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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.
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.
Because DNA of anything tends to carry legacies and evolve from previous similar things rather than just invent random stuff. Re-use is a large factor of DNA and it's complexity masks a lot of differences. That's why most diseases are NOT "just one dodgy gene".
This is why two testicles look similar to two ovaries, and why there's two of each, and why both sexes have pubic hair and anus in the same place, and why the female pelvis - though differing dimensions - isn't fucking octagonal or something.
And your gender is determined not in some magical early moment but quite late in foetal development, and not cast in stone as you're also surrounded by female hormones until birth.
More strange is why certain birds have such vastly different coloured/shaped/sized male/females.
Emphasis mIne.
... as you're also surrounded by female hormones until birth.
And the you get married and have a daughter and you're surrounded yet again until... the day... you die.
[ P.S. I wouldn't have it any other way... ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because women have nipples, and the additional genetic code required to completely remove nipples from males gives no survival benefit.
So when is the decision of XX vs XY chromosomes made?
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."
Everybody has two rows of vestigial nipples. The first is easiest to see, looks like a small mole, the rest look like freckles.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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
Midwestern University Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine
Not quite. Being beneficial is not what keeps things around. More often, being detrimental is what gets them removed.
In times of extreme competition, beneficial traits can statistically outweigh the lack of that trait and become commonplace. (The lack of that trait is detrimental when competition is extremely high.)
But evolution typically results in beneficial traits leading to specialization (literally, a new species), not the destruction of the old species. It's "why we still got monkeys".
Beneficial traits have to be beneficial enough to be selected for from that start all the way up to successful reproduction for evolution to "choose" the beneficial trait.
This has to be done to the widespread exclusion of the lack of the trait to make the trait universal across the species / exterminate the old species.
Alternatively, detrimental traits only have to be selected against once before reproduction (killing the organism), or during all reproduction attempts, for evolution to "choose" to remove it. Even without a widespread beneficial trait in the species putting pressure against the negative trait, other pressures (climate, predation, etc.) and will ensure it gets removed over time.
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?
"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?
Hint: it's you.
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