This is a fascinating article from Reuters News.

I grew up in a generation where the mysteries of the human body were still being discovered, very slowly. Doctors used to say to parents of children with frequent sore throats, “Oh it’s okay, those tonsils (adenoids, appendix, wisdom teeth, etc.) are what we call vestigial organs. The cave men needed that for their raw diet, but we don’t need them today. Eventually, evolution will get rid of this excess baggage. We can go ahead and remove them and no one will ever be the wiser.” Yes, I heard that myself as a child. My mother, bless her, was steadfast.

I personally don’t believe that we have any “excess baggage” in our bodies. It is all there for a purpose, and any removal puts our system out of balance. Sure, you can live on, but you’d better address the cause of the problem first before removing something that your body needs.

All my friends had their tonsils out. I was such an oddity that as a teen, I’d go to the doctor and he’d call in all his nurses and staff to see what an “unimproved throat” (his actual words) looked like. Yes, I eventually grew out of the sore throats and ear infections. To some degree, I think minor undiagnosed allergies might have been to blame, but allergies weren’t something doctors were particularly adept at diagnosing and treating back then.

We know more about the function of these so-called vestigial organs now. We now know many of them are essential parts of the immune system. But what if there’s more we just haven’t discovered yet?

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