The lowly appendix used to get no respect and was simply regarded as a useless evolutionary artifact but two years ago researchers at Duke University Medical Center proposed that it actually serves a critical function as a safe haven where good bacteria could hang out until they were needed to repopulate the gut, like after a nasty case of diarrhea.Now a group writing in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology claim something even more aggressive; that Charles Darwin was wrong and the appendix is a whole lot more than an evolutionary remnant. Not only does it appear in nature much more frequently than previously acknowledged, but it has been around much longer than anyone had suspected.Why go after Darwin 150 years later? Well, he's a big name and New Scientist will do another Darwin Was Wrong cover if they do.Regardless of the hyper they're trying to create, they have a point. Some biology texts still refer to the appendix as a 'vestigial organ.'Using cladistics , which utilizes genetic information in combination with a variety of other data to evaluate biological relationships that emerge over the ages, William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of surgical sciences at Duke and the senior author of the study and colleagues found that the appendix has evolved at least twice, once among Australian marsupials and another time among rats, lemmings and other rodents, selected primates and humans."We also figure that the appendix has been around for at least 80 million years, much longer than we would estimate if Darwin's ideas about the appendix were correct."Darwin theorized that the appendix in humans and other primates was the evolutionary remains of a larger structure, called a cecum, which was used by now- extinct ancestors for digesting food.We'll have to forgive Sir Charles for not knowing everything there was to know about biology in the mid-19th century but surgeons aren't cutting him any slack, noting that modern data showsseveral living species, including certain lemurs, several rodents and a type of flying squirrel, that still have an appendix attached to a large cecum which is used in digestion.Parker also notes that the appendix is actually quite widespread in nature. "For example, when species are divided into groups called 'families', we find that more than 70 percent of all primate and rodent groups contain species with an appendix."So much for the idea that appendices appeared in only a small handful of animals. In your face, Darwin!Darwin also was not aware that appendicitis, inflammation of the appendix, is not due to a faulty appendix, but rather due to cultural changes associated with industrialized society and improved sanitation. "Those changes left our immune systems with too little work and too much time their hands – a recipe for trouble," says Parker.That notion wasn't proposed until the early 1900's, and "we didn't really have a good understanding of that principle until the mid 1980's," Parker said. "Even more importantly, Darwin had no way of knowing that the function of the appendix could be rendered obsolete by cultural changes that included widespread use of sewer systems and clean drinking water."Parker says now that we understand the normal function of the appendix, a critical question to ask is whether we can do anything to prevent appendicitis. He thinks the answer may lie in devising ways to challenge our immune systems today in much the same manner that they were challenged back in the Stone Age. "If modern medicine could figure out a way to do that, we would see far fewer cases of allergies, autoimmune disease, and appendicitis."Colleagues who contributed to the study include lead author Heather Smith, of the Arizona College of Osteopathic Medicine; Rebecca Fisher, of Arizona State University; and Mary Lou Everett, Anitra Thomas and R. Randal Bollinger from the Department of Surgery at Duke.