This is what AnswersInGenesis quoted from New Scientist:
Your surgeon was a little out of date’, replied Chicagoan Kathleen James in the pro-evolution magazine’s questions-and-answers column. ‘Although it used to be believed that the appendix had no function and was an evolutionary relic, this is no longer thought to be true. Its greatest importance is the immunological function it provides in the developing embryo, but it continues to function even in the adult ... . The function of the appendix appears to be to expose circulating immune cells to antigens from the bacteria and other organisms living in your gut. That helps your immune system to tell friend from foe and stops it from launching damaging attacks on bacteria that happily co-exist with you.’1
Here is the same quote from the New Scientist Q&A article:
http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=lw968
Your surgeon was a little out of date. Although it used to be believed that the appendix had no function and was an evolutionary relic, this is no longer thought to be true. Its greatest importance is the immunological function it provides in the developing embryo, but it continues to function even in the adult, although it's not so important and we can live without it. The function of the appendix appears to be to expose circulating immune cells to antigens from the bacteria and other organisms living in your gut. That helps your immune system to tell friend from foe and stops it from launching damaging attacks on bacteria that happily co-exist with you.
Note the part in bold that AIG replaced with ...
hmmm
We can live without a lot of body parts, the human body is wonderfully redundant. But that doesn't mean it's optimal without it. And the appendix performs such critical services during our youth in developing our immune system, that if we were born without it, survival would probably be unlikely.