Spare Parts: The Cultural History of Organ Transplantation

Grant number: FT100100762 | Funding period: 2011 - 2017

Completed

Abstract

Organ transplantation is of considerable contemporary concern to Australians. Despite decades of campaigns seeking organ donors, this country has one of the world's lowest donation rates. This study will explore how this situation arose and offer a new understanding of the factors that impinge upon people's perceptions of transplantation.

Related publications (4)

Crossing the Rubicon: Death in 'The Year of the Transplant'

Helen MacDonald

2017-01-01

How death should be measured was a subject of intense debate during the late 1960s, and one in which transplant surgeons had a par..

Guarding the Public Interest: England's Coroners and Organ Transplants, 1960-1975

Helen MacDonald

2015-10-01

From the mid-twentieth century, England's coroners were crucial to the supply of organs to transplant, as much of this material wa..

Conscripting Organs: "Routine Salvaging" or Bequest? The Historical Debate in Britain, 1961-75

Helen Macdonald

2015-07-01

The period 1961-76 was one of marked contestation in Britain about how organs should be obtained from recently deceased people's b..

Considering Death: The Third British Heart Transplant, 1969

HP MacDonald

2014-09-01

On May 29, 1969, London’s newspapers carried dramatic headlines:“Donor’s Heart ‘Switched Off’ by Doctors.” Margaret Sinsbury had d..

University of Melbourne Researchers

Helen MacDonald Historical and Philosophical Studies