TRAGIC TEEN’S FROZEN BODY IN £10 SLEEPING BAG
THE LAST RESTING PLACE OF BRAVE CANCER SCHOOLGIRL,14
THIS is one of the freezer tanks in the last resting place of Britain’s first cryogenic child.
Our reporter saw the stark conditons in which the body of the 14-year-old cancer victim is being suspended upside-down inside a £10 sleeping bag.
SUSPENDED in a £10 Walmart sleeping bag while tied to a coffin-shaped board, this is the frozen tomb where Britain’s only cryogenic child now rests.
The 14- year- old girl’s body is hung upside-down in temperatures of minus 196C while awaiting still- unknown techniques to bring her back to life.
Before she died from cancer last month, the teenager was confident of her immortality and predicted to her uncle she would live again 200 years from now.
Today is her 20th day inside her Cryostat – a huge human Thermos flask from which she hoped one day she will emerge and be cured of her cancer.
The girl’s body was flown from Britain to the US and the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township, Michigan, last month following a bitter legal battle between her divorced parents.
Preserve
The teenager’s corpse – referred to by the firm as “a patient” – is now suspended in liquid nitrogen.
The company’s chief operating officer Andy Zawacki explained: “It is almost like they float once inside,”
“We store up to six patients inside each Cryostat and they are suspended upside down on their boards.
“Patients are wrapped in everyday normal sleeping bags, the kind you can buy at the local store.
“They are nothing special but we have found they absorb liquid nitrogen very well and help preserve the body.
“Each patient, while strapped to their board, is then hoisted above a Cryostat and we lower them in. “Their bodies are held by restraints while we leave a gap between their head and the end of the boards so they don’t touch the floor. “We have them upsidedown for safety reasons so if there is a liquid nitrogen leak it will be the head that is protected most as that is at the bottom. “Effectively the bodies hang like modern mummies until we hope science will become so advanced they are brought back to life.
“The aim is that by t he t i me t hey are defrosted a cure will have been found for whatever killed them.”
Before her death in a London hospital on October 17, her father, who the girl had not seen since 2007, was opposed to her plans to be frozen, while her mother was in support.
The teen took her battle to the High Court to fight for the right for her mum to have sole control of her remains.
Mr Justice Peter Jackson granted the girl, referred to as JS in proceedings, her wish 11 days before she died.
Her father has since revealed how bitter and destructive the family rift had been while other family members suggested JS had been brainwashed into thinking she could cheat death. The dad was banned, in line with his daughter’s wishes, from seeing her or her body as he fought his own cancer battle.
Resting
Unknown to him, at one point she was only a few floors away as the two were treated in the same London hospital.
Without a legal ban, the father could make an application to visit his daughter’s body in the US.
Mr Zawacki said: “Relatives are allowed to visit. With cryonics we hope it works but we don’t know, so it is possible this is their final resting place. For
relatives, it is still a loss to them, they hope it is temporary but they do like to come in. One gentleman brings flowers each year for his sister.”
Asked if they would specifically allow JS’s father into the facility, Mr Zawacki said: “We would be respectful of another country’s law.”
The £37,000 cost of JS’s preservation was paid by maternal grandparents.
But a cousin of her mother said there had been misgivings on that side of the family over her plans.
Before her arrival in America, JS’s body was prepared by Cryogenic UK, the only British organisation working in the unregulated field.
After she was legally pronounced dead the team cooled down her body before performing “perfusion” during which the blood is replaced with a medical antifreeze.
She was then packed in dry ice and placed in an airtight container before being flown to Detroit airport.
Once at the institute, an unassuming warehouse on an industrial estate, her body was further cooled over five days before being placed in her Cryostat.
The institute, one of only three such facilities in the world, has 145 human bodies. Pets are cryogenically frozen for a smaller fee. University lecturer Roger Eyre, 64, is one of more than 120 Brits who will be cryogenically frozen.
He has signed up to America’s other facility, Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona. Bizarrely, his mum’s head is stored there.
Roger, of Plumstead, South East London, became fascinated by cryogenics when as a 15-year-old schoolboy he watched an episode of Whicker’s World called Immortality Incorporated in 1967.
“Before then I could never accept death,” he said. “I still can’t now.
“Some people find it odd about wanting to be frozen but what is the alternative – lying dead or being cremated. That is final. At least through cryogenics we have a chance of life again.”
Bodies hang like modern mummies until science becomes so advanced they are brought back to life.