FROZEN GIRL’S FATHER: SHE WAS SOLD FALSE HOPE

WHEN the father of a cryogenically frozen British teenager first learned of her desperate wish for a ‘second chance’ at life, he sought a glimmer of hope from the US firm which would preserve her body.

His daughter, 14 and dying of cancer, was at the centre of a bitter legal row between her parents over her wish to be put in a deep freeze after her death until doctors might be able to bring her back to life, so he spoke to representatives of the Cryonics Institute in Detroit, Michigan, where the girl’s body is now stored.

‘I believe they are selling false hope to those who are frightened of dying – taking advantage of vulnerable people,’ he told The Mail on Sunday in his first full interview since the extraordinary court case came to light.

‘When I asked if there was even a one in a million chance of my daughter being brought back to life, they could not say there was.’

If by some miracle cryopreserved bodies could be brought back to life in the future, he said, doctors would also have to cure his daughter’s body of cancer.

Speaking in his North London solicitors’ office, the grey-haired father – in his 40s but looking older – raised his voice with anger at the firm he accuses of cashing in on her desperation.

‘I think it would be doubly impossible to both bring her back from the dead and cure her cancer, and companies should not hold out some false hope,’ he said.

The girl, who died of a rare form of cancer in October, wrote a poignant letter to a High Court judge asking for her body to be stored in liquid nitrogen after her death, it emerged on Friday.

She wrote: ‘I’m only 14 and I don’t want to die but I know I’m going to. Being cryopreserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years’ time.’

Mr Justice Jackson granted her dying wish and the girl was ‘cryopreserved’ after her death on October 17 in a procedure costing her maternal grandparents £37,000. In a deeply emotional interview, her father:

Doubted whether the firm pledging to freeze her for hundreds of years would in fact do so;

Claimed he was denied direct contact with his daughter for years by her mother;

he tried to maintain a relationship by sending her photos of the two of them together;

Urged people to donate to cancer charities after a relative’s death, rather than spend it on cryopreservation ‘which seems to have no basis in science’.

The father – who suffers from lymphoma (a form of blood cancer) himself – and at one stage was unknowingly being treated in the same London hospital as his daughter – says he only discovered his daughter had cancer from a distant relative living abroad.

As he struggled with whether to grant his daughter’s wish in her final months, he spoke to representatives from the Cryonics Institute, ‘but they could not answer how cryopreservation would work in any logical way’.

And he asked: ‘In 100 or 200 years’ time, if there are no relatives around, who is going to make sure this firm is still preserving her body, as they promised?’

The girl is identified only as JS. Her father last saw her in 2007, when she was five, after contact was stopped following an acrimonious divorce from her mother.

He stressed he had made numerous court applications to maintain access but claimed the girl’s mother had opposed them all.

‘When direct contact was refused, I tried to maintain a relationship by sending presents, letters and cards through social services,’ he said.

‘In some, I put in pictures of us together when she was aged four to five. I also put in a picture of her half-sister, from my second marriage, and said: “She’d love to meet you.” I tried to build bridges – I loved her – and I wanted to see her but could not.’

His other daughter has not been told about what happened to JS’s body in a bid to protect her, according to a source.

He tried to see JS as she battled her illness but she refused, which he described as ‘incredibly upsetting’.

Later, he only discovered his daughter wanted to be cryopreserved after reading it in court documents, he said.

Although he remains strongly opposed, he eventually agreed to back his daughter’s legal bid for cryopreservation.

’If this was her last wish, then I had to respect that,’ he said.

After the judge visited JS in hospital, when he was ‘moved by the valiant way’ she was facing death, she called him ‘Hero Mr Jackson’.

Her father had tried to set the condition, in return for his approval, that he be allowed to see her body after death. But the girl refused and the court upheld her decision.

Last night, at the office of solicitors Kilic & Kilic, he tearfully explained he simply wanted the chance to say goodbye.

‘I believe it is every father’s right to see their child for the last time,’ he said. ‘I had not seen her since she was five.’

JS’s father – a former cab driver who moved to Britain in the 1980s – insisted that religion played no part in his opposition to cryopreservation.

Speaking through an interpreter, he said: ‘I am not religious and I don’t believe in the afterlife.’

He added: ‘None of the hospital doctors were in favour of her being cryopreserved – none of them think it will ever work.

‘I am no expert, but I am a rationalist, and I put my trust in their medical opinion.

‘If there is any good that can come of my daughter’s death, and this interview, it is that funds are raised for Cancer Research UK, so we can eventually cure cancer.’

He added: ‘To me, that is much more logical than spending money on cryopreserving those who have died.’

The Mail on Sunday contacted the lawyer for JS’s mother yesterday but received no reply.

Dennis Kowalski, president of the Cryonics Institute, denied it was taking advantage of anyone or profiting from people’s fears.

He said the institute was ‘a nonprofit organisation’ adding that they gave ‘no guarantees’ it would ever work, but said even the smallest chance of returning to life was better than the alternative ‘which is zero’.

The Mail on Sunday has made a donation to Cancer Research UK on the father’s behalf in return for this interview. He received no payment.

I asked if there was even a one in a million chance of my daughter being brought back to life. They could not say there was FATHER OF CRYOGENICALLY PRESERVED TEENAGER ‘She refused to let me see her before she died’