Although I’d like to live forever, one method I am not planning to rely on to get there is cryonics. The idea, of course, is that at death your body is frozen on the off chance that at some period in the future technology might exist to revive you. Since the practice of freezing damages the body, even if someday nanotechnology is around that can revive dead bodies (which I doubt will ever happen — hey, I’m an optimist but even I have limits), I doubt a given person’s consciousness would survive the many changes to cells in the brain (see Pet Sematary for what might happen in such a situation).
But if people want to waste their money having themselves frozen, more power to them. Unless they live in France, apparently. Raymond and Monique Martinot spent a lot of money having themselves cryonically frozen. But French prosecutors claim this is strictly forbidden. The BBC quotes a prosecutor as saying, “What has been done is outlawed in France. In this country, bodies must either be cremated or buried.”
This is apparently common in Europe, and people wanting to freeze themselves after death generally depart Europe for the land where even the kookiest ideas generally have legal protection so long as they don’t harm others — the United States. Cryonics here is regulated by states and several openly permit the process.
I cannot imagine what the European objection to freezing is. The only thing I can think of are concerns that the company or other entity responsible for maintaining the cryonics facilities may become insolvent and leave the government or other third party with a bunch of dead bodies to dispose of, but that concern would be easily addressed through an insurance policy or similar mechanism.
Frozen couple sparks heated debate. The BBC, February 26, 2002.