You'll note that no one has ever performed an eye transplant on a human. There are plenty of blind people with serious eye problems for whom an eye transplant would be curative. So why hasn't it been done ?
The reason is that the eye, and specifically the retina, is an extension of the central nervous system. Indeed the meninges, which enclose the brain and spinal cord, extend along the optic nerve and merge with the back of the eyeball.
As part of the central nervous system the retina suffers the same fate as any other part of the brain or spinal cord if you injure it, or operate on it - the nerve cells that connect the eyeball to the brain all die.
Therefore, if you did take the eye from an owl, or even an eye from a human donor, and implant it into a human face, the recipient would never see because the retinal ganglion cells, which make up the optic nerve, would all die.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=1506.0;prev_next=prev
