From: david@cats.ucsc.edu (David Wright)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Re: Neuro-Muscular Reaction
Date: 17 Apr 92 02:34:13 GMT
Article-I.D.: darkstar.33121
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz


Is there anyway to salvage the debate on the neuro-muscular Reaction theory?

First, I used the definition given from the Clark, WR and Lattimer books. Those
sources mention a stiffening  and or  straightening of the limbs, and an 
arching of the back, and the spine to acount for the head snapping back.
This is consistent with Neal Wickhams accounts of his results of dear hunting.
He has shot numerable dear and elk, and some of them have neuro-muscular
reactions. Apparently the exact place where the dear is shot in the head does
not alter the picture. In the case of animals, the limbs that presumably can
straigten do so, and sometimes this lasts for a few seconds.

However, none of the definitions of the NMT describe the motions of Kennedy's 
body. Kennedy's body moves up and back to the left, as one observer said "The 
torque of his head is transferred to his body, which is also lifted up and to 
the left". The definitions of the Clark, WR and Lattimer books cannot be 
applied to the motions of Kennedy's body. 

That would seem to wrap it up to abandon the neuro-spap theory. However,
Mitchell believes that the head can spin around do to the fact that the bullet
enterd only on one half of the skull, and thus effected only one half of the
body, the left side, more than the other.

However, there is no evidence for this theory, and certainly none of the
official explanations ever dreamt this fantasy up.  In fact, as a recent
article of Gordon Banks reminds us, there is simply no theory at all to explain
the head snap as a neuro-muscular reaction. 

Mitchell's explanation, as vague as it is, can be cast in doubt for the
following reasons:

1) The Brain stem itself was severed, and did not have to be cut to free the
brain during Atopsy, according to Humes.

2) It is likely that an overload of pain from one side of the brain would
not affect the whole nervous system. Thus, the place of the wound on the 
brain is not important. This is verified by Wickman's hunting stories. The fact
that the wound would have to located only with both sides of the brain is not
mentioned in any definition of a NMR from the Clark, Lattimer or WR.

3) Even if only one side was severd, we do not see Kennedy's left arm rise at
all.

4) Kennedy's right arm does not even straighten, although does rise somewhat.

5)  Nor does it seem probable that the assymetric reactions would be of a
particular enough nature to mimic, as if in a conspiratorial fashion, a 
rotation of the head as if shot from the front.

   - Indeed, some of the back muscles that pull on the left part of the head and
     neck attach themselves to the right side of the body.

   - The head itself is driven back, it is not soley a twisting motion. 

6) The head and body are driven back before they are driven up. In approx
   the first 1 to 3 frames, the body seems scrunched down and driven back
   by the head. It is only on the 4th frame that the head is driven upwards.

-- 
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   |      |      | "Be Prepared for Enormous Fustrations"              |
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   /     \                              All comments  are mine---(David Wright)