Science of the Day: Terminally-Ill Teen Gets Right to be Cryogenically Frozen

The word “cryogenics” is normally reserved for science fiction, but it’s not just fiction anymore, and one British girl has proved it. 

The Associated Press reports that a 14-year-old girl, who recently died of cancer, won her fight to be frozen in hopes of being revived when science can achieve such a feat. The High Court Judge Peter Jackson granted her final wishes “in what he called the first case of its kind in England — and possibly the world.”

"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 wrote.

The family’s name has not been released for legal reasons, but the girl’s parents disagreed with the $46,000 procedure, with her mother “for” and father “against.”

AP writes, “The girl asked the court to designate that only her mother could dispose of her remains so that she could be cryogenically preserved, an unproven technique that some people believe may allow frozen bodies to be brought back to life in the future.”

The procedure has been met with skepticism from the medical community, writes AP.

"It is no surprise that this application is the only one of its kind to have come before the courts in this country — and probably anywhere else," the judge said. “An example of the new questions that science poses to the law.”