h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Kidney - A812936
Author: the autist formerly known as flinch - U183016

It's not quite finished, but i thought i'd invite comment now while i'm tying things up.

(My suggestion is perhaps mildly facetious, perhaps not.)

Have you considered mentioning the phenemenon of the 'Kidney Punch'? Often used in Sunday League football to stop a winger who's about to outpace you, particularly if there's no linesman. Not by me, I hasten to add...

If its not finished it should really be submitted to the Writing-Workshop, but I'll comment here anyway.

There are typos in some of it, so i suggest you read it all through once you've finished and fix those, any you miss i will list later. I assume the last sections on problems in the unfinished bit? Do you know about the tag? I would put it around the names of the problems.

Other than that, this seems like a good and informative entry. Well done!

Tango

Yeah Good Entry

You say towards the end that the loss of a kidney causes renal problems, yet, of course, people are able to donate a kidney to relatives, or in India there is a thriving black market in organ sale. Chennai is becoming known as the capital of the kidney trade, along side all the call centres and programming factories are the hospitals set up for this new professional class, and the doctors therein are at the centre of the kidney purchase trade.

I think the pyramids, calices, and the renal pelvis all deserve mention.

This entry suffers the 'bilaterally-symmetrical organ in a report syndrome', in which the author shifts back and forth from thinking of the kidneys as one organ and then two. This change in number is usually not medically or mathematically important, but the whole thing would read more smoothly and grammar mistakes more easily caught if one voice was chosen.

The common diseases of the organ and their pathology are a huge topic on their own, and can be a whole 'nother entry than this one. The way in which you have written them, it looks like you might be planning to flesh them out, and I think it would make this excellent entry too long.

>>I think the pyramids, calices, and the renal pelvis all deserve mention<<

Yeah i was kind of working through the kidney and was comming to the pelvis through the nephron so to speak. I'll get there (eventually).

As for the pyramids and calices - i don't really know hwat they're specific functions are.

As for dsyfunction - i was mearly going to mention briefly major problems and leave it at that. I thought the medical side was better represented by the problems of dyalysis and donation.

this is slightly I was about to write an entry on the kidney myself! I'll have a full techy sort of look over it when you've finished it!

I do thing that you should mention that renal impairent is caused high blood pressure and diabetes. But i expert you were going to mention that when you came onto that section.

In case you want to know the meddula of the kidney is arranged into pyramid shape stuctures with colums of cortex in bettween them, (technically known as colums of Bertin)

The calical system is what get's the urine from the collecting ducts to the pelvis.

Tell me to clear off if you want..

Oh and I've only ever heard erythropotien called EPO on renal units, I think it's a shortening of Epotien the name of the drug that can be given to replace erythropotien. So I don't know if it's a really a widerly used name for erythropotien? ok maybe I'm wrong it is..

Anyway that's all from a stundet with a bad That's hangover one of the lesser used smilies.

An interesting article. Gives a good indication of what the kidneys do without getting to technical.

However, a couple of observations:

“the excretion of some waste products from the blood”
Don’t you mean extraction of some waste products.

“An artificial kidney or 'kidney machine' filters the blood usually overnight. Clearly a patient having to undergo dialysis ...”

I think this could do with a little re-wording. You introduce dialysis without explaing what it is leaving the reader to figure out that the “kidney machine” does the dialysis. Perhaps something along the lines of:

An artificial kidney or 'kidney machine' filters the blood usually overnight through a process called dialysis. Clearly a patient having to undergo dialysis ...”

Other than that, pretty good.

Stuart

Well the term usually used to refer to what the kidney's do is excretion, because they extract the waste products from the blood and then dispose of it! so I personally think that it would be quiet safe to let that stay it. It's a widely known word so I won't say don't worry about it!

..what the kidney's do is excretion, because they extract the waste products from the blood..

This sentence doesn’t make sense as you appear to be using excretion as the noun derived from the verb extract which isn’t correct. The noun derived from the verb excretion is excrete. The noun for extraction is extract.

You could say the blood excretes waste matter to the kidney, but that is not what happens. The kidney extracts waste matter from the blood. If the kidney does any excretion, it excretes urine to the bladder.

You can excrete to or extract from but not excrete from or extract to.

excrete v. (-ting) (of an animal or plant) expel (waste matter). excretion n. excretory adj. [Latin cerno cret- sift]

extract —v. 1 remove or take out, esp. by effort or force. 2 obtain (money, an admission, etc.) against a person's will. 3 obtain (a natural resource) from the earth. 4 select or reproduce for quotation or performance. 5 obtain (juice etc.) by pressure, distillation, etc. 6 derive (pleasure etc.). 7 find (the root of a number). —n. 1 short passage from a book etc. 2 preparation containing a concentrated constituent of a substance (malt extract). [Latin traho tract- draw]

Suart

Ok but the kidney's are how we excret waste products from our body.

I'm with Z on this one. The kidneys excrete waste products in the techincal sense, although it may not make any sense to you grammatically. In the converse sense, it is grammatically correct to say that fibre is excreted from the bowel, when it realistically does no such thing.

In order for a substance to be excreted in the physiological sense, it *must* have been metabolised before being put into whatever format it leaves the body in. So it is correct in the physiological sense to say that urea is excreted via the kidneys, as it has already been metabolised to that state. In the same fashion, it is incorrect to say that fibre is excreted from the bowel, as it entered the body in that state, remained unchanged, and left the body in the same state.

I'll have a look at the entry later - but as that part is correct in the physiological sense, I think it is better left as it is

Stay ,
WD

“So it is correct in the physiological sense to say that urea is excreted via the kidneys, as it has already been metabolised to that state”

That’s fine, I have no problem with that. But the original said that waste matter is excreted from the blood, which cannot be correct, either grammatically or physiologically. This implies that it is the blood doing the excreting when it is the kidney doing the extracting.

Stuart

Ok what about the phrase "waste products are extracted from the blood and excreted from the body" does that please everyone!

Thats along the lines of what I suggested in the first place.

Stuart

Not really because it doesn't say that the kidney's extract from the body which implies that they remove nesscery things from the blood. Rather that they dispose of things from the body. But hey if I started all this off by misreading really ...... to be honest the only reason I'm being picky is because the word excretion is used to decribe the function of the kidney in biology classes up and down the land and I don't want to confuse schoolchildren who happen to come across this article..

help I'm arguing about a very small word at twenty five to three on a sunday morning. Oh dear.

>>But the original said that waste matter is excreted from the blood, which cannot be correct, either grammatically or physiologically<<

I assumed that the word 'from' made it clear that the waste was being excreted from the blood by the kidney - making it correct in both cases.

Is this unclear? I'm wrote it so i'm too close to judge.

Waste products in the bloodstream are excreted by the kidneys?

And the cortex doesn't just act by osmosis - there is also active transport going on too.

I think hte problem stuart had the oringal sentance was that it's the Kidney doing the excreting not the blood. Do you htink this is hte longest row in PR over one word?