There is so much that is distressing about the case of JS, the 14-year-old British girl with terminal cancer who wished to be cryonically preserved after death, in the hope that she could be revived when a cure for her rare illness had been discovered.
Her mother supported the girl in her wishes; her estranged father did not. So, without the consent of both parents, the child had to apply to the courts for permission for the procedure to take place.
JS and her mother both seem to have been determined to secure the preservation. JS got in touch with a Michigan storage facility and also with a UK charity that offers cryonic preservation and makes travel arrangements. Her maternal grandparents raised the estimated £37,000 to fund the process. After the death of JS, her hospital sent a note to the court, saying that their patient's mother had been too preoccupied with complex postmortem arrangements to be "fully available" for her daughter as she died.
It seems cruel, placing that observation in the public domain, in reference to a woman whose daughter lost her life just a month ago. A lot of people will be familiar with the weird displacement activities that are indulged when a relative is dying. As my father died of cancer, his family fretted over whether he was eating enough and drinking enough water. The last time I offered Dad water, he said to me, very crossly: “Deborah. Enough.”
When my mother was dying of cancer, I got rid of the piano to make space for a bed in the living room, called private ambulance companies and contacted local hospices and care homes, trying with immense futility to arrange for her to be brought the 400 miles from Airdrie to London. Would I allow myself to be taken over by my child’s fantasy of future life? I fear I might.
How easy things were when we all agreed that all good children - and adults - go to heaven. My parents had always seemed to me very pragmatic in their atheism and their belief that this life was all there was. I was hugely shocked when my father, faced with his own death, said: “I didn’t think this would happen to me.” If anything, I was even more shocked when my mother said the same thing, just six years later. I’d had cancer myself in the interim, and had stared hard at the prospect of my own death. I’m absolutely certain that it’s going to happen to me. My doleful preoccupation is with how longI’ve got.
As for the father in the case, who also has cancer, he seems to be the ultimate example of a man who is clever but not wise. His objections included worries that she might be revived in the future and be unhappy and isolated. He thought it through. Unbelievable, really. He took a dying child’s complete fantasy, of a rebirth that medical science does not offer and is never likely to, imagined how things might pan out if this wasn’t a fantasy, and decided he was going to deny his child because his verson of this fantasy didn’t end happily. Also, he’s on benefits, and expressed concern about becoming liable for costs.
Yet one feels for this man too. Even this brief vignette of his psyche explains why he was bitterly estranged from his wife and daughter. Neither mother nor child had seen him for many years. Yet still, when they asked something of him in their baleful situation, he said no. Eventually he came round, saying he would agree if he could see his daughter’s body after she died; they said no, in turn. That’s how high-conflict family fractures go: one person says no and the other says no right back, the first chance they get.
It’s possible too, that it was the need for a court order that made the whole thing real to the mother and daughter, encouraged them to pin down details, check out logistics, make costings, seek funding. The case has certainly made things real for the rest of us.
The judge in the case, Mr Justice Peter Jackson, was at pains to emphasise that in granting permission he was not endorsing cryonics. Rather, he suggested that there was a need for regulation to be drawn up. I can't help feeling that the regulation of a few exploitative, science fiction-based companies can only give an imprimatur of seriousness to ghastly people who exploit the human fear of death. These places don't need regulating. They need exposing as morbid confidence tricksters.
In the absence of religion, humans still have philosophy to help those in distress make sense of life and death. At its best, religion is just a theatrical version of philosophy with a comforting final act. Even the resolutely irreligious understand the importance of a funeral - because funerals are for the living.
That’s why it’s easy to see the mother as even more tragic than the daughter. Perhaps she believed in her daughter’s fantasy too. In that case, she is likely to spend the rest of her life tracking progress in the treatment of her daughter’s illness. If that cure ever comes, this might be the point at which she will have to accept that her child is really dead. It’s a miserable thought. One can only hope that she knew what she was doing - offering false but compassionate hope to a child who didn’t want to die.
Guardian Service