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May 31st, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda While most Australians agree with the idea of organ donation, surgeons say not enough people are opting to give up their most familiar body parts their eyes and skin.
Extensive organ waiting lists highlight the need for more donors, but research shows the reasons Australians decline “cosmetic” donations are often spiritual or superstitious.
While 90 percent of Australians agree with the idea of organ donation, 48 percent will turn down the request to donate their deceased relative’s organs, according to recent data from the Organ Donor Registry.
“The quote that keeps coming up in my research is ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’,” Holly Northam, a researcher at the University of Canberra, said.
“You might sit with a family and if the children are involved they will normally say yes to everything to help another person — except the eyes and heart. Because we attach more emotion to those parts.”
The Australia and New Zealand Organ Donation Registry reported a total of 337 organ and tissue donations in 2011, including only 99 skin donors.
For burns patients, this is bad news.
When reconstructive surgeon Peter Haersch was treating athlete Turia Pitt, burned extensively during an ultra-marathon in the Kimberley last year, Australia’s skin banks were empty.
He was forced to organise a supply from the US to be urgently flown to Australia in order to save Ms Pitt’s life.
“People have this idea that donating skin is a grisly procedure, that you won’t be able to have an open casket and so on, but that’s wrong,” Professor Haersch told ninemsn.
In actual fact, a skin donation is less than millimetre thick and generally only centimetres wide.
The graft is then expanded and used on the recipient.
Similarly, cornea retrieval, commonly called “eye donation”, will not affect the appearance of the donor’s eyes.
Less than one percent of deaths leave organs suitable for donation, but skin can be donated up to 24 hours after death, regardless of where or how the donor died.
Skin can also be stored for up to five years.
Ms Northam said the low donation numbers came down to lack of awareness.
She wants her research help educate families of potential donors, as well as the hospital employees they speak to.
“There is a real art in approaching that conversation. What you need to do is actually turn it around and start off with the fact that (their loved one) will look the same afterwards.”
Holly Northam is seeking relatives of donors to help with her research. For more information visit www.canberra.edu.au/research.
Author: Philippa Lees, Approving editor: Fiona Willan
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