Page 130 - Once Upon a Time There Was Darwinism

Once Upon a Time
There Was Darwinism

The myth started with The Origin of the Species'
mention of organs whose functions were lost or reduced.
Darwin described these organs as "rudimentary" and com-

pared them with "the letters in a word, still retained in the spelling,
but become useless in the pronunciation." 74 In 1895, the German
anatomist R. Wiedersheim proposed a list of about 100 human
"vestigial organs," including the appendix and the tail bone.
But like other Darwinist claims, this too was a myth that
thrived because of the unsophisticated level of science at the time.
As research advanced, slowly it came to light that the organs that

Darwin and his followers thought to be vestigial actually had im-
portant functions, as yet not been determined. With the develop-
ment of science, it was discovered that Wiedersheim's list of
organs had very important functions in the body. As their func-
tions were discovered, the long list of "vestigial" organs grew
steadily shorter. For example, it was discovered that the appendix,
long regarded as vestigial, was a very important part of the lym-
phatic system that fights germs when they enter the body. An arti-
cle titled "Examples of Bad Design Gone Bad," referring to some of

the basic literature on anatomy, explains:
An examination of the appendix microscopically, shows that it con-
tains a significant amount of lymphoid tissue. Similar aggregates of
lymphoid tissue (known as gut-associated lymphoid tissues,
GALT) occur in other areas of the gastrointestinal system. The
GALT are involved in the body's ability to recognize foreign anti-
gens in ingested material. My own research, in particular, is fo-
cused on examining the immunological functions of the
intestine.
Experiments in rabbits demonstrate that neonatal

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