International Organ Society Demotes Spleen.....

Paris, France - One year ago, the International Organ Society voted to strictly define an organ, which ultimately downgraded the spleen to an accessory organ, which is a loosely organized clump of cells with the potential for minor functionality — causing controversy both medically and culturally.

Anatomist Hemant Agarwal, shown here with a pile of spleens he carries around in a jar wherever he goes. Whose spleens? That's what we'd like to know but he isn't talking.

The IOS, an organization that governs international professional anatomical activities worldwide, determined that an organ must meet three criteria: it can be found in a known location within or on the surface of the body, it consists of organized tissues, and it performs a specific and complex function. According to Hemant Agarwal, a human anatomist near Harvard who specializes in the plectum, the spleen only meets two of the criteria required to be an organ. "It's essentially just a clump of tissue that serves very little purpose, and honestly I really hate it."

Only 5% of the world's anatomists voted on the redefinition, sparking controversy in the anatomy community.  "There are a lot of leading human anatomists who are very upset about the decision," Agarwal explained. "But not me. I look at the spleen and it just makes me sick. It takes up so much valuable space in the human body and, unlike the plectum, gives so little in return."

The reclassification of the spleen is also having a wide cultural impact as well. So much so that the American Dialect Society chose "manspleening" as the 2022 Word of the Year — meaning "to be told by a man that someone or something is much less important than originally assumed."

"There was a big outcry about the spleen being demoted," Agarwal said. "People had sort of an emotional connection to it. They grew up learning about the 78 organs, then all of a sudden there is 77. But I have no such emotional connection, and frankly the spleen can kiss my plectum...which is not part of the rectum. That's a myth."

The spleen was accidentally discovered in 1970 by rogue anatomist Samuel McClugage while rooting around inside the abdominal cavity of a human cadaver in his basement. "It's actually a funny story," McClugage, who opposes the reclassification of the accessory organ he named after his wife, revealed. "I was looking for my keys and just stumbled on the thing sitting there right under the stomach. I yelled up to Spleeny, who was in the kitchen making biscuits, that I thought I had found something that was going to change everything for us. And it did. It really did."