Page 513 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

The Myth of Vestigial Organs

You may have read that the human appendix and coccyx, or tail bone, are vestigial organs that once
had important functions in our supposed evolutionary ancestors, but lost those functions over the course

of time.
Lots of people have, because ever since Darwin, the myth of the vestigial organs has been the evolu-
tionists' favorite propaganda material.
The myth started with The Origin of the Species' mention of organs whose functions were lost or re-

duced. Darwin described these organs as "rudimentary" and compared 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 important functions, as yet not been determined. With the
development of science, it was discovered that Wiedersheim's list of organs had very important func-

tions in the body. As their functions 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 impor-
tant part of the lymphatic system that fights germs when they enter the body. An article 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 contains a significant amount of lymphoid tis-
sue. 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 antigens
in ingested material. My own research, in particular, is focused on examining the immunological functions of
the intestine.

Experiments in rabbits demonstrate that neonatal appendectomy impairs the development of mucosal im-
munity. Morphological and functional studies of the rabbit appendix indicate that it is probably the equiva-

lent of the avian bursa in mammals. The bursa plays a critical role in the development of humoral immunity
in birds. The histological and immunohistochemical similarity of the rabbit and human appendix suggest
that the human appendix has a similar function to that of the rabbit appendix. The human appendix may be
particularly important early in life because it achieves its greatest development shortly after birth and then

regresses with age, eventually resembling such other regions of GALT as the Peyer's patches in the small in-
testine. These recent
studies demonstrate
that the human ap-

pendix is not a vesti-
gial organ, as
originally claimed. 75

In short, the
reason why the ap-
pendix was fa-

mously thought to
be vestigial was the
dogmatism of

Darwin and his fol-
lowers, thanks in
turn to the unso-
phisticated level of

Adnan Oktar 511