She believed that she could stay youthful and beautiful by bathing in the blood on young virgins. Because she was extremely rich and powerful she was able to act on those beliefs. Countess Bathory would gather young women, the children of starving peasants from the countryside surrounding her Transylvanian castle. She would bring the girls into her household as servants where she would torture and murder the girls after which she would have other servants, and future victims, bathe her in the girls blood.
I bring up that 16th century story because of a brief news story from yesterday. Elderly mice, when injected with the blood of baby mice, are invigorated and behave as if they were much younger. Scientists are, of course, thrilled at the discovery and predict that some time in the future transfusions of young blood could cure ailments of elderly humans. I see a more terrifying near future.
Billionaire Blood Bank |
We already see this in the black market trade in human organs. In 1999, American billionaire Richard DeVos received the healthy heart of a British woman for the cost of only £60,000. In Mexico there is a thriving criminal trade in kidnapping children to harvest their organs for the American market. Right-wing theorists continually lobby for the total legalization of the human body part market (the Chicago could sell pork bellies along side of human liver futures).
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