# New Human Organ Discovered! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 4, 2017, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342 "2017-01-04T23:35:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2017, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/1 "2017-01-04T23:35:47Z")
Seriously. This is not a joke. It has nothing to do with sex, so get your mind out of the gutter. It’s not Alan Sherman’s _humdinger_. They call it the _Mesentery_, and it’s a collection of tissues in the stomach that were for a long time thought to be “fragmented parts”, but is now held to be a complete, connected unit. They’re still not sure what it does: > **[Another organ has been hiding in your belly all along](https://www.yahoo.com/news/another-organ-hiding-belly-along-194924072.html)** > > This week, as you dream up ways to improve yourself in 2017, give yourself a pat on the back: You've already made a significant change this year, from deep within your belly. You technically gained an organ. Irish researchers have confirmed that the... > [@](#): > > This week, as you dream up ways to improve yourself in 2017, give yourself a pat on the back: You’ve already made a significant change this year, from deep within your belly. > > You technically gained an organ. > > Irish researchers have confirmed that the mesentery — a fold of membrane that connects the intestine to the abdomen — is its own continuous organ, and not a series of fragmented parts like experts had previously thought. > > The discovery could create a new field of “mesenteric” science and may help doctors better understand and treat abdominal diseases, said Calvin Coffey, a professor of surgery at University of Limerick’s Graduate Entry Medical School. > > “We are now saying we have an organ in the body which hasn’t been acknowledged as such to date,” he said in a news release. > > Coffey published his peer-reviewed findings in the November issue of The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, a top medical journal on the digestive system. > > Mashable was unable to reach Coffey for comment by the time of publication. > > An organ is considered to be a self-contained body part that serves a specific vital function. The heart, for instance, is a muscular organ that pumps blood through our blood vessels. > > Researchers say they still don’t quite understand the mesentery’s key functions, beyond the obvious role as a connective layer. This part surprised me: > [@](#): > > One of the world’s earliest depictions of the mesentery was produced by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci. While his drawing and subsequent medical illustrations showed the mesentery as a continuous structure, in the past century scientists came to believe it was a series of broken-up pieces, and thus less medically significant. Why they later thought this was a “broken-up” organ isn’t clear. I’m amazed that daVinci had the insight to see it as a connected organ. I’m also impressed that his drawing makes it look as if we all have vulvae in our bellies. (There’s a copy of his drawing in the article.) ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/2 "2017-01-05T00:23:36Z")
Interesting that the discoverer of a new intestinal organ is named Coffey and it’s reported by a pub called “Mashable”. Paging Dr. Frankfurter! ---
**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/3 "2017-01-05T00:59:32Z")
Ohh great, now I have one more thing to go lookup fatal diseases of that I probably have in Web MD. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/4 "2017-01-05T04:57:25Z")
Dr Frank N Furter. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/5 "2017-01-05T05:02:12Z")
And Fifty Ways it can Give You CANCER! #23 will shock you! ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/6 "2017-01-05T12:47:40Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > They call it the _Mesentery_ I thought it was funny to see a newscast emphasizing the word “mesentery” like it was a new and exotic label. Does nobody dissect animals in middle/high school biology classes any more? If you do, you should be familiar not only with the term, but with the organ itself. It is the series of membranes that link all of the folds of the intestines into a single mass (and makes all of the book/movie scenes of intestines falling out like a tangled fire hose when anyone/anything is gutted completely inaccurate.) The membrane has been called the “mesentery” since long before I leaned the name in high school in the late 1980’s–the only difference is that it is called an organ and not a tissue now. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/7 "2017-01-05T13:10:00Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > I thought it was funny to see a newscast emphasizing the word “mesentery” like it was a new and exotic label. Does nobody dissect animals in middle/high school biology classes any more? If you do, you should be familiar not only with the term, but with the organ itself. It is the series of membranes that link all of the folds of the intestines into a single mass (and makes all of the book/movie scenes of intestines falling out like a tangled fire hose when anyone/anything is gutted completely inaccurate.) The membrane has been called the “mesentery” since long before I leaned the name in high school in the late 1980’s–the only difference is that it is called an organ and not a tissue now. I was familiar with the mesenteric vein, so I realized that they were not inventing the name, just now calling it an organ. I’m actually glad about that. Names used to be interesting coinages, inspired by history or mythology or derived from latin or greek roots. “Syphllis” was named after a poem by an Italian doctor (about the disease’s effects). Today, diseases and other medical items are given ungainly acronyms. I’m glad it’s “mesentery”, rather than something like PAFPB (Pyloric Antrum Fluid-Producing Body). ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/8 "2017-01-05T13:14:55Z")
> [@outlierrn](#): > > Dr Frank N Furter. Abdominal surgeon, Dr Nicholas Bowel. “Nick Bowel to surgery, stat!” ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/9 "2017-01-05T13:22:22Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > PAFPB (Pyloric Antrum Fluid-Producing Body). PABFB: now $5 at hipster bars. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/10 "2017-01-06T06:39:11Z")
New? Ridiculous! A tear or bulge in the mesentery is called a hernia. Doctors have been operating to repair them for decades. Nothing new about this. Except possibly to re-define it as an ‘organ’. ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/11 "2017-01-06T06:59:35Z")
How serendipitous: doing a Target Word puzzle not an hour ago, and the nine-letter word was MESENTERY. I did get it by the way. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/12 "2017-01-06T15:54:50Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Why they later thought this was a “broken-up” organ isn’t clear. I’m amazed that daVinci had the insight to see it as a connected organ. I’m also impressed that his drawing makes it look as if we all have vulvae in our bellies. (There’s a copy of his drawing in the article.) The [Visible Man](https://davewaugh.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/20140620-165915-61155130.jpg) model I had as a kid in the '60s certainly presented it as a continuous sheet of tissue, framed by the large intestine. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/13 "2017-01-06T16:32:09Z")
> [@kambuckta](#): > > How serendipitous: doing a Target Word puzzle not an hour ago, and the nine-letter word was MESENTERY. Not OVERLORD? 🙂 I dunno. Discoveries like this make me wonder what modern medicine has been doing for, oh, the last 100 years. What is there to say when an utter novice like Leonardo could spot it in decaying corpses, but highly trained medical establishment decided it was just useless fragments and never gave it another thought? Kind of the like the “discovery” of the clitoris. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/14 "2017-01-06T16:33:10Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Not OVERLORD? 🙂 > > I dunno. Discoveries like this make me wonder what modern medicine has been doing for, oh, the last 100 years. It sounds very much like a case where an utter novice like Leonardo could spot it in decaying corpses, but highly trained medical establishment decided it was just useless fragments and never gave it another thought. > > Kind of the like the “discovery” of the clitoris. But just imagine how happy they were when they found it! ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/15 "2017-01-06T16:35:09Z")
> [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](#): > > The [Visible Man](https://davewaugh.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/20140620-165915-61155130.jpg) model I had as a kid in the '60s certainly presented it as a continuous sheet of tissue, framed by the large intestine. I liked that the Visible Eye included the _Zonule of Zinn_. Next they’ll be telling us that the ZoZ is really the Third Eye. ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/16 "2017-01-06T20:15:44Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Not OVERLORD? 🙂 > > I dunno. Discoveries like this make me wonder what modern medicine has been doing for, oh, the last 100 years. What is there to say when an utter novice like Leonardo could spot it in decaying corpses, but highly trained medical establishment decided it was just useless fragments and never gave it another thought? It’s not like nobody knew it was there, or we’ve suddenly learned a lot more about what it does. This ‘news’ is basically a couple guys saying “Hey, since we’re all now more sure than we used to be about this group of tissues all being connected, why don’t we start calling it an ‘organ’ now?” ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/new-human-organ-discovered/776342/17 "2017-01-06T20:45:16Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > It’s not like nobody knew it was there, or we’ve suddenly learned a lot more about what it does. This ‘news’ is basically a couple guys saying “Hey, since we’re all now more sure than we used to be about this group of tissues all being connected, why don’t we start calling it an ‘organ’ now?” I know. I just think they should call it… a dwarf organ. 😃