Blame 'inner fish' for bad body

Chicago Tribune ^ | 02/18/08 | William Mullen

[Borges]

Even before they are born, all people carry genetic baggage, genes that were useful to distant, non-human ancestors but are hopelessly outdated, even harmful, to humans as they live today.

Chicago scientist Neil Shubin calls this inheritance our "inner fish."

People hiccup, he explains, because of a design malfunction in a nervous system and breathing apparatus passed down from fish and tadpoles. Human males are vulnerable to hernias because of their awkward setup for toting around sperm-producing gonads, which developed in fish.

"In a perfectly designed world -- one with no history -- we would not have to suffer everything from hemorrhoids to cancer," Shubin writes in his new book, "Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body."

A dean at the University of Chicago and provost of the Field Museum, Shubin is part of a pioneering field that uses traditional paleontology and molecular biology to study evolution. At 47 he is already something of a science celebrity for helping discover what may be one of history's most important fossils: a "missing link" from the time animals first crawled out of the sea 370 million years ago.

[big'ol_freeper]

Liberals.

[Frank_Discussion]

snorkles

[spanalot]

omg - is that why i can swim?

[mikrofon]

"In a perfectly designed world -- one with no history -- we would not have to suffer everything from hemorrhoids to cancer,"

Such profundity makes one want to run out and buy this book.

[mikrofon]

You can’t get in tune with your inner fish, but you can get a tuna fish...

[Snickering Hound]

[Behind Liberal Lines]

These guys definitely are controlled by their inner fish:

[reagan_fanatic]

And God laughed.

[the invisib1e hand]

the obvious question is whom to claim for reparations for psychological harm.

[meowmeow]

Didn't modern medical science debunk this kind of crap?

We are fearfully and wonderfully made...

[nmh]

What nonsense will they dream up next and accept as “knowledge” or some major break through. It’s ow wonder LIBERAL academia excels in DUMBING DONW KIDS and our worldwide rank in math and science are in the toilet.

[Liberty2007]

yeah my ‘nads weigh so much I get hernias.

[geopyg]

“You can tune a piano, but you can’t tune a fish.”

[3AngelaD]

See: http://www.design-police.org/

[McKayopectate]

Well, my inner child may be dead, but I’m glad my inner fish is alive and well...

[bikerman]

yeah my ‘nads weigh so much I get hernias.

I carry mine around in a wheelbarrow

[Enchante]

So does the “inner fish” explain flatulence?

How about the mental flatulence of leftists?

Can we say of them “the inner fish rots from the head down?”

[Enchante]

“A woman without a man is like an inner fish without a bicycle”

— Gloria Steinem —

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what your inner fish can do for your country”

— JFK —

“How many roads must a man walk down,
before you can call him a ...... fish.....”

— Bob Dylan —

[aruanan]

"In a perfectly designed world -- one with no history -- we would not have to suffer everything from hemorrhoids to cancer," Shubin writes in his new book, "Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body."

Fortunately, for folks like Shubin, everything is perfectly suited for self-justifying just-so stories that happen to explain the otherwise inexplicable.