Cryo freedom
ON a trip to Disney World in Florida recently I discovered the truth about the frozen fairy tale.
Not the animated musical with Elsa but the urban myth about the real Walt Disney.
After his death in 1966 rumours spread that the pioneering animator had been cryogenically frozen and placed in a secret crypt in Cinderella’s Castle... waiting for scientists of the future to discover the technology to bring him back to life.
But a guide in the Magic Kingdom explained Disney was actually cremated and his ashes are interred in a California a memorial garden. Yet the myth endures as so many want to believe one day death will be defeated and immortality will become reality. y.
Or even that we can suspend our r lives to avoid painful episodes – such as seeinging a loved one die – as Mel Gibson’s character acter did in the 1992 film Forever Young..
This week we learned of a 14-yearrold girl with terminal cancer so scared d of dying that she fought a court battle e for the right to be cryo-preserved.
The bright, intelligent, bubbly youngster had researched the controversial science and convinced a judge she should be granted her dying wish, although her estranged father tried to block the move.
Her letter to the court was heartbreaking. She wrote: “I don’t want to die but I know I am going to die. I think being cryo-preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up – even in hundreds of years’ time. I don’t want to be buried underground.” The teenager died in October and is now suspended in freezing nitrogen at a cryonics centre in Michigan, US. Mr Justice Peter Jackson, who visitedd the girl in hospital and called herr “valiant”, said: “She died peacefully in n the knowledge her body would be pre- served in the way she wished.” But herer mother was so busy organising cryonicscs volunteers to prepare her body that she was not, thet judge noted, “fully available”ble” to her da daughter on the day she died. And whilew her dad eventually came round, h he fears for the 14-year-old if f she is resurr resurrected in the US in 200 years – alone and pos possibly without any memory. The ethical dilemmas raised by this tragedy are as complex as the science. e. I don’t knowk if her mum believes in God,od, or an af afterlife, but I’m sure she and thehe doctors did everything possible to helplp the girlg come to terms with dying.g. But she was determined. ItI must have been a nightmare re decisiondec to send a daughter off intoto an earthly limbo, knowing she’ll stilltill beb suspended in time when theyhey area dead and gone. Perhaps her parents can take solace in the words ords that formed the tagline of Foreverever Young: “Time waits for no man, but true love waits for ever.”