I was moved to read about the recent case of the 14-year-old girl dying of cancer who was allowed to have her body cryogenically frozen after her death. She had written, “I think being cryo-preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even if in hundreds of years’ time.”

Many people will have had misgivings about this story: the girl’s youth and vulnerability; the dodgy science, even admitted by the experts; the cost of the cryogenic process; and the pathos of the remark by the girl’s father that he had reluctantly agreed to his daughter’s dying wish because “This is the last and only thing she has asked of me”.