I just love Science!

Ok - here's the biologist in me. One of the RSS feeds I've subscribed to is "EurekAlert!-Biology". Of course, I get about 50 feeds a day, so I don't read them all, but as I was trawling through them this evening (work avoidance behaviour.... I'm supposed to be setting a Gd 10 exam paper...) I found this INCREDIBLE news. I just LOVE it when something we don't understand is proved to be useful/ necessary/ good. That just makes the creationist in me want to shout - 'See, God knew what he was doing! You evolutionists aren't even close to catching up with him!'

So - what is this incredible news? The appendix is not the useless item we thought it was. No, it is, in fact, still a life saver.

The short story is that it is the place where good bacteria live. In fact, we have immune tissue there that specifically protects and nurtures good bacteria (while attacking and killing the bad bacteria). When we get diarrhoea, the good bacteria ride it out in the appendix while the rest of the gut is completely evacuated. Then, when all the fuss is over, they climb out again and repopulate the gut before the bad bacteria can.

HOW AMAZING IS THAT?!?!

So why do we get appendicitis? Because we aren't regularly exposing our bodies to parasites and intestinal germs our immune response over-reacts to the smallest of infections. The appendix swelling is just such an over-reaction. Unfortunately, a swollen appendix causes massive problems for us. In other words - our life style is killing us.

So maybe we should all let our dogs and cats lick us in the mouth a bit more, and not deworm them quite so often...

maybe we should undercook our meat a bit more and eat chicken that's a little raw...

maybe we should eat cooked rice a few days after cooking...

maybe we should eat more raw fish....

maybe we should eat food dropped on the floor after the 3 second rule has expired...

But that's beside the point. I just LOVE science! And I just love how incredible our bodies are - how incredible creation is. I know that some people will look at this say that we evolved that way to cope with all the parasites we faced in eons past. Believe what you will, it doesn't detract from the fact that our appendix is just the most incredible little organ. And here we all thought it was useless and pointless. More fool, we!