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

As I wrote in my letter announcing David Alexander's entry, it's good to have doctors because there are medical issues involved in the JFK assassination, especially in regard to JFK's actions after he got shot, as we can observe in the Zapruder film. 


We have our first new member for 2016: David Alexander, who is a chiropractor. He is our third chiropractor, the other two being myself and Thomas Halle. In case you are wondering, we have 3 MDs in the OIC.

I think it's very good to have doctors in the group because there are medical issues to consider in the JFK case. One that I harp on is the official story of the single bullet that supposedly traversed JFK's neck from back to front, boring a tunnel next to if not through the spinal cord, and yet, he was able to use his shoulder, arm, and back muscles and showed no signs of paralysis. If you sever a nerve, it's like severing an electrical wire: the thing on the receiving end goes dead. But, after that shot, JFK remained upright with his postural muscles working, which was impossible if he sustained such an injury. He had a channel, a tunnel through his neck next to his spinal cord and not a single nerve got cut? 

Then, the other big medical issue is that Dr. John Lattimer MD, who was Eisenhower's personal physician during WW2,and then became the chief medical officer during the Nuremberg trials, came out with his theory that the reason JFK raised his hands to his throat is because he was exhibiting a Thorburn reaction.     

Thorburn was a London physicians at the turn of the century, and he wrote of a case in which a patient experienced a crushing injury of the spinal cord at the level of C5 which proved to be fatal. The guy lived several weeks. But, during that time before he died, he experienced a non-voluntary contraction of his biceps, deltoid, supinator, and brachialis muscles. 

But, there is no comparison to Kennedy; look at the picture.

That guy was unconscious, and his muscles were paralyzed, except for the four that weren't. but Kennedy was conscious and wasn't paralyzed at all. I read Thorburn's original journal article from 1898 where he laid out the clinical case, and what I realized from reading it is that the reason his dying patient wound up in that position is simply because his four remaining functioning muscles had no opposing antagonists to reverse their actions. For example, if you flex your bicep, the only way you can unflex it is if you flex another muscle, your tricep. But, if your tricep doesn't work, then your bicep is going to stay shortened and will keep shortening until it's shortened all the way. So, what Thorburn's patient experienced over several days was "muscle creep". It wasn't a sudden spasm. But, every time he twitched, he contracted the few muscles he had left, and over time, being unopposed, they got shortened. That's all it was.

Lattimer tried to claim that everything Kennedy did after he was shot was a muscular reflex, that his entire body was reacting reflexively, like a puppet on a string. Why would Lattimer want to claim that? It's to deny that Kennedy was shot in the throat (from the front) and that he raised his hands to his throat because he was shot there and was struggling to breathe and trying to clear his airway. In the Zapruder film, he is trying to cough up, dislodge a bullet. But, according to the official story, there was no bullet, that it traversed him. Lattimer's way out was to call it a Thorburn reaction, which is ridiculous.

So, there are medical issues involved in the JFK assassination, and we welcome doctors of all stripes to get involved. Welcome, David, and thank you for joining us. Ralph