Question: What would happen if a part of you're insides was missing at birth e.g. your tounge

Jennifer Paxton answered on 7 Mar 2018:

Good question! Well, if you are born without something then you wouldn’t be able to do the thing that the body part does so if you didn’t have your tongue you wouldn’t be able to talk, eat or taste very well at all! Now some body parts are vital – this means that if you didn’t have it you wouldn’t be able to live. Vital organs are things like the heart, lungs, brain etc. Other organs are not vital, so you could live without them, but it would make life a lot more difficult! There are also a few organs that you can live completely fine without – like the appendix or some of the reproductive organs. You can live without your arms and legs fine too – just live is more difficult.

Usually if someone if born without something that is not life-threatening doctors will try to either fix it or try to find something to replace it with. My research looks at how we can build new parts of the body in the lab to help people who have something wrong with their organs.