The 14-year-old girl’s body has been taken to the US.
A 14-year-old British girl has been cryogenically frozen in Cryonics Institute in Michigan. The girl, whose identity is yet to be revealed and is referred as JS, won a court case in UK following which her body was taken to the US.
CNN reported that the girl died of a rare form of cancer and wanted to be brought back to life in the future. The matter was brought to London’s High Court as a dispute arose between the girl’s parents who are divorced.
Taking note of the girl’s words, Justice Peter Jackson, in his judgment granting permission to start cryogenic procedure, said that the girl had expressed her desire to do so.
“I have been asked to explain why I want this unusual thing done. I’m only 14 years old and I don’t want to die, but I know I am going to. 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,” wrote the girl.
“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. I want to have this chance. This is my wish,” she added.
Though her father, who had not seen his daughter face-to-face since 2008, was against her wish initially, he changed his mind as the court procedures advanced.
Earlier the father said: “Even if the treatment is successful and [JS] is brought back to life in let’s say 200 years, she may not find any relative and she might not remember things and she may be left in a desperate situation given that she is only 14 years old and will be in the United States of America.”
But, he changed his stance saying that he “respected the decisions” of his daughter.
Praising the intelligence of the girl, Jackson said the girl was “a bright, intelligent young person who is able to articulate strongly held views on her current situation” — had the capacity to start legal action.
“Over recent months, JS has used the internet to investigate cryonics: the freezing of a dead body in the hope that resuscitation and a cure may be possible in the distant future,” he said.
The body of the patient, who was a member of the Cryonics Institute at the time of death, reached the institute on October 25, approximately eight days after death. She was the 143rd patient at the institute.
“The patient was then placed in the computer controlled cooling chamber to cool to liquid nitrogen temperature. The human cooling program from dry ice was selected and the time needed to cool the patient to liquid nitrogen temperature was 24 hours. The patient was then placed in a cryostat for long-term cryonic storage,” the Cryonics Institute said in a statement.