Evolutionary Report Card

The evolutionary process is like one of those underachiever kids who comes home with a patchy report card: opposable thumb = A plus; vermiform appendix = E minus.

There’s a theory that says life is DNA’s way of replicating itself; our bodies are merely vehicles. If true, this would explain why evolution gets away with all kinds of substandard materials and shoddy workmanship. We only have to survive to breeding age. Once we’ve been fruitful and multiplied, we become a drain on the ecology, and as far as DNA is concerned, the sooner we’re broken down and recycled into our component molecules, the better.  

As support for this theory, let’s take a look at the digestive tract: a system designed by a committee of Rube Goldbergs.  

We’ll start with the above-mentioned appendix, a totally useless organ that occasionally swells into a softball-sized sack of pus and explodes. (This happened to me when I was eight years old. Fortunately, I was on the operating table when it exploded, and the surgeons managed to mop up most of the pus before it killed me.) How did that one get past the design committee?

Rube #1: Hey guys? We got a piece left over here.

Rube #2: What does it say on the label?

Rube #1: (reading from tag) Caution – may explode.

Rube #3: Just tuck it into the intestines. It’s a mess down there anyway.

Or what about the way we digest proteins?

Rube#1:  We can break proteins down with hydrochloric acid.

Rube #2: Won’t that eat through the stomach lining?

Rube #1: Well, we could neutralize it with sodium bicarbonate, but that’ll produce a lot of gas.

Rube #3:  No problem. Just shove it down into the intestines. It’s a mess down there anyway.

And don’t even get me started on teeth. (Oops, apparently it’s too late. I’m started.) The number of design flaws in teeth is staggering. They grow in tightly-packed clusters making it impossible to prevent food from getting stuck between them, which rots and leads to cavities. They are embedded in gums that recede over time, creating more pockets to collect rotting food. They are coated in a thin layer of dentine that wears away after only twenty or thirty years of normal use, exposing sensitive nerves. Why do teeth even have nerves? The entire structure is so flimsy it can be cracked or broken by an event as innocuous as biting down on a seed. And to top it all off, the roots abscess painfully. 

I know these things because I have experienced every one of them. Over the course of my lifetime, I have dumped a small fortune into my mouth on fillings, root canals, extractions, crowns, gum surgery, plaque removal and antibiotics; not including the tooth brushes, toothpaste, mouthwash, toothpicks and dental floss which did little to mitigate the necessity for all that extreme dentistry.

Perhaps I’m sensitive about my teeth today because the one tooth left in my mouth with a live root abscessed last week. When the antibiotics have reduced the swelling, I’ll be back in the dentist’s chair four more times over the next two months, while he carves off the existing crown, takes half a dozen before-and-after x-rays, canals the root and re-crowns the tooth, hiking my lifetime dental budget over the $50,000 mark and my annual radiation exposure past the limit recommended by Health Canada.

What makes teeth even more annoying is that evolution has already produced several superior alternatives.

Beaks, for example, are made of keratin, which is immune to cavities. Birds don’t get receding beaklines, and they never need a beak canal because beaks don’t have roots. An additional advantage of beaks is that romantic comedies would end with a satisfying click instead of that gross, wet, sucky sound we’re subjected to now.

An even more elegant system is that employed by spiders, who inject their food with digestive juices before ingestion, then suck up nutrients like a milkshake. Not only does this remove the need for teeth, it also transfers production of nasty gasses to a process outside the body.

By far the best solution, in my opinion, is photosynthesis, which eliminates not only teeth, but the entire digestive tract and its smelly byproducts. Photosynthesis would also put an end to racial discrimination, since we’d all be green. On the downside, scatoloical commentary would be reduced to bumper stickers with slogans like “CO₂ happens”.

Sorry, evolution, but I can’t grade you higher than an overall C minus in Human Digestive Studies. Not your best work.