This would not have been possible in France and it is a decision to date unpublished in the United Kingdom, even in the world. A judge granted the wish of a 14-year-old girl (and therefore a minor) who suffered from a rare form of cancer.
Died a month ago, the teenager obtained the right to have her body cryopreserved with the hope that science will make it possible to bring her back to life in the future and to cure her cancer. The court decision was made eleven days before his death.
The British judge based on the wish of the girl who wrote her a letter, not on a scientific basis and the validity of the cryopreservation. The adolescent's mother was in favor of this procedure when her child entered the terminal phase but not her father (the parents are divorced).
For the sum of £ 37,000 (almost € 43,000), the teenager's body was transported to the United States and cryogenic by the Cryonics Institute in the American state of Michigan. Cryogenization is a controversial process of preservation at very low temperatures. In the current state of knowledge, it is not reversible.
For some, the idea is that advances in science will resuscitate them in the future and in good health. The process involves keeping the body at the temperature of liquid nitrogen, around -196 ° C, where all biological activity ceases and therefore cell death. Currently, cryogenization – which is legal in the United States – can only be performed on clinically dead patients.
Cryonics Institute hopes that one day and under very limited conditions, cryopreservation can be applied for terminally ill patients. However, even after clinical death, most of a person's tissue is still alive.
Cryonics Institute has a list of almost 140 bodies in cryopreservation since 1977. Also in the United States, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation has a list of 148 patients since 1967. In Russia, there is the establishment KrioRus.
