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

I am eagerly awaiting Dr. David Mantik's assessment of JFK's medical condition as we observe him in the Zapruder film and the effects that the shots had on him, medically speaking. But, until then, here is how it stands for me.

I start by recognizing that JFK was functioning normally before he was shot, but then he was in a state of dyskinesia. 

Dyskinesia is defined as abnormal, uncontrollable, involuntary movements. There are many different types of dyskinesia with symptoms that range from minor tics to full-body movements.

The only one who has tried to explain this that I know of is Dr. John Lattimer, but his explanation, that it is a Thorburn reaction is ridiculous. Dr. Thorburn's patient suffered crushing trauma to his spinal cord at the level of C5 rendering him quadriplegic. He was paralyzed in all his somatic muscles except for four, and what happened to him is that because those muscles which still worked were unopposed, they underwent "muscle creep." There is always some tone in your muscles, where they tend to shorten a little, but the reason they don't do it is because opposing muscles are stretching them at the same time. But, when you remove the opposition, the muscle will eventually creep to its shortest length. That's what we are looking at below on the left. 

But, Kennedy wasn't paralyzed in any of his muscles, and his spinal cord wasn't damaged at all. He was trying to cough something up but his muscular usage was excessive; he went into a spasmodic state, and then he couldn't release it. Jackie tried to help him release it. She tried to coax him to put his arm down, but he couldn't. 

Her one hand didn't work, so she tried two.

But, that didn't work either. He wouldn't let go. This is functional pathology; an aberrant and excessive muscular response. But why? Something must have affected him between a and b. 

Dr. Mantik says that the impact of the shallow back shot was "trivial" and I agree. And there is no reason to think that the throat shot caused this. I think it was due to a toxin. I think that the shot to his back, which was not a regular bullet, must have contained a very fast-acting nerve agent.  The very fact that it only penetrated an inch through soft tissue tells you that it was not a regular bullet. Some have tried to say it was a regular bullet but with deficient gun powder, hence a "short charge" and so it lacked the momentum to penetrate. But, if that were true, it would have lacked the momentum to reach him at all. For a bullet to travel stabily in a straight line requires that it be fully charged. Robert Prudhomme estimates that for the bullet to have only enough momentum to travel an inch through soft tissue would mean it could have a velocity of no more than 400 feet per second, which is 20% of the normal speed of 2000 feet per second. And, I have seen it reported as 2200 feet per second. Prudhome goes on to say that the bullet certainly would not have reached him accurately at that slow speed, and it probably wouldn't have reached him at all. It would have run out of gas. It would have hit the  ground. You know, gravity?

So, the whole "short charge" claim is ridiculous, but, there's more. There were a lot of eyes on Kennedy. His wife's eyes were on him, and she was sitting right next to him. If he was hit in the back with a bullet, a real bullet, imagine how startling it would have been. Imagine how he would have reacted. He probably would have been vocal. 

Look, if I stood behind you with an ice pic in my hand, and the ice pic had a collar on it such that it could only penetrate one inch, and then I plunge it into your back. How are you going to react? You're going to jump, aren't you? You're probably going to scream, aren't you? But, nobody reported anything like that for Kennedy. And his wife said that the first thing she noticed, telling her that something was wrong, was that he he had a "quizzical" look on his face. Read her testimony. So, how could a guy get shot in the back with a regular bullet and wind up with just a quizzical look on his face? It doesn't follow. 

But, if you go back to the Church Committee, you find out that the CIA "heart attack gun" was designed to deliver an impact that felt no more significant than a mosquito bite. That's a quote. And it accounts for why Kennedy didn't jump. And what was he "quizzical" about? He was quizzical knowing that something had happened to him, but he didn't know exactly what. 

I don't know what the projectile was, but I presume it was something frozen. And remember what happens to ice cubes sometimes: THEY EXPLODE WHEN YOU TRY TO PRY THEM OUT OF THE SHELL. It's from minerals in the water.

I really think that Kennedy was hit with such a projectile. It explains why nothing was found. There was no bullet inside him. There was no bullet trapped within his clothes. And whatever chemical agent or agents were in the projectile must have caused his aberrant kinetic behavior and mental impairment, where, in the Zapruder film, he seems to be inebriated.