A controversial X Factor-style website offering desperate patients the chance to plead for a kidney is being launched in the UK.
Matching Donors allows US patients to make emotional appeals via the internet to persuade potential donors to volunteer organs to keep them alive.
Some cry, sing, or put their children in front of the camera to beg people to save their life.
The website will allow UK patients to go private and bypass Britain's anonymous NHS scheme, where a medical panel decides who is in most need of an organ.
The non-profit organisation has matched around 250 strangers, more than twice as many as the NHS scheme, according to ITV.
There are 6,500 kidney patients in the UK waiting for a donor to save their life, but far less on the donor list, meaning three people die every day.
Matching Donors allows patients and donors to exchange messages A lucky few get theirs from a living donor - a person who decides to help others by living the rest of their life with just one kidney.
But only 117 people have donated kidneys in this way in the UK.
Those that do have to give their organ to the NHS - and so never know who received it, or have any choice who gets it.
But Matching Donors allows those in need of a transplant to make online pleas to donors, who can then choose who they give their kidney to.
The Human Tissue Authority (HTA), the UK's transplant watchdog, carried out a review which found the website could charge up to £377 for patients to register.
The website - which makes it clear that it is illegal to offer or receive payment for organs - claims "many patients" get their transplant within six months of signing up.
A donor (left) meets a stranger whose life she saved (pic: Matching Donors) Matching Donors spokesman Paul Dooley told ITV: "We have wanted to come to England for the longest time. We have the ability to take our system to the UK and save their lives."
Potential donor Rebecca Rogers, from Ramsgate, Kent, who has already signed up to the US version of the site, said: "With the American system you're personal and bonding with them.
"I like knowing who I am going to give my kidney to. You don't get that in the UK. You just go to the hospital and they expect you to give it up like that."
Allan Marriott-Smith, director of strategy and quality at the HTA, said: "We are not yet clear how it will operate here and the legal implications, and we have not had a conversation with the charity about these issues.
"Once we have more information, we can advise members of the public considering the possibility of arranging a donation through this route."
