Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

Dr. John Lattimer should have his medical license revoked- posthumously. That's because of his outrageous comparison of JFK to Thorburn's patient from the 1890s. To have ever drawn a parallel between the two is an outrage. Consider:

1. Thorburn's patient was rendered immediately unconscious, while Kennedy NEVER lost consciousness (until the fatal head shot). 

2. Thorburn's patient suffered massive spinal cord damage. Think of the spinal cord like a piece of licorice, and then imagine taking heavy pliers and scrunching the licorice. That's what happened to Thorburn's spinal cord at the level of C5. But, JFK suffered NO spinal cord damage. Not a whit.

3. Thorburn's patient was largely paralyzed. Of all his bodily muscles, only 4 were not paralyzed: the biceps, the deltoid, the brachialis, and the supinator. That's it! All of his other bodily muscles were completely and totally paralyzed. But, JFK suffered NO paralysis at all. None. 

4. Modern knowledge of neurology explains what happened to Thorburn's patient; it is no mystery. Muscles have tone. Muscle tone refers to the low-level of contraction that occurs within muscles all the time. Those who are physically active, such as athletes and manual laborers, tend to have more muscle tone than those who are sedentary. Muscle tone works to shorten the muscles. But, the reason the muscles don't shorten very much is because there are opposing muscles which also have muscle tone, and those muscles are working to stretch the muscles they oppose. It results in a steady state, a counterbalance, like two same-weight kids balanced on a see-saw. 

But, what happens to the other kid when one kid is removed? Now, the counterbalance is gone, isn't it? Well, it's the same way with the muscles. When you remove the stretch of the opposing muscles, muscle tone is going to cinch up the muscles that are still active, still innervated, still toned. And that's what happened to Thorburn's patient to put him into the "Thorburn position". 

But, Kennedy never lost innervation to any of his muscles, that we know of. Furthermore, his muscular reactions were immediate. Upon emerging from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, he was already reacting.

       
But, Thorburn's patient's immediate reaction was paralysis and unconsciousness. It never said he went into spasm. And even later, it looked more like a muscular shortening, a muscular closing, but not a spasm. Compare these two:

Simply put: Thorburn's patient's muscles crept closed by the action of unresisted muscle tone. That's it! That's all that was going on in what we see. JFK, in contrast, was reacting to being shot in the throat. He looks like he's trying to cough up a bullet from his airway. He may have been pulling on his tie to loosen his shirt so he could breathe better. And he is thrusting his elbows out to expand his chest, which also aided his breathing. To say that all of that purposeful muscular activity was due to involuntary cord reflexes- as when a doctor taps on your patellar tendon with a reflex hammer and your lower leg pops out- is nonsense. Complete, total, utter, ridiculous nonsense. 

It's often said that John Lattimer was an independent medical investigator, not affiliated with the US government. That's not true. He had a long career as a military doctor. He was General Patton's doctor. Then he was a medical officer during the Nuremberg Trials. And he lived well. He had a lavish 30 room house in New Jersey that was filled with so much paraphernalia from WW2, it was like a museum. 

And he lived long too- until 2007. And that means you can't say he couldn't have known better how preposterous his theory was due to the limitations of medical knowledge at the time. I'll let Thorburn off the hook that way, but not Lattimer. 

John Lattimer should have his medical license revoked- posthumously- for unethical conduct because he has got blood on his hands in the cover-up of the murder of John Kennedy.