Ye gods, am I ever bored. The winds are 60 mph and I'm trapped inside. I did find this 2021 thread from the McAdams forum in which several of this forum's participants - including John C, Steve G, and Mark U weighed in (along with wacky Gil Jesus, who steered us to a YouTube video proving - PROVING, I tell you! - that JFK was attempting to cough up a
recalcitrant meatball bullet):
https://groups.google.com/g/alt.conspiracy.jfk/c/mIy5MUtYgYg.
Mark made the same point I do here (yay, Mark!): what we see with JFK is indeed a neuromuscular reaction but NOT the Thorburn reaction. Indeed, one of the criticisms of Lattimer's claim in the article I linked was precisely that the reaction observed by Thorburn was nothing like instantaneous but was fully developed only days later. Mark quoted from John McAdams'
Assassination Logic (yay, John!) as follows:
"Lattimer was responsible for another bit of pseudoscience related to the case. In the wake of the bullet strike to his torso, Kennedy’s arms move sharply upward, toward his throat. He doesn’t actually grasp at his throat, and his fists are balled up in what looks like an involuntary reaction. Lattimer found a 'golden oldie' (from 1889) of an article in a medical journal and decided that Kennedy had assumed 'Thorburn’s position' — something documented as happening in the wake of trauma to the spine. Kennedy’s arm movements were indeed a neuromuscular reaction, but not the one Thorburn described, since Torburn’s position develops over days or weeks or even months. (130)
(130) Lattimer, Kennedy and Lincoln, chapter 11; Bob Artwohl, post on Compuserve forum, April 6, 1994, http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/thorburn.txt."The link to Dr. Artwohl's post no longer works, but Mark steered folks to this letter from Dr. Strully, a NH neurosurgeon, to Dr. Artwohl:
https://www.jfk-assassination.net/strully.txt.
What should profoundly amaze you is that Dr. Payette, having no idea what he was even talking about, nonetheless correctly diagnosed what is going on here - i.e., the bizarre movement of JFK's arms is indeed a neuromuscular reaction, just not a Thorburn reaction. The Thorburn thing is a red herring clutching at its gills with its little flippers (or fins or whatever red herrings have).
I am not surprised that anyone might think JFK was clutching at his throat because (1) he did have a throat wound and (2) that's kind of what it looks like.
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