Marys Catholic Center: Was Darwin Wrong?
Well, yes Darwin was wrong about a lot of things. No, he didn’t get everthing wrong. I am not talking about evolution as evidence of our beginnings but rather the appendix. Yes, the appendix. Darwin hypothesized that the appendix was a vestigial organ that was “left over” from our evolutionary anscestors. This theory has become the most common answer to what the appendix does, or rather, doesn’t do. However, doctors now think that theory needs to be tossed out because the appendix plays an important roll in our health. “Maybe it’s time to correct the textbooks,” said researcher William Parker, an immunologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. “Many biology texts today still refer to the appendix as a ‘vestigial organ.'” The vermiform appendix is a slimy dead-end sac that hangs between the small and large intestines. No less than Charles Darwin first suggested that the appendix was a vestigial organ from an ancestor that ate leaves, theorizing that it was the evolutionar
