UNFULFILLED DESIRE

Life Eternal

THE British national daily newspaper The Guardian published a news report that was later republished in The Times of India on 19 Nov, 2016, under the title Dying girl gets wish to have her body frozen.

LONDON: The teenager's instructions were explicit: she didn't want to be buried, but to be frozen—with the hope that she could continue her life in the future when cancer was curable.

"I want to live and live longer and I think that in the future they may find a cure for my cancer and wake me up," the 14-year-old wrote to a British judge before her recent death. She said "being cryopreserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up—even in hundreds of years' time.”

Her plaintive words convinced high court judge Peter Jackson to grant her final wishes in what he called the first case of its kind in England, and possibly the world.

The judge said the girl had chosen the most basic preservation option at a cost of about £37,000 ($46,000) after extensive research. Cryonics is the practice or technique of deepfreezing the bodies of those who have died of an incurable disease, in the hope of a future cure.


The desire for eternal life is innate in every human being consciously or unconsciously. But it is also a fact that no one has been able to realize this desire. Everyone is destined to die.

The girl's parents disagreed about the procedure, with the mother favouring it and the father initially saying no, though he softened his stance as his daughter's death neared. The girl, who, along with her parents, can't be named for legal reasons, asked the court to designate that only her mother could dispose of her remains so that she could be cryogenically preserved, an unproven technique that some people believe may allow frozen bodies to be brought back to life in the future.

The concept is regarded with scepticism by many in the medical community because it has not yet been proven to be effective. Barry Fuller, a specialist in low-temperature medicine at University College London, said the technology of preserving cells at ultra-low temperatures is promising but cannot yet be applied to large structures like a human kidney. "At the moment we have no objective evidence that a whole human body can survive cryopreservation with cells which will function after re-arming," he said, referring to the process of reactivating cells in the future. He said there is ongoing research with the immediate hope that scientists could use the technology to preserve human organs for transplantation. He said that would be "a major first step into proving the concept.”

The judge called the case that began in the family division of the court unprecedented. Calling the case "an example of the new questions that science poses to the law.” The girl's lawyer, Zoe Fleetwood, told the BBC the girl learned of the favourable ruling on 6 October, 11 days before her death. "She was delighted," said Fleetwood, adding that the girl described the judge as a hero. His ruling cleared the way for the girl's remains to be taken to a specialist facility in the US for the start of the preservation process. Lawyers say that has been done, but details have been kept private.

The girl was too ill to attend court proceedings, but Jackson visited her in a hospital. He said he was impressed by the "valiant way" she dealt with her impending death from a rare form of cancer. He said she spent her final months researching cryonics on the internet. "I don't want to be buried underground," she wrote at the end of her note. "I want to have this chance. This is my wish."

Medical experts say cells once damaged during freezing cannot be converted to living tissue. In spite of what they say, there have been about 250 people spending huge sums cryo-preserving their bodies with thousands more having already paid up to do the same when they die. This desire to live eternally is not only the desire of a British girl. It is innate in every man and woman, consciously or unconsciously. But it is also a fact that no one has been able to realize this desire. Everyone is destined to die. According to a survey the average age of a human being is about 72 years. Why is this disparity between human desire and actual fact? A study of man shows that, according to God’s creation plan, he is born with a complete personality. In terms of his creation, there is no defect in his personality. Then why it is that no one is able to achieve the goal of eternal life? When the creation is perfect, the desire of human beings must also be perfect.

This disparity poses a great question. The answer is only one, that is, eternal life is not possible on the planet earth. It requires a new world, that is, Paradise. We have to make ourselves deserving candidates for Paradise. Only in this way can eternal life be achieved that is, in the Paradise which is attainable in the world Hereafter.