[extropy-chat] Can a single brain cell recognize Bill Clinton?

David Lubkin extropy at unreasonable.com
Fri Jul 1 00:53:45 UTC 2005


Adrian Tymes wrote:

>It is arguable whether evolution "accounts" for vestigial things like a 
>human's appendix, even if it can explain how such things came to be.

The appendix IS NOT vestigial. It has been known for several decades to be 
part of the immune system.

See, for instance,

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole00/mole00225.htm
http://www.uchospitals.edu/online-library/content=P00630

or many of the other 122,000 matches for appendix "immune system" on google.

Medicine has a long hubristic tradition of declaring that

(a) we don't know what body part X does
(b) therefore it has no purpose
(c) therefore we may/should/will excise it

and then we have to deal with the aftermath, as when they decided that the 
thyroid was vestigial and removed it.


-- David Lubkin.




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