The entire body of a 49-year-old woman from Shandong Province has now been stored in a container filled with liquefied nitrogen for a year, reports Xinhua News Agency.
The body of Zhan Wenlian was cryogenically frozen by the Yinfeng Institute of Biological Sciences soon after she died of lung cancer on May 8, 2017.
Over the past year, the container has successfully preserved her body, while consuming 40 liters of liquefied nitrogen each day.
Zhan's case has triggered debates over the ethics of preserving bodies.
If cryopreservation is only used for organ donation, it refers to some legal procedures; however, once it is used for body resurrection, it would be very complex in terms of ethics, said Dai Xin, a law professor at the Ocean University of China.
Zhan's husband said her last wish was to donate her body for medical research and the storage of her body complies with that wish.
It is an innovative probe in biology to seek the development of organ storage and resurrection skills to better serve patients and to promote the donation of bodies, organs and hemopoietic stem cells, said Jia Chunsheng, Vice Chairman of the Yinfeng Institute of Biological Sciences.
In 2015, the body of Chinese author Du Hong, who died of pancreatic cancer, was transported to Los Angeles, where the head was detached and preserved in a container.
Over 300 bodies have been cryogenically frozen worldwide since 1967.
