Freezing hope
‘Cryonics’, describing the freezing of the freshly deceased in the hope that they may in the future be reanimated, is cryopreservation taken to its extreme. No public funding is available, although adherents may be able to raise funds to assist the process. There is a single decided English case1 related to a child undergoing this process. The reason it came to court was that the competent child’s father opposed his daughter’s wish for cryonic preservation, and the hospital sought a determination on whether it could rely on the child’s decision, and that of her mother, in these circumstances. JS was 14 with a rare cancer. Having been treated, she was now receiving palliative care, and knew that her death was imminent. JS had investigated cryonics and wished to have her soon-to-be-dead body frozen ‘… in the hope that resuscitation and a cure (for her malignancy) may be possible in the distant future.’ The court was told that since the 1960s the process had been performed on a few hundre
