. But even this can cause cell damage as ice crystals form and break apart the cells.
Luckily, these problems are also being solved.
Only this week, as I write, there is news of a liver-preserving machine which you can hook a liver up to. This device will then keep the liver alive, by emulating a living body. In essence, the liver does not know that it is no longer in a body, and continues functioning. 
Now that this has been done for livers, it can be expected that similar news will be announced in the next few years for almost every other organ.
The shortfall problem, that there are simply not enough donors per required organ, can be fixed with artificial organs.
Organs are generally very difficult to replace, as they do quite a number of different things. But some of the simpler organs have already been successfully replicated.
An obvious example is the heart. The first successful artificial hearts (not a pacemaker, but an actual pump) were created in the 1982. While their recipients lasted only 112 days and two years respectively after surgery, that’s still time that the patients didn’t have without the hearts.
This artificial heart design was primitive by present-day standards, but encouraged further research.
Artificial hearts are usually used as “bridges”, to keep a patient alive while waiting for a donor to supply a “real” heart. But sometimes, the artificial heart’s help gives the patients’ own heart enough rest to heal itself, and a transplant is no longer needed. 
Almost every organ can be replaced, given enough time and research.
Ears can be replaced with cochlear implants.
Eyes can be replaced, but artificial eye resolution is still very low. There are many different threads of research ongoing in this area. 
Some of the more “bag-like” organs can be very successfully replaced right now with artificial versions.
Bladders, trachea, arteries; these can all be created from stem-cells and/or plastics.
Legs and arms deserve a full chapter. There is some amazing work being done in these areas.
The most difficult organs (in the body itself) to replace are the pancreas, liver, lungs, and kidneys. These perform specialised functions, and currently, artificial versions are not small enough to implant.
I expect to hear within a year or two of the first completely artificial kidney implant. There already is an implantable artificial kidney available, but it’s a lot larger than a natural kidney.
In the future, I expect that the only organ that you will not be able to replace, will be the brain itself. Not because it can’t be moved, of course, but because the brain is your identity – there is no point replacing your brain with someone else’s.
However, having said that, if your entire body was failing, you could transplant your brain into a younger body.
There are a number of reasons you should not hope for this to happen, though.
For one example, in order for you to do a brain transplant, there must be a younger body available for you to transplant into. But if a younger body is available and it is healthy, then it makes greater ethical logic to offer its organs to save multiple people, instead of just you.
For you to get a whole new body all to yourself, you would need to provide it yourself, and i can’t think of any legal or even close to ethical way that you could do this!
If it turns out you need a whole new body, you’re probably better off looking into brain uploads instead, which will be discussed later in the book. Currently, brain uploading is not possible, but the technology should be ready soon; probably sooner than the first successful brain transplant.
In this chapter, you learned a short history of organ transplants.
There is currently a shortfall of available donor organs.
Artificial replacements are available for some organs, and others are on the way.
The only organ that will never be replaced fully is the brain, but we’ll talk more about that in a later chapter.