Our kidneys are engineered to filter out waste products from the blood, regulate the blood to have the correct proportion of water, maintain a proper concentration of salts within the body, regulate the acid-base equilibrium of the blood, and secrete hormones that help maintain blood pressure and make red blood cells. That description of critical functions for the kidneys reveals how important they are to our daily lives. Until kidney dialysis machines were invented in the mid-twentieth century, the prognosis for those with chronic kidney disease was simply death.
An idea of the complexity of the design and operation of our kidneys can be gained by taking a cursory look at kidney dialysis machines. The first practical artificial kidney was built in 1943 during World War II. Since then a host of engineers, doctors, and inventors have steadily worked to improve the technology to the level at which they now function. Today, dialysis therapy as a field benefits from decades of contributions from experts in medicine, physics, chemistry, nutrition, as well as engineering. Nevertheless, a typical modern hospital dialysis machine is about the size and weight of the person who is getting the treatment.
Kidney Dialysis Machine in Operation
In hemodialysis, blood is removed from the body and circulated through a circuit outside the body in the machine. The circuit consists of a hemodialyzer, where the blood is cleaned. The hemodialyzer contains a selectively permeable membrane, which filters out fluids and waste and prevents the exchange of blood components. The fluid used to clean the blood (called dialysate) flows in the opposite direction to the blood on the opposite side of the membrane. Three processes, diffusion, ultrafiltration, and osmosis, are utilized by the hemodialyzer to accomplish the cleaning.
Patients undergoing dialysis must spend several hours a number of times a week hooked up to these machines to stay alive. The only other alternative for sustaining life for the chronic kidney disease patient is a kidney transplant. I think it should be clear that these highly engineered machines are very complex. However, they are far larger and much less efficient than a human kidney!
Dialysis Machine Set-up Diagram (From Wikipedia)
I am not a medical professional, and I am mostly ignorant about the workings and design of our kidneys. But, the following drawings of kidneys and their design should suffice to educate one to their extreme irreducible complexity.
Kidneys and Blood Vessels
Diagram of Renal Circulation
Section of Left Kidney
Evolutionists would have us believe that the kidneys are the result of random-chance evolution. Does anyone believe that type of process resulted in the dialysis machine? No? Then, why would anyone believe that the orders of magnitude more efficient and more complex kidneys randomly evolved? It makes more sense that they are the result of the workings of a superior Engineer, who designed them to function perfectly along with the rest of the irreducibly complex human organism that He created.
J.D. Mitchell
