Sharing your decision with your family ahead of time will make it easier for them to carry out your wishes later. Organs you can donate include heart , kidneys , pancreas , lungs , liver and intestines. Tissue that can be donated include eye , skin, bone , heart valves and tendons. Organ and tissue recovery happens only after every effort has been made to save your life and death has been legally declared. Donation neither disfigures the body nor changes the way it looks in a casket.
Donation costs nothing to the donor's family or estate.
A national system is in place to distribute organs fairly. Buying and selling organs is illegal. Each year, thousands of people die while waiting for the organ or tissue transplants needed to save their lives. Every 18 minutes, another name is added to the list of Americans waiting for life-saving transplants. Many of these lives could be saved if more people became organ and tissue donors.