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For fifty thousand pounds you might be able to live for ever - or at least your head can be frozen following death, with the hope that decades later life might be revived and your intelligence downloaded into a computer. That’s the belief of three Oxford academics at the University’s Future of Humanity Institute who have set up life insurance policies that will pay US companies to do this and ‘keep their future options alive’.

This makes a fun news story. Of course it’s not clear that such a procedure will work and, even then, being a disembodied head may not be the most interesting of lives. However, it does highlight an increasing scientific interest in ageing and even combatting that universal human enemy, death. Alice said to Humpty Dumpty ‘one can’t help growing older’, but increasing expectations of health care make possible the thought that as science develops it will cure all of our problems.

Having turned fifty this year, I suppose I should be interested in such possibilities of prolonging life. However, I do think there are bigger questions than my personal possible cheating of death. Quality of life seems to be more important, not just for me but for many throughout the world who will never have the capacity to buy into such technology. In addition, as a Christian, the hope of resurrection following death, provides a different way of viewing life...