While America is a young country not as prone as some others to preserving ‘relics’ of the dead, we do appear to have a thing for blood, which, if modern science progresses as some think it might, could result in some interesting historical clones. This article on the subject by El Pais columnist Marcos Balfagon reflects on this odd historical preoccupation, and on the wisdom of someday restoring another Ronald Reagan to the world.
For El Pais, columnist Marcos Balfagon starts off this way:
An online auction house [PFC Auctions] based on the island of Guernsey, a British tax haven, has put up the “for sale sign” for a vial of blood that supposedly came from Ronald Reagan. According to the seller, the sample, now dried out, was taken on March, 30, 1981 at the hospital in Washington that the-then president was taken to in the moments after he was wounded at the hands of a madman. Of course, the news has angered the Reagan family, and through its foundation, denies the authenticity of the sample, as does the U.S. medical profession.
This not the first time – nor will it be the last – that civil relics have been for sale. As mentioned by the magazine The Atlantic, the United States lacks the saints whose alleged remains have been saved through the centuries in Europe – nor has it an officially-recognized church to protect them. To indulge their fetishism, they have to opt for newer remains. The blood-stained sheets of assassinated President Lincoln are preserved, as is the blood-spattered dress Jackie Kennedy wore as her husband was killed in Dallas.
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