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

An Open Letter to Dr. Alen Salerian

Dear Alen,

I see you have been through hell. I have been harassed too for my JFK work. But, since you are an MD, I would like to point out that there are medical aspects to the JFK assassination that have been ignored, not just by the lay people but by doctors, who should know better. The most significant thing pertains to JFK's medical condition during the attack. In the Zapruder film, we see him smiling and waving. Then he disappears behind the freeway sign, and when he emerges, he is in a state of panic, apparently needing to cough to clear his airway. I asked Dr. David Mantik, and he said it wasn't necessarily a bullet that obstructed his airway, that it may have been a piece of tissue or a bolus of blood. But regardless, whatever it was, he seemed to have cleared it, but, he was gone mentally after that. He was totally incapacitated mentally. Why hasn't that been talked about? He had suffered no brain damage to that point, so why should his mind have failed him? 

What I believe is that high on the hill, Kennedy was hit in the back with a frozen flechette that contained shellfish toxin, and perhaps more, and this chemical attack is what accounts for his complete and total mental collapse. The Church Committee met in 1975 to discuss the "heart attack gun" with CIA Director William Colby answering questions. Nobody suggested it, but they were talking about a weapon that was used on JFK. 

Then, another medical issue that has been ignored is the extreme muscular spasticity that Kennedy displayed, where his arms were flexed and raised, and he could not release them. Jackie tried to coax him to lower his arm, but to no avail. I'm sure you are aware that neuro-toxins cause muscle spasticity by inactivating cholinesterase in the synaptic cleft. In the Zapruder film, we can plainly see that Kennedy gets all seized up, and yet no one talks about it, clinically. Such a thing does not happen for no reason. Again: no physical trauma to that point could have caused it. The attempt to call it a "Thorburn" reaction is completely bogus. I read Thorburn's article from 1898, and his patient experienced a complete crushing of the spinal cord at the level of C5. The patient lived 18 days, and during that time, he experienced muscle creep. It was not due to spasticity, but rather, the complete denervation of opposing muscles. He only had a few somatic muscles that were functioning. The biceps was one of them, but since the opposing triceps were gone, he had no way to reverse the creep of the biceps, so they crept all the way into full flexion. It has no bearing on Kennedy, who experienced no spinal cord damage and no denervations. My hypothesis of neuro-toxin poisoning is the only plausible explanation for what happened to him.    

And it correlates with what Dr. Humes found: a clean, neat, shallow hole in Kennedy's back. An ice bullet would do that. It was hard and durable enough to penetrate the skin and underlying tissue (fascia and muscle), but it melted rapidly, as heat was applied to it, and it vanished. 

So, Kennedy rode down the steepest part of the hill having been shot in the back, but that part of the Zapruder film was cut out. That is why in the Z film, you see Kennedy pass the TSBD and get immediately to the freeway sign. The part in-between the TSBD and the freeway sign was cut out. 

You know the official story has it that he was traversed by a single bullet, but medical doctors, with their medical education, should know better. Even if the course of the bullet avoided the spinal cord, it certainly would have gotten close enough to it that the inflammatory reaction alone would have been extremely disruptive and even life-threatening. The only reason why Christopher Reeves survived his fall is because he was given massive doses of steroids to suppress the inflammation. My point is that if the Single Bullet Theory were true, Kennedy would never have been able to sit there. He would have collapsed. So, the SBT is just ridiculous. But, what are we left with? We are left with a shallow wound in Kennedy's back, which traumatically speaking, was of no consequence at all.  Then also, there was a shallow wound in Kennedy's throat, but we don't know the extent of the damage because the Secret Service agents would not allow Humes to dissect it. But regardless, the trauma was nowhere near his brain, so it should not have impaired his mind. At that point in time, in terms of physical trauma, Kennedy was less bad off than Connally, Yet, what we see of Kennedy in the Z-film is a freak show that can't be explained by his physical trauma. 

Kennedy's complete mental collapse and his extreme dyskinesia, as seen in the Zapruder film, are the elephant in the room of the JFK assassination. Thank you.

Ralph Cinque D.C.