DOES (DID) MY APPENDIX REALLY DO ANYTHING?

WRITER: FRED HILTON

When I was 4, my appendix burst. A ruptured appendix is dangerous stuff for anyone, but for a little guy, it’s particularly terrifying. I was rushed to a hospital, where the doctor ripped out my appendix.

“Ripped” is an appropriate word. I was left with a scar of biblical proportions. It covered the greater part of the right side of my tiny tummy. Later on, friends would swear the doctor used a church key, rather than a scalpel, to perform the operation. If you’re under 40, you may have to Google “church key.”

A huge, ugly scar can have advantages for an entrepreneurial 4-year-old. My aunts, uncles and assorted relatives all wanted to see the scar. I made big bucks for a little kid by charging everyone a dime for that privilege. I did charge Aunt Tillie a quarter, since she always wanted to hug me and she smelled funny.

In the years after the church key surgery, I wondered if I really needed my appendix in the first place.

Until recently, the conventional wisdom was that the appendix had little function in the modern human body. The appendix was thought to be a vestigial organ — one that had lost most of its original function due to evolution. The caveman’s appendix was much larger and played a major role in digestion.

Current research, however, has given the humble appendix a new level of respectability. A team of scientists at Duke University Medical Center found the appendix produces good bacteria for the purpose of “rebooting” the digestive system. Sometimes, the researchers said, diseases such as cholera or dysentery can kill off good bacteria in the intestines.

Dr. Bill Parker, an assistant professor of experimental surgery at Duke, explained to Duke Magazine: “The idea is that the appendix is a safe house or a storehouse, even a cultivation center for the normal, beneficial bacteria that our gut needs. That safe house would be necessary and useful in the event that the main compartment of bacteria, the large bowel, got contaminated with some kind of infectious organism and got flushed out.”

If your appendix is already gone, you’re probably still safe. Parker pointed out the world we live in is much more sanitary than that of our ancestors and diseases that wipe out bacteria on a major scale aren’t typically seen in countries where appendectomies are common.

Apparently I never needed help from my appendix, since I’ve gotten along famously without it all these years. My tummy is no longer tiny, but that nasty-looking scar is bigger and scarier than ever. I don’t think anyone would pay to see it now … not even Aunt Tillie.

FRED HILTON spent 36 years as the chief public relations officer/spokesman for James Madison University in Virginia and 10 years as a reporter and editor for