Dyer County Clerk Diane Moore, organ recipient Denise Ables of Dyersburg, Mid-South Transplant Foundation Community Outreach Manager Randa Lipman, Dyersburg Mayor John Holden, MSTF Community Outreach Coordinator Zola Burgess, Dyersburg/Dyer County Chamber President Alan Hester and MSTF Community Outreach Coordinator Kip Alexander, BS, joined together at Moore's office on Monday to announce the launch of the State's new online organ and tissue donor registry. Lipman explained the new Web site and handed out posters on the new site.

Now residents across the state who would like to donate their organs to aid patients like Ables may use their computer keys as well as their car keys to give the gift of life to another person.

In the past, residents who wished to be organ or tissue donors could only do so by checking the box on their driver's license. Now, with a new organ and tissue donor registry available online, the task of becoming an organ donor is as easy as surfing the worldwide web.

By visiting tndonorregistry.org, Tennessee residents can choose to become organ and tissue donors with a binding consent contract that will "donate life" to others.

"Tennessee now has more than one way to 'Check Yes Tennessee,'" said Mid-South Transplant Foundation Community Outreach Manager Randa Lipman at a recent press conference at Dyer County Clerk Diane Moore's office in Dyersburg. "For the first time (in Tennessee), an online registry is acknowledged as first-person consent."

Ables, who fell sick in her 20s with kidney failure, has already seen the miracle of life that comes when a family reaches through its darkest hours of grief to give the gift of life.

"(Organ donation) is very important," said Ables. "I was on dialysis and a man was killed in Mississippi. Had it not been for that family, and they could've said 'no' at any time, (I wouldn't have lived.) I got well immediately. I've had my kidney for 20 years-which is just a miracle-they usually only last 12 to 15 years. And I've never been sick in the 20 years that I have had it."

Ables has never been able to meet the family whose decision allowed her a kidney transplant after just 10 months on the list. A decision that not only saved her life, but allowed her to have a family of her own.

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"I got pregnant nine months after this transplant," said Ables, who had two healthy children after receiving her kidney when doctors had said pregnancy was out of the question. "(Both pregnancies were) accidents. I know that God miraculously worked this in line for me. I know that and I know that He will again."

Ables is not only a living tribute to the success of organ and tissue transplants, she is again a patient on the list wishing for the organ that could save her life.

"I have been on the transplant list again for two-and-on-half-years," said Ables, who takes approximately three hours worth of dialysis at home, six days per week. "I'm very much in need of a kidney. It is sad because you know that someone has to die for you to live. But people are dying every day. They are just dying in vain. If something happened to my children, God forbid, I would be beside myself, but I would donate their organs because I know how important it is. To know that someone is walking around out there with my daughter's heart, that says something."

The new website, named Donate Life Tennessee, was enacted by a bill passed unanimously in the Tennessee General Assembly in 2006. It is a completely secure, comprehensive database of all Tennesseans who have given consent to be organ and tissue donors. Officially launched at the State Capitol on Tuesday, April 29, the website will help Tennesseans volunteer to become organ and tissue donors with ease.

"We believe Donate Life Tennessee will increase organ and tissue donation, saving and renewing the lives of thousands of people in Tennessee and across the U.S.," said MSTF Executive Director Judy Shipman in a recent press release. "By securely registering their decision to donate, Tennesseans can be sure their wish to give the gift of life will be carried out."

Although the website and the upcoming Donate Life Tennessee public education campaign hopes to increase the number of registered organ and tissue donors in the state, officials with MSTF remind residents to keep donating money through their County Clerk's office.

"Even though (the law) passed unanimously, it passed without funding," Lipman told Moore at the press conference. "So, it is those dollars you collect that make it possible (for funding the program.)"