An appendix with purpose

After checking out the latest happenings at Duke Med, I don't know whether it's time to mourn my friends' lower left abdominal scars or break into a shout of thanksgiving over that dreaded, disguised bellyache that never plagued my childhood.

Why? It turns out that the appendix-that useless flesh prone to annoying infection, that intestinal attache, that vestige of evolution, etc., etc.-well, it may actually serve a purpose in the human body after all.

Doctors now have found convincing evidence that the appendix, historically considered a remnant of the evolutionary cycle since its purpose has remained a modern medical mystery, houses bacteria necessary to protect the bowel and intestinal systems of the body. Translation: The appendix serves as a storehouse to keep things moving, and in the event of digestive distress, help replenish the bacteria necessary for proper system function. Handy. Dandy. Swell.

Or not? What has taken so long for us to analyze the appendix as more than an afterthought? As is alluded to in the official Duke Med press release, our oversight of the appendices' properties are results of modernity, sterility and social evolution. According to Dr. William Parker, codirector of the study, "Diseases causing severe diarrhea are endemic in countries without modern health and sanitation practices, which often results in the entire contents of the bowels... being flushed from the body." This ultimately necessitates the immune production of the appendix.

As excited as I am to know that I am not presently harboring a useless mistake of creation in the whereabouts of my stomach, this new discovery not only raises concerns of Western medicine but also of Western society in general. Via Internet, we (as Americans, or folks living in America) are able to announce a potentially large "oops!" in the world of medicine. We comfortably nod our heads as we read the headlines on our new laptops and add another interesting piece of information to our current events file. But perhaps we should consider how this "discovery," applauding the laboratory's beneficence and utility, reflects a particular bias, majority interest and entitlement to truth and knowledge.

What it comes down to is the fact that the United States, along with the Western world, prescribes far more than routine prescriptions to the global community. As in most things, the West is known to set the standards for civil progress and societal achievement over and against what would be considered developing nations. We set the standard as to what is normative in medical science, assuming an analogous link to universal humanity, and calling others to conform. And, when something does not serve our direct purposes, or retain a level of utility reflecting our own desires and aims, we cast it out as useless and unnecessary.

I am not on a tirade against the miracles of modern medicine, or the incalculable service and lives saved by medicine. I simply want to consider the history of who is practicing medicine and for whom doctors and medical books alike understand themselves to be practicing?

I'm not a doctor. But if a circumstance presented itself in which an international patient was rid of her appendix and later returned to a situation outside of modern medicine where she needed those bacteria, what are the implications of said disservice? With the value that our medical assumptions carry around the world, what does it mean that we were able to write off something that we don't need as universally useless?