With the advent of transplantation, fiction has become fact as viable organs can be removed from the deceased to replace those that have failed in the living. Probably more than a milllion condemned patients have been given a new lease of live thanks to a vascularized organ or a bone marrow transplant. Tomorrow, cell and gene transplantation will open a new chapter in medecine, widening the field of transplantation to include millions of patients with end-stage diseases of vital organs.