1.   Also, a living donor organ has not gone through the trauma of death.

2.   Bludworth offered to donate part of his liver to a severely ill patient after reading about the success of using living donors for liver transplants.

3.   Both Hurewitz and Boone believe, however, that the medical process that qualified their husbands as living donors went too fast, with little counseling about the risks.

4.   A living donor can give a kidney, bone marrow, a lung, a lobe of the liver, and skin, doctors say.

5.   A living donor may give a single kidney, a lobe of a lung or part of a liver or pancreas.

6.   But living donor transplants remain controversial within the medical community because of the risk to the donor.

7.   Deaths of living donors are especially troubling, he said, because they are perfectly healthy people who undergo major surgery just to help somebody else.

8.   Each wanted to be the living donor, vying for the honor.

9.   Elliott did not have to wait because he found a living donor, his brother Noel.

10.   However, there is no federal oversight of living donors and no private group that tracks the long-term health of living donors or recipients.