It was the first day of spring break in 1992 in Phoenix, and 12-year-old Heather Smith was excited for her family's upcoming ski trip. But before Smith and her family had even packed their snow pants, ...

For more than a century, the human appendix has been written off as a biological relic, a shrunken leftover from plant-eating ancestors that serves no real purpose. That view is now outdated. A ...

The human body is still a mystery, and some organs have largely been considered useless in one way or another. However, the truth may not be quite that simple.

A sudden appendectomy as a child made Heather Smith curious about what the appendix is for and why it gets inflamed. Now as an anatomy researcher,... Your appendix is not, in fact, useless. This ...