The right to make decisions about our bodies, provided we don’t harm others, is sacred. That right was today upheld by a High Court judge in approving a 14-year-old London girl’s dying wish to have her body frozen. She did so in the hope one day of coming back to life. This hope clearly gave comfort to a dying person.

Cryonics is, to many of us, absurd. But the right to employ it is not. Wanting to be buried in a fridge rather than in a grave is hardly a big deal. Rising from the dead is one of the oldest human cravings. It is central tenet of Christian faith, whether resurrection is to take place in heaven, hell, a churchyard or the second coming.. Science fiction writers imagine bodies being suspended in time to enable space travel.

14-year-old girl who died of cancer wins right to be cryogenically frozen Read more

The science of low-temperature physics is in its infancy. Cryonicists believe blood can be drained, stored and replaced with antifreeze-like chemicals to prevent crystallisation and the rest of the body preserved intact. Stem cells can be isolated and stabilised. Body parts can be replicated. As a field of research, some of this may yield advances in the understanding of cells and body chemistry. Some may indeed help in preserving simple body parts. But the idea that the infinity of brain cells could be locked down and then resuscitated as a human being remains fanciful. If we wish to live for ever, we must have children.

The world is full of wacky science. In America, the home of hope, over 100 bodies are believed to lie in iced storage, in what their former owners believe is suspended animation. Good luck to them, and to the scientists who charged them £65,000 each.

None of this matters at law. Today’s case is about something different, the rights of individuals and families. The girl, a minor, and her mother wanted cryonics. Her father, who is separated from her mother, did not. He changed his mind on condition he could see his daughter on her death. Her mother and her refused. What right does a teenage girl’s father have?

The answer, in this case, was none. The decision was about the rights of all of us, including in this case a mother and her child, to “own” our bodies. The wider implications extend to the right to die and be helped to die, as to abortion, drug use, cancer cures, alternative medicine and, more controversially, our custodianship of our children. A young girl’s wish to pay for the freezing and storage of her body may be eccentric. That is no reason for refusing it.