Vestigial Organs?

You are clearly confusing 2 separate usages of the term degeneration. p.164 clearly describes degeneration of the tonsils as involving shrinking, fusing and the formation of crypts and cysts as well as linking it to the onset of puberty, clearly not a description of anything to do with being an evolutionarily vestigial organ.The Bursa Pharyngeal is not an old term for tonsils it is a term for itself, it isn't the pharyngeal tonsils but a structure associated with them.As PaulK has also pointed out the tonsils being discussed here are the pharyngeal tonsils, also known as the adenoids, rather than the palatine tonsils which are what are removed in a normal tonsillectomy.It is also pretty clear from any rudimentary knowledge of medical history that the reason tonsils are removed are not for evolutionary reasons but because their structure often forms a breeding ground for bacteria leading to painful and potentially dangerous infections.So you are reading things wrong in at least 2 or 3 different ways.TTFN,WK

This seems to be something that has a reality and a somewhat different false version which is commonly bandied about. If you look at wikipedia's entry on Wiedersheim it gives several examples as having been on the list of 86 vestigial organs, but looking at the actual list itself, on p.200 of the book in section B on organs which might accurately be termed vestigial, we find a number of them clearly missing, specifically the tonsils and adenoids (neither of which are even mentioned in the book apart from that one reference in the Bursa Pharyngea section) and thymus (in another list of organs which have had probable changes in function). Even then these are only organs 'wholly or in part functionless' which includes structures which only occur in the embryo in humans but persist in other vertebrates.This confusion may well not have originated from creationists, but where it has come from is unclear.TTFN,WK

Just to confuse the issue I have made some edits to the Wikipedia page.TTFN,WK

Um, yes. They are members of the order Artiodactyla the even-toed ungulates and their relationship is supported by genetic analysis. You could add cows and giraffes to your list as well, not to mention camels and hippos.Do you ever think to check these things out before you ask them? Such mice are bred for more than one generation, if it was simply that the human copy was inactive in the mouse then you would tend to see no viable mice homozygous for the human version in later generations if it was an important gene. That is what they do, you can't make an adult transgenic mouse without having it grow from a transgenic embryo. The real trick is working out how to let you only activate the changed genes at later stages of development or in the adult.TTFN,WK