Terminally Ill Girl's Wish To Freeze Body Approved By Court

A 14-year-old girl, who died in October from a rare form of cancer, wished she could live longer before she succumbed to the illness in the hopes of being brought back to life in the future.

The girl's mother and estranged father have disagreed with the girl's wish. However, the court has agreed to grant the girl's wish as she was brought to the United States to be cryogenically frozen. A High Court judge said that the girl's mother should be allowed to decide what will happen to the body, as reported by BBC News.

During the last months of her life, the teen used the Internet to investigate on cryonics. To hide her identity, she was named JS, sent a letter to the court to wish that she would be allowed to be frozen, hoping to be brought back to life in a hundred years.

"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," JS said in a letter to the court, The Guardian reports.

Cryonics And Its Promise

It is simply described as the technique used where the bodies of those who have died of a serious or incurable disease, such as cancer, are deep-frozen, in the hope of a future cure.

This procedure can just be seen in movies, where a body is preserved and brought back to life in a later time. The science behind cryonics does exist. Dubbed as cryogenics, the theory revolved around how the body can be preserved at really low temperatures.

Over the past years, cryonics have gained immense popularity, especially among those who are suffering from serious diseases, which cannot be cured today. Human bodies are stored at extremely low temperatures so when one day, a cure has been discovered, they can be brought back to life.

According to The Telegraph, up to date, there are roughly 2,000 people signed up for cryopreservation and about 200 have already been frozen. There are only three known companies who perform cryonics, two in the United States and one in Moscow.