At 04:42 PM 6/22/97 +0800, Chan Wei Lik <weimin@pl.jaring.my> wrote:

Only a fool would give up something so valuable as... as his own eyesight. 

So >what if they never found a donor for Ranma, it was still... stupid...

Never heard of the Eye Bank? I'm sure they could have come up with a tissue 
match sooner or later.

Sooner; as lucidly explained below, corneas don't get rejected:

	       Corneal Transplantation: A Success Story

		       By Ronald E. Smith, M.D.

			Professor and Chairman

	     USC School of Medicine, Doheny Eye Institute


More than 40,000 sight-restoring corneal transplants are perfomed each
year in the United States - more than all heart, kidney and liver
transplants, but it is also the most successful. In many cases a
success rate of 90% is possible.

Why is a corneal transplant so successful when other transplants are
rejected? The eye is a "privileged site."  The unique structure of the
eye, and in particular the cornea itself, is responsible for the high
success rate. Most transplants of any other human organ or human
tissue carry a high risk of rejection by the host patient.
Incompatibility between the host tissue and the donor tissue causes
rejection. In order for the patient's tissue to "recognize" and then
reject the donor organ or tissue, a blood supply to the transplanted
tissue is required.

In the case of the cornea, there is no capillary system of blood
supply since cornea tissue is transparent. It receives its nourishment
from ocular fluids, not from a blood vessel network. If the cornea had
blood vessels transversing it, it would not be clear. Therefore, the
same unique feature that allows the human cornea to be exquisitely
transparent and provide the clear "window" to the inner eye, also
creates a "privileged site" which can accept a donor corneal
transplant. In most cases it is not necessary to find a donor "patient
antigen match" for successful corneal transplant. This greatly reduces
the waiting time for corneal transplant surgery....

>From http://www.usc.edu/hsc/doheny/update.html

In Hawaii, according to http://www.eyebank.org/, the waiting time is
"three to six weeks".

					- Harold