Whether you’re looking to make some cash or give someone another lease on life, living organ donation may be an option for you. While you likely already know that you can donate blood and one of your kidneys, it turns out you can put quite a few other body parts on the market as well, as Newsweek reports. Here’s a sample of the other items listed in the article:

Eyes: Whole eyes cannot be transplanted. But individual components of the eye—namely the lens and the cornea—can.

Intestine: It’s possible, but the risks are so great and the need so rare that intestine donations almost always come from deceased donors.

Pancreas: Another organ of which you can donate a segment. Pancreas transplants are often done to improve quality of life (by reducing or eliminating the need for constant insulin injections in diabetics, for example).

The article also compares the price a kidney fetches in various places around the world. In the U.S., they’re worth an average of $30,000 (albeit on the black market—selling organs is strictly illegal here). But in India, you’d only get $1,500 for that same kidney. Which mirrors the rest of the relationship between U.S. and Indian health care—same care, drastically different price tag.

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Discoblog: Doctors Remove Implanted Heart After Original Heart Heals

Image: flickr / Look Into My Eyes

Jennifer Gilbert needed a kidney, and her aunt, Kimberly Johnson, had one. But instead of removing it through traditional surgery, doctors pulled it out through her vagina. The procedure was done in three hours, and is far less invasive: Johnson, who has three children, said it was easier than childbirth, and was home by the next day.

Instead of the typical five to six-inch abdominal incision, the process involves small pea-sized incisions (in this case, three) in the abdomen and navel, through which cameras are inserted. A bag attached to a hollow tube is then inserted through the vagina. The kidney is cut loose and, using the cameras, doctors guide it into the bag and pull it out through the vaginal opening.

Transvaginal kidney removal, as the procedure is known, has been used in the past on cancerous or nonfunctioning kidneys, and similar removals of gall bladders and appendixes have been done through the mouth and anus. But doctors believe this is the first time the procedure has been done on a healthy organ.

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