A young teen in London specifically requested that she be frozen, not buried, when she passes away, in hopes that she can live again when science finds a cure for cancer in the future. She won a historic legal battle and had her wish granted when a judge ruled in her favor.
The 14-year-old girl, who had a rare form of cancer, wrote to a judge before her death, saying,
I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they may find a cure for my cancer and wake me up.
She believed that cryogenic preservation would give her that chance.
Her plea convinced High Court Judge Peter Jackson to grant her final request in what Jackson said is the first case of its kind in England – and likely the world, Fox News reports. He called the case, “an example of the new questions that science poses to the law.” Since the girl was too sick to go to court, Jackson visited her in the hospital and was impressed with how “valiant” she was in dealing with her approaching demise.
The teen’s divorced parents were in disagreement over their daughter’s decision. Her father was against it, though he later softened his stance on the matter. Her mother, on the other hand, fully supported cryonics, according to the BBC.
Before her death, the teenager researched on cryonics and became convinced it was her best shot. Cryonics is the process of freezing and preserving a body, in the hopes that it can be resuscitated in the future with advances in science and technology. It is a controversial procedure – no one who has undergone cryonics has been revived – but there are facilities in Russia and the USA where bodies are frozen with liquid nitrogen at temperatures lower than -130C.
Jackson says the girl chose the most basic preservation option, costing about 37,000 pounds, or $46,000. He allowed the girl’s mother to decide what should happen to the body.
The girl died in October, and her body was flown to the US for the procedure.
