A 14-year-old girl in the U.K., who died of cancer, received her final wish of being cryogenically frozen in the hopes of eventually prolonging her life. The girl, who is being addressed as JS for legal reasons, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, and when she was told it was terminal, she began researching cryonic preservation. However, the act of being cryogenically frozen is, as The Telegraph puts it, a “leap of faith” and relies on medical procedures that may not even be created.
The girl’s decision was met with controversy, as her two divorced parents were split on the decision with her father being completely opposed to the idea. Her mother began legal proceedings with the help of a solicitor to make it happen. Unfortunately, JS was too sick to attend court, but wrote to the judge:
“I think being cryo-preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years’ time. I don’t want to be buried underground. I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they might find a cure for my cancer and wake me up.”
Judge Peter Jackson ruled to leave the girl’s fate up to her mother and didn’t specifically rule on cryonic preservation. But JS got her wish and was taken to a storage facility in America. The judge also granted an injunction preventing JS’ father from making arrangements on what to do with his daughter’s body but felt his sorrow: “No other parent has ever been put in his position. It is no surprise that this application is the only one of its kind to have come before the courts in this country — and probably anywhere else.”
(Via The Telegraph & The Guardian)