Vestigial Organs Seem Ripe for Transhumanist Tweaks, Wired Article

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2007/11/alttext_1107


by Lore Sjöberg

I spent some time at BodyWorlds 2, an exhibition of plasticized human cadavers designed to educate people who are not yet dead. I learned many things, but the main thing I learned is that the body is jam-packed with organs, much like a throbbing, oozing Swiss Army knife.

Actually, you may be surprised to learn that the human body is even more complex than a Swiss Army knife. Even more than those really thick knives that have an added, non-advertised function such as a cudgel. Bulbous biological material is wrapped all around in your body, tucked into alcoves, threaded through bone holes -- it's as efficient as it is disgusting.

But like a Swiss Army knife, not every part is equally useful. For instance, every Swiss Army knife I have owned incorporated a fish scraper, but I have never scraped a fish in my life. I assure you, if an unscraped fish is brought to me, it leaves my presence still unscraped.


Similarly, there are a number of body parts that may have served some important purpose in the distant past, but are now more likely to host disease and infection, much like pay phones. A lot of transhumanist types focus on replacing perfectly good body parts with even better ones, giving us more durable hearts or prettier eyelashes, but it seems to me we ought to start by dropping some of our vestigial organs in favor of something more useful, or at least more classy.