every opportunity...

The liver is a good one too... "In Plato, and in later physiology, the liver represented the darkest passions, particularly the bloody, smoky ones of wrath, jealousy, and greed which drive men to action. Thus the liver meant the impulsive attachment to life itself."

Re:Hatred

[petrus4]

I always thought it interesting how mythology gets distorted and passed down through time. The heart, for example, is the only organ with special, emotional status these days. Strange for an unseen hunk of ugly muscle.

The origin of this idea is probably the esoteric belief in the heart chakra, an element of the energetic system which was supposed to occupy the same space.

Although, the Ancient Egyptians thought the heart was the seat of intelligence, too.

Doubleplusold news?

[RichiH]

I remember reading this more than a year ago. Granted, that was in German news, but with the Internet and everything...

Standing army?

[Anonymous Coward]

'"The parallel in military terms is a standing army," said Matthias Nahrendorf, an author of the report. "You don't want to have to recruit an entire fighting force from the ground up every time you need it."'"

Matthias Nahrendorf may be right about the spleen but he's wrong about armies. Maintaining a standing army is dangerous.Raise one only when you really need it and then disband it when it is no longer needed.

wasn't this a known fact?

[atilla filiz]

I remember being told by my elementary school science teacher that the spleen was one of the sources of white blood cells. That was like in 1994-95. Am I missing a point here?

Re:wasn't this a known fact?

[dhowe01]

I agree.
  The spleen stores WBC's. That's nothing new.

Well with science like this, why should we worry?

[intheshelter]

I know this is going to piss some folks off, but it's stuff like this that makes me question if mankind is really as smart and enlightened as we like to think we are. Here is a human organ that we obviously don't fully understand. We thought we had a good understanding of its function, but apparently there are deeper secrets and interactions than we were aware of. No big deal, I'm fine with that. The problem I have is that in some areas (global warming comes to mind) scientists again think they understand something very well, and "the evidence is all in" and "no reasonable thinking person could dispute the evidence" and yet I am wary of the certainty of modern science. I'm not living in a cave and performing human sacrifice, I just have a healthy (I think) skepticism of the certainty of scientists. I think we have some understanding of how the world around us works, but we are nowhere close to the big picture.

I know this is a broad conclusion to draw from a story like this, but it just reinforced something I've noticed over the last 10 or so years. That we (mankind) seem to be constantly finding out that our understanding of a particular topic is not as complete as we thought. I'm sure that might rankle some scientists who don't approve of any dissenting opinions, but to believe we have much more than a 50/50 understanding of the world that surrounds us seems somewhat arrogant.

So, flame on. Just a thought. Regarding this article specifically, I think it's amazing how complex the human body is and how many more amazing things we'll find out in the future. I think we only have a sliver of understanding of the complexities involved in our own bodies. It's amazing that something that complex can function as well as it does.

One of the lucky spleen-less

[Anonymous Coward]

I am one of those who had their spleen removed due to cancer treatment in the mid-80's. In my continued good health since, I have to do a number of "alternative" medicine treatments throughout the year to boost my immune system. As I get older, these treatments have had to increase. Acupuncture and chinese herbs, a twice yearly fasting cleanse and liver detox, as well as regular exercise has kept me on the level for the most part. I'm not surprised by these findings, and what I'd like to know is some people do regrow a removed organ. Does the smaller and sometimes ineffecient organ have the same capacity?

Re:Well with science like this, why should we worr

[dhowe01]

Scientific method is always opened up to testing of falsifiable hypothesis. That's how science progresses.
  Where those with political/religious motivations have problems is:
1) Overwhelming evidence doesn't get negated simply because it conflicts with your particular belief.
2) Weak evidence doesn't get merit simply because it makes you feel good.

Science evolves. Some people's dogma doesn't.

Re:Well with science like this, why should we worr

[intheshelter]

The method may be fine. The method may be open to testing falsifiable hypothesis. The flaw in the system is that the method is utilized by people. By that I mean the method may be sound, but it's only as good as the person wielding the method. The same dogma you seem to condemn is what I see by some (not all) scientists lately, especially in the area of global warming. It's the dogma that they can't be wrong, and anyone who questions them isn't qualified, doesn't understand science, or doesn't understand the scientific method. Science is becoming a religion unto itself because of the arrogance of some of the practitioners. That doesn't mean I am anti-science, that science can't be trusted, or I am hiding my head in the sand. I just think we have a only the beginnings of understanding how the world around us works and interacts, and the new priesthood of arrogant scientists does not tolerate dissent. I know you meant religious dogma in your reply, but keep in mind that scientists are just as human and fallible and susceptible to their own self serving dogma and someone who disagrees with you based on religious dogma.

Re:Well with science like this, why should we worr

[intheshelter]

"Where those with political/religious motivations have problems is:"

To make a few points of my own in response to yours.

- The fact that someone has political/religious motivations does not make them incorrect (nor does it make them right either)
- Taking those motivations out of the discussion for a moment, there is still plenty of reason to doubt our level of understanding of the world around us. Simple observation over a period of years makes it pretty obvious that some mainstream supported conclusions end up getting reversed as something new is discovered. The disingenuous scientists will say this doesn't mean anyone was wrong, only that more evidence changed the conclusions, but I guess that's what the rest of the world calls "wrong".

You mean we didn't know this?

[Zacqary Adam Green]

I thought this was established fact for many years. My ninth grade biology teacher told me the spleen was one of the biggest white blood cell reservoirs in the body, so all this time I've assumed the spleen is great for your immune system. I guess it was just hypothetical thus far.

Can we use it?

[kungfugleek]

I know nothing of medicine or biology, but could this reservoir of white blood cells be artificially induced to disgorge into the bloodstream, thereby enhancing the body's defenses to some difficult-to-fight diseases that are serious, but not directly traumatic enough to trigger the disgorging on their own?

Re:Can we use it?

[Khyber]

You can make the spleen contract and release leukocytes into the bloodstream via the use of cocaine. Of course this isn't recommended because you're much more likely to have heart attacks and whatnot.

I learned that interesting fact in a doctor's office when I went with my old boss to his oncologist.

Standing Armies

[bill_mcgonigle]

Sigh, I'll bite.

You don't want to have to recruit an entire fighting force from the ground up every time you need it.

Yes, you *do*. That's why the USA Constitution specifies a 2-year maximum on a standing army. The 'Navy' (expensive hard assets) can be ongoing, but you want to make it hard for politicians to start a war.

If it's important enough, you'll have enough volunteers to fight your war. If you don't get those volunteers, it's not a war worth fighting. Democratization of the ability to go to war was supposed to be a major advance for our country.