A 14-year-old girl who wanted her body to be preserved, in case she could be cured in the future, won a historic legal fight shortly before her death. The girl, who was terminally ill with a rare cancer, was supported by her mother in her wish to be cryogenically preserved — but not by her father.
She wrote to the judge explaining that she wanted “to live longer” and did not want “to be buried underground”.
The girl, who died in October, has been taken to the US and preserved there.
A High Court judge ruled that the girl’s mother should be allowed to decide what happened to the body.
The details of her case have just been released.
The teenager, who lived in the london area and cannot be named, used the internet to investigate cryonics during the last months of her life. The judge, Justice Peter Jackson, visited the girl in hospital and said he was moved by “the valiant way in which she was facing her predicament”.
His ruling, he said, was not about the rights or wrongs of cryonics but about a dispute between parents over the disposal of their daughter’s body.
It was brought to court for the first time on 26 September and the judge made his decision on 6 October.