14-Year-Old British Girl Cryogenically Frozen In Clinton Township

CLINTON TOWNSHIP (WWJ) - After a court order, the body of a British teen with incurable cancer is now in a cryonic state at a Detroit area facility.

Andy Zawacki facility manager of the Cryonics Institute in Clinton Township confirmed Monday that the 14-year-old girl — known only as "JS" — is there with 144 other bodies.

She arrived a couple of weeks ago, Zawacki said, and is stored in a 10-foot high white fiberglass vat of liquid nitrogen, upside down, with five other bodies.

Zawacki said the business opened in 1977, but admitted that no one has yet been revived from a cryonic freezing.

Talking to WWJ's Sandra McNeill on Monday, he insisted "it's not a scam."

"A scam is when you tell someone you're gonna do something; you take their money and then you don't do what you're told," Zawack said. "We're very open about what we do. We tell people that there might be no chance at all, but we only say that you do the research and if this is something you want to take part in than this is a service that we provide."

Zawacki said his is one of just three such facilities in the world and serves patients from as far away as Australia. He said JS is the youngest.

"The whole idea is, hopefully, what killed these people today — the diseases and so forth — will be curable in the future and hopefully the freezing damage will be reversible and revival will be possible," Zawacki said. "If it is, that's great; and if not, you have nothing to lose and life to gain."

Zawacki said there are no guarantees, other than "we'll do our best." (Video above explains the process).

According to a report by BBC News, JS was supported by her mother in her wish to be cryogenically preserved, but not by her father who fought the decision — worried about what would happen to the teen if she ever was revived alone, far in the future. He attacked cryonics firms for "selling false hope."

"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," he said in an interview published by the Daily Mail on Saturday.

JS, who lived in the London area, wrote to the judge explaining that she wanted a chance "to live longer" and did not want "to be buried underground." A High Court judge ruled that the girl's mother should be allowed to decide.

The cost of a lifetime cryonics treatment at the Clinton Townshio facility is an one-time payment of $28,000, Zawacki said, and most people pay it through life insurance. That cost does not include transportation.

The Cryonics Institute also freezes and stores pets.