People can donate kidneys, livers, lungs, corneas, pancreases, heart valves, bones, tendons, skin and bone marrow. At least 400,000 people each year in the U.S. receive either donated corneas or tissue. Banking on Tissues Most commonly, organ and tissue donations are made by a person's loved ones upon the person's death. A product inventory is maintained in the tissue bank. On a donor card or in a written document, the donor can specify which organs and tissues they want to donate.
Federal law bars the buying and selling of human organs and tissues.
Recently, some tissue banks have found unlikely partners in the private sector. LifeCell, the company that manufactures AlloDerm, pays the tissue banks a fee for the tissue it obtains then uses its proprietary technology to process the skin, removing cellular material and sanitizing it, according to LifeCell executive Fenel M. Eloi. Collagenesis, the privately held manufacturer of Dermologen, will actually charge a fee to the tissue bank to process the cadaver collagen. The profit-making side of this delicate operation has also raised some eyebrows. Manufacturers, though, point out their products are not just used for cosmetic surgery.