Some of us may have gone through autologous transplants. This is when a tissue is transplanted from one part of the same body to another part e.g. skin taken from the thigh to repair burns elsewhere on the body. There are situations when a patient receives their own blood to reduce infection risks or enable them to conform to religious needs. Bone grafts and dentistry procedures regularly rely on using the patient’s own bone resources. In fact the earliest transplants were teeth transplants carried out in the 1750’s & 1760’s. A dentist in Norwich called Michael Whitlock was one of the first dentists to carry out this process and write about in 1762.

The activity was so widespread in London society of the late eighteenth century that political satirist Thomas Rowlandson produced this cartoon in 1787. It shows middle class clients inspecting the quality of their ‘new’ teeth. The teeth were obtained for very little money usually from destitute children. No ethical or moral scruples stopped this process.

Most commonly we think of tissue grafts taking place between a deceased donor and a patient that needs a life enhancing medical procedure. Tissue transplants can also be life saving in the cased of blood transfusions, severe burn injuries and bone marrow transplants.

Tissue can also come from a living donor such as a person that has gone through a hip replacement. They may donate bone to a recipient. Often the recipient doesn’t even know they have received the bone graft from another person. There is no legal obligation to tell the recipient.

It may be hard to believe, but technically blood is a connective tissue. To a non-medical person like me that is hard to accept. Blood looks like a liquid to me, but it consists of tissue cells from which can be taken a number of blood products such as red cells, platelets and plasma.

So what can we give as tissue donors? The diagram below shows the range of tissue that can be given legally in the UK.

Beth Morris

The Morris family from Bolton owe a great deal to living donors. Thirteen year old Beth has received multiple blood transfusions and a bone marrow transplant.

These photos show a bone marrow recipient - you just cannot tell - to the left Beth is holding out her medal haul from the British Transplant Games - to the right she stands proudly with one of her six medals from the World Games in Sydney 2009.

Beth Morris is now one of the most successful swimmers for her age group in the Transplant Games. This is a fantastic achievement for a thirteen year old girl. This is especially true when you consider that when she was 17 months of age Beth was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Beth had to endure chemotherapy treatment for two years, spending most of that time in hospital.

Although she seemed to be recovering, she had a relapse in 2001 and doctors told her parents she had a 30 per cent chance of surviving without a bone marrow transplant None of her relatives had matching blood types, but a charity eventually found a donor from Germany and Beth had her transplant in April, 2002, spending six weeks in almost total isolation afterwards. To get her through all these treatments Beth received over 85 blood transfusions.

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By choosing to be a donor you give other people the choice of life.