• Question: Are there any organs which are not vital?

    Asked by henry8th to Jen, Jill, Mel, Phil, Stef on 8 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Stefan Piatek

      Stefan Piatek answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      I guess there are a few, I should say that even though we don’t necessarily have to have them, our lives are better with them.

      Eyes and ears – it’s wonderful to see and hear but not necessary to survive.

      Kidney – can lose one or if we don’t have both then could survive using dialysis – a machine that cleans our blood

      Appendix – a classic one, seems to be something we’ve kept hold of from when our ancestors used to eat grass, in other animals it is a home for bacteria that help break down the grass. It seems like in humans it might be a place for our fighting cells (immune cells) to mature.

      Gall bladder – makes stuff to help break down fats

      Pancreas – I’ve got a friend who doesn’t have one. It makes things difficult because the pancreas makes hormones that tell your body what to do, like insulin which controls your blood sugar. It also makes enzymes that help digest good. My friend has to inject and take pills to make up for these.

      Those are probably the most interesting ones, tonsils and thymus could be others too.

      It’s quite scary to think what we could live without!

    • Photo: Jennifer Paxton

      Jennifer Paxton answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Yes, absolutely, there are some organs that we don’t need to survive. There are only a few organs that if we don’t have then we would die – these are the brain (the brain control EVERYTHING!)
      the heart and lungs (these keep you breathing and transports blood around the body to make sure all the other organs and tissues have a good supply of oxygen and keep working well)
      the liver (the liver cleans your blood and has important roles in breaking down food that you eat) and the skin (yes, the skin is an organ!! and if we didn’t have it we would probably die because we didn’t have the outer layer of protection on our bodies!)

      BUT there are some organs that we could live without, but there are certain things that we could not do or that would cause us to be unwell and need special help from Doctors and their special medicines and machines to help us feel better.

      Here are some examples:

      Kidneys – the kidneys will clean your blood too and if we didnt have them, poisons would build up in our blood and make us very unwell. Normally you have two kidneys, but you can survive well with only one (my dad only has one kidney and he is fine!) If you have no kidneys though you can become very sick and so you need to have your blood cleaned using a special machine called a dialysis machine. This lets the patient survive without their kidneys, but they have to spend several days a week in hospital for the rest of their lives, which can’t be much fun!

      Pancreas, thyroid – these are organs/tissues that produce special chemicals called hormones that tell the body to do certain things. You can survive without these but will need to take medicine so that the body still gets the chemicals it needs to keep you healthy.

      Tonsils, gallbladder, appendix – all of these can be removed without much problem for the patient and don’t usually need them to take medicines afterwards.

      Reproductive organs – these are the organs that you need if you want to have children. For men, they are called the testes and for women, they are called the ovaries and uterus. They are definitely not vital to live (if you think about it, all women survive without testes and all men survive without ovaries! 😉 ) but they are needed if you want to have your own children.

      Also, things like your eyes, ears and nose are not vital to survival, but having them working is certainly much better.

      A big part of my work and the work of other scientists who do what I do is to try and make people new tissues and organs to replace in case their own stop working. Imagine one day we could give a person a new heart and let them live longer or a new kidney so they didn’t have to have dialysis all the time – I think that is very exciting! Scientists are trying to make artificial hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, muscles, tendons, bones, bladders, etc…… the list goes on! There are lots of interesting things being tried out and some of the results seem to say that this could happen in the future – you can always ask me about it if you are interested too!

    • Photo: Melissa Brereton

      Melissa Brereton answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      We have lots of organs in our body, not just the ones we are most familiar with such as the heart, lungs, brain and kidneys. The largest organ in the body is the skin, but of course, we certainly need that one to survive otherwise we look like something out of a horror film!

      Many of our organs come in pairs such as the lungs, kidneys, ovaries, testis, eyes, and ears and we can live with only one of these. Strictly speaking, the reproductive organs aren’t vital because we can live quite happy, healthy lives without them. Similarly with our eyes and ears, we all know some people are born blind or deaf and continue to live a very fulfilling life. Of course, it is a gift that we can see and hear the wonderful world around us!

      The gall bladder and spleen are always a strange organ that even now I sometimes forget what they do, but they are not vital to our survival! The gall bladder helps break down fats and the spleen filters all the toxins from our blood! The appendix is a funny organ too as it actually serves no function. Some scientists believe that in hundreds of years time, humans won’t have an appendix which will be good news for all the people who have had to have it removed after contacting appendicitis!

      The best way to think of this question is to flip it around and ask which organs ARE vital and then to try and understand why that is. We can’t live without a heart…..why….because it pumps blood around our body to the other organs. Brain…. well, of course we wouldn’t be able to walk, talk, eat, but also all our other organs wouldn’t be able to work because they need our brain and nerves to function properly!

      What I think is amazing is how advanced modern medicine is as we can have artificial organs that can be implanted surgically into our body when our own organs wear out. Many surgeons can also remove huge chunks of our organs if they are diseased or not working properly, and replace them with drugs and we can continue living a healthy lifestyle!

    • Photo: Phil Rice

      Phil Rice answered on 11 Mar 2013:

      I am not sure about this one. It depends on what era of human existence you are talking about. If it was 100,000 years ago, I would say that the only redundant organ would have been the appendix. There were no qualified surgeons in those days. Now, we can survive with a pump (heart), blood cleaner (1 kidney), protein factory and toxin buster (1/10 of a liver), 1 breathing organ (lung) and a brain stem (to run the heart and lungs). Everything else is superfluous.

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