CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU

One of most encouraging and uplifting events in my life in recent times occurred in a cemetery eight years ago. And I am an atheist.

It was in a new rose garden at a cemetery in Homebush in Sydney—the place where a few years later the fittest people in the world would compete in an event called the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

The people who gathered that day in the graveyard were not the fittest people in the world. But they were alive. And they were alive largely because of some other people in the garden.

I was the guest speaker at a ceremony to consecrate that rose garden. Every rose bush represented a person who in death had given life. Every rose bush acknowledged that organs from a person who had died on life support had saved somebody else’s life.

And the adults gathered there, many still grieving for the loss of a loved one (especially a child), mingled with recipients who had literally been given the gift of life.

It was such a tangible feeling of selflessness and community spirit and generosity. I remember the drizzling rain dampened our clothes that day but dampened nobody spirits.

For many people the fact that out of death came life for somebody else helped bridge their grieving process. For many mothers and fathers who – in the blackest hours of their lives – had made decisions and signed papers it was s comfort that part of their precious ones lived on.

This column is obviously prompted by the launch of the new organ donor campaign in the name of cricketer and colleague David Hookes. The David Hookes Foundation.

It has the backing of some of Australia’s most recognisable names including two organ recipients, Kerry Packer and Sam Chisholm.

Adman John Singleton, radio star Alan Jones and the bosses of the company that owns this newspaper have also committed to the campaign.

It is a campaign that shouldn’t be needed. It should be pretty obvious that “you can’t take it with you”.

And yet, along with New Zealanders, our donor rate is one of the worst in the world. Way, way behind European countries. So, the question is: Why? What are people scared of or repulsed by? Why do some many Australians at a loved one’ deathbed refuse to sign the consent papers even when they know that is what the person wanted?

Why, even accepting the searing grief, they would go against a person’s last wish? wouldn’t do it over a will over a thing called money but would over a selfless request, almost from the grave, to “the bits of my mortal remains and save somebody else”.

Accept that some people have religious or perceived moral reasons to decline the chance to donate organs. And that should be respected. But I have some other theories.

Some people shudder at the idea of a loved one undergoing an autopsy. Bodies are opened almost “ from neck to knee”. Skulls are opened with electric saws. Sometimes, the stitching on the repair work (from some autopsy corpses I have seen) is pretty crude.

That is not the case with people who, in death, donate their organs to the living on the agonisingly long waiting lists.

These vital organs are removed in a sterile operating theatre. The donor treated with the utmost respect for a number of reasons: medical, ethical, moral.

The donor body is then restored to an almost pristine condition. You will not go in to say your final goodbyes to a scarred and stitched and bruised Frankenstein. You will see a loved one at peace.

I suspect that the donor programme public relations has not always been that good. Even now, the expression that David Hookes’ organs were

“harvested"sends shivers through some people. Maybe I am being sensitive here but “ harvested” sounds like you are chopping off corn cobs – not gently and cleverly removing a part of one human with, sadly, no use. To donate something precious (and lifesaving) to somebody else.

One thing that the David Hookes Foundation has already achieved is a national debate in newspapers and on talkback radio about the organ donor process.

In this country we have an "opt-in” system where, in most states, you tick your driver’s licence application if you want to be a donor. The weakness there, as I have said, is that families at that awful moment of death can decline. And nearly fifty per cent do. David Hookes’ family didn’t. There are ten recipients who got an extra innings because of Hooksey and his family.

In some countries, especially in Europe, there is an “opt-out” system where you don’t tick a box saying that you want to be an organ donor – you tick a box saying that you don’t want to be.

It is a stunning, lifesaving distinction. And it should be debated in this country.

There is another issue, just as important as organ donation, and that is tissue donation. David Hookes and his family were involved in both.

It is not only hearts and lungs and kidneys. Corneas can be donated by families and that can be done even if a person is killed in a car crash or bicycle accident.

In Victoria corneal donation is five times more common than organ donation and more than 80% of donations are, in fact, eye or tissue donations and not organs for transplant. The largest, busiest, transplant hospital in Australia is not the Alfred or the Austin. It’s the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital. And transplanted corneas are a daily occurrence in this state.

Postscript: On 3AW, discussing this issue, I took a call from a strident opponent of organ donors. His argument was so off the planet that I offered him some advice. I said: If you ever change your mind about donating organs do the world a favour. Don’t donate your brain.

February 29, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004