Cryopreservation and the death of legal personhood

In the more than half a century since James Bedford reportedly became the first person to undergo whole body cryopreservation in 1967, the number of cryogenic ‘patients’ and people who have registered to be cryopreserved upon their death has slowly but steadily increased. These preserved ‘patients’ present problems for both bioscience and bioethics. But they also present problems for several core legal principles–including the concept of legal personhood in private law. This article introduces the concept of private law personhood and identifies its three core tenets: private law personhood terminates at death; it is focused on the self-interested individual; and it is ill-equipped to weigh the interests of the individual against those of society. This article argues that each of these core tenets is fundamentally challenged by the existence of cryopreserved individuals, who have an awesome and ongoing physical presence despite being technically dead, but are nonetheless entirely reliant on the care of the living for their ongoing maintenance–even when such care causes the living to suffer harm.