You might think cryogenics — the branch of
physics dealing with the production and effects of very low
temperatures; often mentioned in relation to freezing a person's body in
the hopes of bringing them back to life in the future — are straight
out of science-fiction, but it turns out some people are turning to them
for real-life solutions.
The latest brave
volunteer to undergo the freezing process, with the hope to be revived
in the future, is a 14-year-old girl from Britain. Last month, a girl
suffering from cancer, known as JS (for legal reasons), was granted the
right to be frozen, following a lengthy court case surrounding the moral
and ethical questions of her brave decision.
According to the CNN,
the girl's divorced parents disagreed over her wish to be frozen after
her death so she wrote a letter to a High Court judge asking it to
intervene in the case.
"I don't want to die but I know I am going to... I want to live longer... I want to have this chance," she wrote.
As
a result, judge Peter Jackson granted JS right to be frozen after her
death on 17 October, and her body was taken to the U.S. to become the
first British child to be cryogenically frozen.
The
young girl hoped that by being frozen, she might one day be 'woken up'
and cured of her rare form of cancer. "I'm dying, but I'm going to come
back again in 200 years," she told a relative.
After
being diagnosed with cancer last year, JS reportedly began researching
cryonic preservation – the process of freezing a dead body with the hope
to be revived in the future – but required the permission of her
parents to be allowed to take part in the science.
Last
month, the judge granted JS' mother sole right over the decision and
said the child was a "bright, intelligent young person" with full
capacity. However, he also highlighted that his ruling did not concern
cryogenic preservation itself, but the right to decide whether to take
part in the process.
Despite being too ill to
attend court, JS wrote to the judge to say: "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."
JS
and her mother have also been granted an injuction against the child's
father which prevents him from trying to alter arrangements concerning
his daughter's body.
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