Friday, February 08, 2002
Of Ronald Reagan and my grandfather
Ken Layne has a moving bit about Ronald Reagan’s birthday. “There's something very sad about a guy -- a not-very-special guy who went from sports announcer to actor to president -- who can't sit on the porch and look back on what he did,” he writes. I loathed Reagan when he was president. I cannot remember a single policy of his that I agreed with. What galled me the most was that, being European, I had had no say in the election that brought Reagan to power, yet his misguided choices had a full-on impact on my life. But I wouldn’t wish Alzheimer to my worst enemy, let alone Reagan. My grandfather had it for five years before he died. The worst moment was when he was still able to have conversations but too senile to remember much about his life. He would ask after his grandmother, who had raised him, and his brothers and when we told him they were long dead, he wouldn’t understand why. He did not realise he was not a boy any longer and cried to himself that anyone he held dear was dying. When a man is robbed of his memories, he is robbed of his essence, of what makes him himself. This is why I am in favour of therapeutic cloning. Derived stem cells could help cure Alzheimer and several other diseases. It’s a chance we cannot pass up.
posted by Carla Passino at 11:05 AM
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