CLINTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The remains of a 14-year-old London girl whose dying wish was to be cryogenically preserved with the hope of someday being brought back to life are being kept at the Michigan-based Cryonics Institute.
“It was her wish to be cryopreserved, and her wish was granted,” Andy Zawacki, facility manager at the Cryonics Institute in the Detroit suburb of Clinton Township, said Monday. It is one of three full-service cryonics facilities in the world. The others are in Arizona and Russia.
The unidentified girl’s remains were brought to the facility last month after a British High Court judge granted her wish. She died in mid-October after telling the court she hoped she could be woken after a cure for her cancer is found, even if that’s “in hundreds of years’ time.”
The matter ultimately was resolved in the Family Division of the court because the girl was a minor whose divorced parents did not agree on what should be done. The girl’s father, who initially opposed the procedure, eventually softened his stance as his daughter’s death neared and after she expressed her wishes in a heartfelt letter.
“The idea of freezing whole bodies and bringing them back to life has basically zero scientific support at this point,” said Hank Greely, a professor and director of the Stanford University Center for Law and the Biosciences.
Cryonics Institute was incorporated in 1976 and preserved its first patient in 1977. It now has 145 human patients and 125 pet patients. It has more than 600 “contracted members” who “signed up to be frozen upon death.”
“The ultimate goal is to revive our patients,” Zawacki said. “We refer to them as ‘patients,’ because we don’t believe that they’re corpses. We haven’t given up on them.”
Of the pets housed there, 90 percent are cats and dogs, he said. Other animals include a parrot, an iguana and a hamster.
Cryonics Institute has two types of memberships. A lifetime membership requires a one-time payment of $1,250 and $28,000 to be frozen. An annual membership calls for a $120-a-year payment and $35,000 to be frozen.
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