A 14 year old girl who suffered from a rare case of cancer won a legal fight to have her body preserved.
The girl got her wish granted to be cryogenically preserved just right after her death in October. Her wish was supported by her mother but not her father. What she did was to write a letter to the judge expressing her desire to live longer because she does not want to be buried underground.
The case won in favor of the girl because it was what her mother also wanted for her and the High Court judge said that the mother should be the one to decide about what will happen to the body. The girl who lived in London learned about cryonics through the Internet during the last days of her life.
Cryogenic preservation is the process by which the dead body is placed in ice baths to reduce the temperature and replacing the blood with cryo-protectant fluid to prevent cells from dying. The body is being kept in an arctic sleeping bag where the temperature is kept low. However, according to scientists, it is not yet a guarantee that they will be able to bring a dead back to life with this process but there is a possibility if a cure will be found in the future.
Below is the teenager's letter to the judge.
"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."
