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New Research Suggests the Appendix Has a Purpose After All (qz.com)
The appendix is an organ thought to have gone the way of our wisdom teeth and body hair: At one point we all needed them, now people can get by just fine without them. However, it turns out, at least the appendix has some purpose in the body. From a report: Scientists, though, have never been certain what the appendix used to do -- and if it is still, in fact, useless. On Jan. 9, a team of researchers led by scientists at Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine published a review study proposing an answer: the appendix is a secondary immune function that both catalyzes immune cell responses and floods your gut with beneficial bacteria when they've been depleted. And it still plays that role, in a limited fashion, in human body function."We can function okay without it, but the appendix does provide some degree of immunity and beneficial bacteria,â Heather Smith, an anatomist and lead author of the paper said.
Not news.
The appendix has MANY subtle jobs rather than one obvious one, that's why you can do without it.
I've been telling people for 20+ years after reading it online that the appendix is PARTLY a store of stomach bacteria etc. to help reseed the stomach in the case of it being flushed during illness.
People with appendices recover better from a bout of stomach flu and are less likely to get knock-on infections that those without. It's been in the medical literature for decades, at least, and been on this site at least twice I'm sure.
It's also not the appendix's only job.
This is not "news" at all.
You mean to tell me that something attached to other organs, that has blood vessels, that has metabolizing and reproducing cells, that has multiple cell types, that has nerve endings, actually has a purpose? Gee whiz next thing you'll be telling me that the tailbone has no function and we'd be A-OK if instead of something hitting your tailbone it hits the end of your spinal cord directly instead.
Now tell me why men have nipples :)
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I've read about this role for the appendix for at least 5 years? At LEAST.
Here's an early article I found on the subject https://blogs.scientificameric... - and if SciAm had it in 2012, it had to be relatively established information, they're not anywhere near cutting-edge reportage.
And here's a Discover magazine thing saying the same thing in 2008: http://discovermagazine.com/20...
-Styopa
for useful info.
Emphasis mIne.
You fucked up the quotes again.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's nothing! Recently slashdot discovered that the moon was created by something banging into the Earth!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No - remember the old story:
Young bull sees the city boys left the gates open. Says to old bull:
The city boys have left the gates open again. Lets run down the hill and do a couple of cows.
Old bull replies. Nope. Lets stroll down the hill and do a whole bunch of them!
Moral: There is no need for speed. The need is for good management and an editorial team that actually knows what an editor is supposed to do!
And absolutely no need for cows, bulls, farms or city boys, but then I digress....
And I was taught this stuff about the appendix in secondary school - in the 1960's. Get orf me lawn!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
At least 20 years I think... They could have saved a lot of money and just asked me instead of performing this crazy-ass study of something most doctors have known for decades. And I'm not even a doctor.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The appendix is where the soul is.
The people who have had theirs removed....those poor, poor bastards....well, you shouldn't trust them from then on.
So this makes me wonder if people without their Appendix have a different lifespan than those that keep it. I tried to google for the answer, but I came up short. Anyone know of any studies on this subject?
If you thought you knew this before a study like this came out, then you're as bad as all the other gullible sheep out there, because there was not a large body of good evidence to point to to support that opinion.
The study in the Qartz article is a review study, looking at hundreds of other studies. It's an extremely important kind of study for solidifying our understanding of how things work, and frankly in my opinion they often don't get enough attention because people think they know these things already. You did not know these things already. You had a couple of articles that you'd seen before that suggested maybe the appendix isn't as useless as doctors used to think, but you didn't have a body of evidence that you could point to to prove that fact. Now you do. That's the importance of the study.
Of course, in typical fashion the SlashDot summary woefully misrepresents it as a study saying "Hey guys! I found this brand new thing that other people have already found! Check it out!", which of course that isn't what the study was doing at all.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
No, scientists had reasonable evidence to suggest that might be a function of the appendix.
Until there is a large scale review study of all the studies on the subject, just like the study in the article, no reasonable scientist would say the subject was closed.
The SlashDot summary was terrible, though, so there is that.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Appendix is where the lawyers put all the escape clauses, in fine print too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine
The appendectomy at one point was a standard surgical procedure performed on many not too long ago, on my parents generation.
"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail" attitude surgeons where cutting away rudimentary flesh left over from the absolutely positively proved human evolution, doing us all a favor.
Maybe not so fast, because you do not fully understand something does not mean you can go and fuck around with it nilly willy.
There are many examples of "accepted medical practice" is disproven in medical scientific literature, but is kept alive by old habits.
A single cell has billions of "parts" much less is understood that is being let on. Medical science is mainly behavioral studies and 99.99% guesswork. Complete understanding to the molecular/atomic level is just not there. Yet the high salaries and snooty attitudes prevail, when these charlatans have a very superficial grasp of reality.
Medications are approved for diseases not fully understood by medications not fully understood. Not much better than homeopathy.
Watch the fuck out for yourself.
body hair will help you detect insects around your skin so you can squish them. Biting insects are a vector for disease, so it is of great benefit to be able to detect them more quickly before they can bite. The great majority of people still live in environments with biting insects, so body hair is still of great biological utility.
The purpose is store sliced carrot. Haven't you noticed that when you vomit there is always carrot in there, even if it has been months since you ate any?
stupid science; ruined the joke.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm usually on the lookout for my shoes...
That way I know it's almost over.
Also, that I need to buy new shoes...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
If your idea of making out requires ass hairs, I think one of us is doing it wrong...
You seem to have different definitions of determined and implemented than I do, though there can be some confusion between sex and gender as well. Your sex is determined by your chromosomes. What you seem to be describing are physical sexual characteristics which are implemented about the time you seem to indicate. Now gender means different things to different people, and describe behaviors as well as physical characteristics.
"Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine"
Osteopathy is quack medicine!
How dare you pollute Slashdot in this manner?
There used to be standards here, or was that before Trump?
How about "It turned out you had ovarian cysts, not appendicitis, but we decided to take it out anyway."
Play Command HQ online
Hint: it's you.
Play Command HQ online
Yep. It definitely has the purpose to limit the surpopulation !
That's nature at work !
aaaaaaa
Good riddance.