Reagan Foundation Expresses Outrage At Auction Of Purported Former President's Blood

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES, May 21 (Reuters) - Ronald Reagan's foundation expressed outrage on Monday at a British company's auction of what it says is a vial of the late U.S. president's blood taken at the hospital where he was treated after a 1981 assassination attempt.

PFC Auctions, a company based in Guernsey in the United Kingdom, announced on Sunday that it would sell the vial of blood in an online auction set to end on Thursday.

The vial was taken at George Washington University Hospital on March 30, 1981, after Reagan was wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., PFC Auctions said on its website. It is said to have come from a person whose late mother had worked at a medical lab.

"If indeed this story is true, it's a craven act and we will use every legal means to stop its sale or purchase," John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said in a statement.

The website for PFC Auctions said the latest online bid for the vial stood at 6,270 British pounds ($9,910). A PFC Auctions representative could not be reached for comment.

The website for PFC Auctions showed a picture of the blood-filled vial with a label stuck to it showing the president's name.

Reagan suffered a punctured lung and internal bleeding when he was shot by Hinckley outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. Hinckley was later found not guilty by reason of insanity. He is allowed to visit his family away from the psychiatric hospital where he is being treated.

Heubusch said his foundation had spoken to the hospital where Reagan was treated and was assured an investigation was under way into "how something like this could possibly happen." A spokesman for the hospital declined to comment.

Also posted on the PFC site was an image of a form from Bio-Science Laboratories that lists George Washington Hospital as the source of the vial, along with a statement from an unnamed person offering the vial for sale.

The seller wrote that the vial came from his or her late mother, who took it from her workplace at Maryland-based Bio-Science Laboratories, where blood work and testing were done for George Washington Hospital.

The seller said he or she had contacted the California-based Ronald Reagan Library and Museum, which is run by the late president's foundation, months ago and had been told that Reagan's family would like to have the vial given to them.

"I told him that I didn't think that was something that I was going to consider ... and that I was a real fan of Reaganomics and felt that President Reagan himself would rather see me sell it rather than donating it," the statement said.

A spokeswoman for the foundation declined to comment on the seller's claim to have spoken to the library. (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Bill Trott)

Also on HuffPost:

Comments

[venice6]

07:42 PM on 05/25/2012

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/62848_157420237615108_153964677960664_405842_2536021_n.jpg

who needs blood when you have facts and history.

[Really I B Waiting]

10:50 PM on 05/23/2012

Business is business.

[peterphx12]

05:38 PM on 05/23/2012

For a guy who sold American jobd to the Chinese...frankly I don't give a damn.

[bhaines213]

02:37 PM on 05/23/2012

This doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the story of Henrietta Lacks. She was poor and without health insurance. A tissue sample of her cell line was used in research without her knowledge or permission. A lot of people made a lot of money off of that research but none of it was shared with her family. She didn’t even get any recognition for her contribution to cancer research until a journalist wrote “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. If Reagans blood or tissue samples shouldn’t have been taken without the family’s permission, then the same should be true of everyone.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Henrietta-Lacks-Immortal-Cells.html

[dbrett480]

01:55 PM on 05/23/2012

The Foundation has every right to be outraged. The person who has the blood should also be arrested for possession of stolen property, as they had no right to take the blood anyway.

[yovinny100]

12:02 PM on 05/23/2012

I'm sure Grover Norquist will buy it and masturbate to it every night before going to sleep in his Sponge Bob p.j.'s.

Troubling visual, perhaps, but not as troubling as the damage he's done to this country.

[whoringthings]

11:30 AM on 05/23/2012

Outrage over free market that sells Saint Roney's blood? Hmmm.

[yovinny100]

12:04 PM on 05/23/2012

Don't forget, it's a free market unless you're selling pot, porn or womens health services.

If I had the money, I'd buy it just so I could pour it in a pig sty.

[alice sophia]

11:03 AM on 05/23/2012

Who would want or care about that cowboy-clown's blood if it was being given away free as another cereal box prize, Cracker Jack prize or McDonnell,s kid;s meal toy? Just read DRIFT, by Rachel Maddow, and she nails that Star Wars Idiot better than anybody so far.

[storgrisdemo]

12:40 PM on 05/23/2012

You left out "fake" before the word cowboy...

[hpd4612]

09:12 AM on 05/23/2012

I wish we could infuse this whole country with some Reagan blood.

[storgrisdemo]

11:51 AM on 05/23/2012

Yeah, .. and infest Americans with Reagan dementia.. ooooops that has already infested the R/Teaklanners.. But hey, Rmoney is doing the honor of wishing he could destroy the USSR... (which by the way, no longer exists) now it a darn old capitalistic Russia.. we will hear soon from Romney workers, that Ivan IV started communism in the 1400's when he claimed he was the Czar.. Run run, run and hide, the Russians are coming..

[Joe Brindley]

08:36 AM on 05/23/2012

At least if it's Reagan's blood it was all American, not part liberal.

[storgrisdemo]

12:06 PM on 05/23/2012

yup, and wasn't it so cool and heroic, that he was a buddy and worker for Joe McCarthy and Dirty Dickie Nixon... and turned in a long list of evil communist Jews, in Hollywood.. he believed that every Jew in America was a communist..
Shame, shame, wasn't it evil that your parents and grandparents kept on watching the Jewish "commie" Lucille Ball TV shows? Katherine Hepburn was very un-American when she was in the movie, "The African Queen" with that commie, Humphrey Bogart.

[archstantn]

08:30 AM on 05/23/2012

So long as there's any chance scientists could use the blood to clone the Gipper back to life, the vial should be buried beneath the ocean . There it could remain with nuclear material, PCB's, H5N1, and other hazardous substances.

[capn moose]

12:31 AM on 05/23/2012

A) I doubt the president's blood would have not been well guarded, so doubt this is authentic; B) On the outside chance it is real, the Brits should join with the U.S. in simply going in a seizing the blood. It is illegal in both countries for blood of a patient to be stolen be staff or anybody else. C) legal or not, this type of ghoulish behavior must be stopped.

[ItsGettingWeird]

12:12 AM on 05/23/2012

Vampires have a powerful voting bloc within the Republican party.

[Xanadutu]

11:13 PM on 05/22/2012

Man -- The price has risen to ONLY a little shy of $10,000???
I thought a LOT of people would be will to pay a heck of a lot more to get a
'Drop of Blood from reagan'!!

[storgrisdemo]

12:13 PM on 05/23/2012

The Reagan Foundation, immediately claimed Reagan's blood is theirs... A religious shrine can be built, and will be the most holy place in America for the R/Teaklanners... bigger and more grand that the Mormon Temple in Utah..

[bigmaddy]

11:10 PM on 05/22/2012

Anything to make a buck, republicans should love it.

[bhaines213]

02:14 PM on 05/23/2012

I agree. I like the seller’s statement –“I was a real fan of Reaganomics and felt that President Reagan himself would rather see me sell it rather than donating it".