Aussies favour animal organ transplants

By Leanne Edmistone

August 23, 2004

More than two-thirds of Australians would accept an animal organ transplant if it would save their life, new research has found.

Most Australians also significantly overestimate the number of organ transplants performed each year, figuring between 500 and 5000 when the actual number last year was only 179.

While an increasing number of people have expressed their willingness to become donors, discussing it with family and partners, 35 per cent had not formally registered their wishes.

The national survey of almost 1500 people, aged 16 and over, commissioned by Transplant Australia, also found only 10 per cent of people were not willing to donate organs or tissues.

About half of adult Queenslanders have registered their interest to be an organ donor on their driver's licence.

The survey also found about 20 per cent of people changed their minds about organ transplantation recently, influenced largely by the death of cricketer David Hookes and the establishment of a foundation in his name to promote organ donation.

Transplant Australia New South Wales branch president Dr Antony Harding said the wide acceptance of xenotransplantation (the scientific term for use of animal organs) was surprising.

"The willingness to take an animal organ is quite a major step," Dr Harding, himself a liver transplant recipient, said yesterday.

Dr Harding said the hard data should be seen by the Federal Government as a convincing argument to inject more funding and research into organ transplant research, especially xenotransplantation, which was still at a very basic level.

Brisbane university student and kidney transplant recipient Emma Hutchison, 23, said any opportunity to meet the need had to be explored.

Ms Hutchison, who lived on dialysis for a year before having her transplant three years ago, said the situation was particularly dire for those people requiring new hearts, lungs and livers.

Copyright © 2004 Queensland Newspapers.

This article posted September 16, 2004.