Appendixes Aren't Useless
By B. James McCallum and Stuart M. Smith
You need your appendix! Well, that may be overstating the theories a little, but new research has indicated that appendixes might not be as useless as we once thought. Immunologists and surgeons at Duke University School of Medicine reckon that your appendix actually serves as a reserve of good bacteria; like a starter for yogurt or good sour dough bread.Certain infections can cause the “normal” bacteria inside us to die off. This makes it possible for less desirable bacteria to move in and set up shop. The current research, due to be published next month in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, suggests that people with appendixes might be able to “reboot” quicker than those without, replacing the beneficial bacteria before the malign influences can take over.
The reason why we have an appendix has long been a mystery. Humans are one of only a few species of animal to have an appendix joining a motley collection of other primates, rabbits, opossums and wombats (and no, we haven't made this up). The common conception that it is a vestige of our evolutionary past is largely discounted by the scientific community. Researchers have long thought that our appendixes must play some kind of a role in immunity but they couldn’t work out what that role was. It’s possible that this current research has changed all that.For those of you without an appendix, all is not lost. You are unlikely to lose all of your good bacteria, and if you do, will likely rapidly restore the population with bacterial inadvertently donated by friends and family. You might be out of luck, however, if you want another appendix - a quick Internet search for “artificial appendix” yielded nothing practical. But all is not lost; with some spare parts from a brewery it is possible, we’re assured, to make an artificial appendix about the size of a small car, for just a fraction of the price of trying to grow a new biological version.
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