Tassie organ donor shock

Tassie organ donor shock

PHILIPPA DUNCAN
Mercury, The Voice of Tasmania
May 07, 2007

A WOODBRIDGE mother has agreed to become a living donor and give her left kidney to an American businessman she met on the internet.

Michelle Eather, 37, is understood to be the first Tasmanian to offer such an extraordinary and unorthodox gift free to a stranger.

But the plan has prompted concern from the Australian Medical Association, which warned Ms Eather was risking her health.

"It's a major operation," AMA Tasmanian president Professor Haydn Walters said.

"Kidneys are pretty important things.

"Who is to say in the next 30 years she is not going to need that kidney?"

Ms Eather registered on the Matching Donors website this year, after unsuccessfully offering her kidney to hospitals in NSW.

"It's really amazing that we can do this. We can actually save lives," she said. "But I was always hampered by the law in Australia.

"I would have to wait until I die."

The former accountant posted her profile on the US website that matches donors and patients and was inundated with more than 100 responses.

One person offered her almost $50,000 for the vital organ but she insisted money did not motivate her.

"I'm not in it for the money," she said. "It is illegal to sell organs."

The website tells potential donors 17 people die a day in America waiting for an organ and most live donors "do very well and have no physical ill-effects".

But Prof Walters said Ms Eather would be more vulnerable to disease and might require care in the public health system.

"I don't see why the Australian taxpayer should subsidise this," he said.

"I don't think this is something that we want to encourage."

Prof Walters said there was significant danger to the donor, which was balanced only when people donated to save a family member or close friend.

"I think ethically people are happier with relatives and good friends doing this," he said.

"I hope this lady is going into this with her eyes open."

He said there was also a risk organ donation would become commercialised.

Ms Eather, who has undergone so many tests she said she had started to feel like a "pin cushion", will find out on Wednesday if her kidney is compatible.

She had her final blood test at 4am today, timed to coincide with flights to get her blood to America in 24 hours.

"If the blood doesn't react (with his), then it's all systems go," she said.

"I fly to America."

Ms Eather first heard about organ donations more than 20 years ago when she helped her first husband decide to donate his dead father's organs.

His organs saved the lives of six people and Ms Eather, who is studying to be a social worker, said she had wanted to donate ever since.

She said she had chosen to donate her kidney to Ronnie Andrews, a successful businessman in his 60s, because they had "just clicked".

"He has just become a grandfather again," she said.

"He has so much to live for. He has no chance of a future without this kidney."

She has had counselling and her family became supportive after they realised they could not stop her fulfilling her ambition.

Mr Andrews will pay for Ms Eather's air fare and has invited her to stay before and after the keyhole surgery that will take two hours.

"We email every day," she said.

"We will be great friends for life."

The ethics of live organ donations was hotly debated in 2000 when helicopter pilot Nick Ross donated a kidney to his boss, ailing billionaire Kerry Packer.

http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,21683348-5007221,00.html