A 14-year-old cancer patient who died in London on October 17 has been cryogenically frozen in the United States. She wished for her body to be preserved in the hope that she can be “woken up” and cured of the disease, hundreds of years later, The Telegraph reported on Friday.
The girl, identified as JS, had appealed to the High Court of Justice in England after her divorced parents had varied views on her decision. As she was a minor, she needed both parents’ consent to take the case forward, but she had to resort to seeking a court order because her father, whom she had not met since 2008, did not agree with her decision.
“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,” she said in her letter to the high court. “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.”
Days before her death, Justice Peter Jackson granted her her wish, which included allowing her mother alone the right to decide what could be done with her body. He had emphasised that his ruling was not related to cryo-preservation. Following the judgment, her body was frozen by Cryonics UK and taken to a facility in the US.
After pronouncing his verdict, the judge had suggested that it was probably time to consider “proper regulation” of cryogenic preservation. The process is currently unregulated and is beyond the ambit of the country’s Human Tissue Act of 2004, as cryogenic preservation of human bodies (process pictured above) was “not contemplated” when the legislation was passed. The Human Tissue Authority currently governs only the preservation of sperm and embryos.
The 14-year-old is one of only 10 Britons and the only British child to be cryogenically preserved. Her maternal grandparents raised the more than £37,000 (around Rs 31.22 lakh) required for the cryonic process. Justice Jackson had barred any news of the process from being published till a month after the girl’s death and also directed that the names of her parents and other specific details be kept confidential.
Cyro-preservation involves cooling cells, and in this case the whole body, to very low temperatures to prevent any damage from enzymes or other chemical sources. Cryonics UK claims that suspending a dead person in liquid nitrogen soon after death can “ prevent further deterioration of the body indefinitely.” In theory, proponents hope that when medical science advances enough to cure the disease that killed the person involved, their body will have been kept in a state fit enough to receive the treatment.
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