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Cryonics, the process of preserving the body by freezing it in low temperatures, raises the possibility of patients with terminal diseases like cancer to cheat death. However, patients may face a host of problems like isolation and depression if they are successfully brought back to life.

It seems that scientific and medical innovations are still seeking the Holy Grail as they find a way to make humans immortal. The search for the cancer cure and any other treatment to eradicate fatal diseases continue with cryonics offering a way to cheat death while the said cure is still being discovered.

The case of the 14-year old British girl, who was awarded the right by the court to undergo cryonic preservation, brings to light once more the possibility of living longer. The body of the British teenager is now preserved in a cryonics facility in the United States as reported by The Guardian.

Cryonics, not cryogenics as many people know, has been available since the 1960s. In 1967, James Hiram Bedford, who died of cancer, is the first person to undergo cryonics and his body is now being kept in the Alcor Life extension Foundation in Arizona.

The process is expensive because of the complexity of the procedure, which relies on speed as a crucial element. The British girl's family with the help of donors needed to raise as much as £37,000 pounds possibly including transfer. In the United States, the cost for the Cryonics procedure is at an estimated $30,000 dollars as reported by CBC News.

There is no known medical case that a cryonics patient was successfully resuscitated. There are many questions raised by the procedure not just ethical ones. A primary concern if the patient does wake up is the possibility that cognitive functions are altered, meaning the person may not have any recollection of past life.

Given the case of the British girl, she wrote about wanting to live longer even if it means waking up after a hundred years. She may not have realized that everyone she knows and loved may be gone forever. Bioethicists fear that such patients may experience isolation and even depression as reported in BBC News.