New Delhi:
The body of a 14-year-old British girl, who died of cancer, has been cryogenically preserved in the hope that she can be woken up and cured in the future.Â
The girl won a landmark court case during her final days that fulfilled her wish to be preserved in hope of revival of life.
The process involves the freezing of a dead body in the hope that resuscitation and a cure may one day be possible.
The girl's divorced parents had different opinions over wether her wish should be followed, so the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, asked a high court to intervene.
According to a story published in The Telegraph, the girl, known as JS, asked high court judge 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.
“I’m dying, but I’m going to come back again in 200 years,†she told one of her relatives.
Shortly after her death at a hospital in London on October 17, the judge granted JS her wish. JS's body was frozen and taken to a storage facility in the US.
Cryonics can be termed as an experimental process through which people declared dead are frozen in the hope they will be brought back to life with the help of future medical advancements.
What is cryopreservation?
#The cryogenic preservation process needs to begin right after patient's death to to stop brain cells dying through lack of oxygen
#Bodies are first cooled in ice baths to gradually reduce the body temperature
#A BBC report explains that blood and other fluids are removed from the body and replaced with cryo-protectant fluid, stopping ice crystals forming inside, which in turn damages cells
#The bodies are transferred for storage
#The companies put the person into an arctic sleeping bag and lower them into a giant tank, where their temperature continues to be lowered
Whole bodies or just heads can be preserved
#No one has yet been revived after undergoing cryonics
#newsgraphic Cryonics: an experimental process of preserving a body for possible future medical breakthroughs @AFP pic.twitter.com/Df98Y7a5jB
— AFPgraphics (@AFPgraphics) November 18, 2016
(With inputs from agencies)
