Court Grants 14-year-old Girl's Right to Freeze Her Body Till Cure for Cancer is Found... See Shocking Details (Photos)

A 14-year-old girl who was terminally ill with a rare cancer and wanted her body to be preserved in case she could be cured in the future, won a historic legal fight shortly before her death.

Cryonic storage chambers at Alcor, one of two companies in the US that offers to store frozen bodies (Photo: Alcor/Alamy)

 

A 14-year-old girl who died of cancer has been cryogenically frozen in the hope that she can be 'woken up and cured' in the future after winning a landmark court case in her final days.

 

The girl’s divorced parents had disagreed over whether her wish to be frozen should be followed, so the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, asked a High Court judge to intervene.

 

In a heartbreaking letter to the court, she said: "I have been asked to explain why I want this unusual thing done.

 

"I am only 14 years old and I don't want to die but I know I am going to die. I think being cryopreserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up - even in hundreds of years' time.

 

"I don't want to be buried underground. 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.

 

"I want to have this chance. This is my wish."

 

Justice Peter Jackson, the judge who backed JS

 

The girl, known as JS, asked Justice Peter Jackson to rule that her mother, who supported her desire to be cryogenically preserved, should be the only person allowed to make decisions about the disposal of her body.

 

Shortly before her death in a London hospital on October 17, in what is believed to be a unique case, the judge granted JS her wish. Her body was frozen and taken to a storage facility in the US. She is one of only 10 Britons to have been frozen, and the only British child.

 

She told a relative: “I’m dying, but I’m going to come back again in 200 years.”

 

But after a decision that raises profound moral and ethical questions, the judge and the girl’s doctors expressed serious misgivings about the process, which did not go entirely according to plan. Her mother spent the last hours of her daughter’s life fretting about details of the freezing process, which was “disorganised” and caused “real concern” to hospital staff.

 

The judge suggested that “proper regulation” of cryonic preservation – which is currently legal but unregulated  should now be considered.

 

Cryogenic preservation of bodies does not fall under the remit of the Human Tissue Authority, which regulates the freezing of sperm and embryos because it was “not contemplated” when the Human Tissue Act 2004 was passed.

 

Volunteers from Cryonics UK train for the process of freezing a body (Photo: Cryonics UK)

 

Cryonics UK, the non-profit organisation that prepared the girl’s body for transport to the U.S, agreed with the judge.

 

A spokesman for the firm said: “We expect that future regulation will help hospitals to know where they stand legally and procedurally. The opportunity to utilise professional medical assistance may increase as we become a recognised and regulated field.”

 

The case can only now be reported because Justice Jackson ruled that nothing could be published until one month after JS’s death. He also ruled that her parents’ names and other specific details should remain secret.

 

JS, who lived with her mother in London, was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer last year and by August this year she had been told her illness was terminal and active treatment came to an end.

 

She began researching cryonic preservation online - a controversial and costly process that involves the freezing of a dead body in the hope that resuscitation and a cure may one day be possible - and decided she wanted to be frozen after her death.

 

Because she was too young to make a legally recognised will, she had to have the permission of both of her parents to sign up for the process.

 

Source: The Telegraph UK