There are many more donations from dead donors than by living people.
But the chronic shortage of dead donors has steadily increased the use of live transplants since the 1980's.
When a dead donor is identified, a coordinator logs onto the computer system to match the organ with a patient.
If Bernie'd brought home a dead donor, the doc would have skinned him down.
After the operation, Terry has flashes of memory from the last moments of the dead donor's life.
The heart comes from a recently deceased or brain dead donor, also called a beating heart cadaver.
The decline in young, dead donors has had a disproportionate effect on quantity as well as quality.
A 60-year-old dead donor might have two or three usable organs, while the rest might be too damaged.
Nationwide, the number of dead donors under age 35 declined 4 percent from 1990 to 2002.
If we had just 20-30 dead and live donors per million head of population, the European Union would have a good supply of organs.