No appendixes allowed in the Antarctic!

TIL if you’re an Australian doctor and want to be posted to the Antarctic during winter, you have to (voluntarily) undergo an appendectomy before departure. Apparently there was a bit of trouble on Heard Island in the 1950s after the lone Australian doctor became sick with appendicitis . After a “complex emergency evacuation”, the Australian Antarctic Division likely decided that it’s easier to require their physicians to remove their appendixes rather than risk another life-or-death situation. Not everyone can be like Leonid Rogozov , the Soviet surgeon who, in the face of imminent rupture, enlisted his non-medically trained colleagues as surgical assistants, then proceeded to perform a self-appendectomy.