After JFK was shot on November 22nd 1963 he was driven immediately 4 miles to Parkland Hospital. The doctor that just happened to be in the ER that day was Dr. Carrico. Dr. Carrico immediately noticed JFK was gasping for air. The medical term that is more descriptive is agonal breathing or dying gasps. Since JFK was trying to breath Dr. Carrico felt he must act. He inserted a breathing tube, an endotracheal tube, but there was a small hole at the right side base of his trachea where air bubbles were coming out. By this time a vascular surgeon had arrived, Dr. Perry. Using his clinical judgment, seeing the frothing blood at the base of the neck Dr. Perry performed an emergency tracheotomy. Upon starting the tracheotomy Dr. Perry noted there were signs of a possible pneumothorax so he requested other doctors insert chest tubes. Dr. Baxter and Dr. Peters inserted the chest tube on the right. Dr. Jones inserted the chest tube on the left.
There were 3 cutdowns done to start IV's. A cutdown is a procedure where an incision is done to expose a vein, in order to insert a tube to give fluids. Thus the term intervenous or IV fluid. When fluid started to be administered through one of these IV's it infiltrated. Infiltration means that the fluid goes into the surrounding tissue instead of the vein. This makes the surrounding area hard and painful. Since the other 2 IVs were flowing without problem another cutdown was not done. Through these 2 IV sites 2 units of O negative blood was given along with IV fluid. O negative blood is the type of blood that can be given in emergency situations where there is not enough time to crossmatch blood.
The discrepancy is that during the autopsy there were found superficial lacerations on the chest where chest tubes could have been inserted but weren't. There were also superficial lacerations where cutdowns could have been performed but weren't. The autopists assumed that the insertion of chest tubes and IV's was contemplated but not done because the situation was too hopeless. Which is a logical assumption but according to the testimony of Parkland doctors it was the wrong assumption.
On March 25th 1964 Arlen Specter travelled to Dallas Texas to take the Parkland doctors' testimony of what each personally did and observed in Trauma room 1 on November 22nd 1963. The testimony can be found in the Warren Commission Hearings Volume VI http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/co...ntents_wh6.htm
From Dr. Peter's testimony Volume VI Warren Commission testimony:
Dr. Peters: "Dr. Perry and Dr. Baxter were doing the tracheotomy and a set of tracheotomy tubes was obtained and the appropriate size was determined and I gave it to Baxter, who helped Peerry put it into the wound, and Perry noted also that there appeared to be a bubbling sensation in the chest and recommended that chest tubes be put in. Dr. Ron Jones put a chest tube in on the left side and Dr. Baxter and I put it in on the right side--I made the incision in the President's chest and I noted that there was no bleeding from the wound."
Specter: "Did you put that chest tube all the way in on the right side?"
Dr. Peters: "That's our presumption--yes."
Specter: And what else was done for the President?"
From Dr. Jones testimony Volume VI Warren Commisssion testimony:
Dr. Jones: "Well, as Dr. Perry started the tracheotomy, I started the cut down in the left arm to insert a large polyethylene catheter, to give an IV so that we could give IV solutions as well as blood, and at the same time another doctor or two were doing some cutdowns in the lower extremities around the ankle. We made the cutdown in the left arm in the cephalic vein very rapidly and IV fluids were started immediately and as I was doing this, Dr. Perry was performing the tracheotomy, and it was about this time that Dr. Baxter came in and went ahead to assist Dr. Perry with the tracheotomy, and as they made a deeper incision in the neck to isolate the trachea, they thought they saw some gush of air and possibility of a pneumothorax on one side or the other entertained, and since I was to the left of the President, I went ahead and put it in the anterior chest tube in the second intercostal spacel"
Specter: "was that tube full inserted, Doctor?"
Dr. Jones: " I felt that the tube was full inserted, and this was immediately connected to underwater ddrainage."
Apecter: "What do you mean by "connected to underwater drainage, Dr. Jones?"
Dr. Jones: "The tube is connected to a bottle whereby it aerates in the chest from a pneumothorax and as the patient breathes, the air is forced out under the water and produces somewhat of a suction so that the lung will re-expland and will not stay collapsed and this will give adequate aeration to the body, and we decided to go ahead and put in a chest tube on the opposite side: since I could not reach the opposite side due to the nuber of people that were working on the President. Dr. Baxter was over there helping Dr. Peryy on that side, as well as Dr. Paul Peters, the assistant head of urology here, and the three of us then inserted the chest tube on the right side, primarily done by Dr. Baxter and Dr. Peterson the right side."
Specter: "then what other treatment, if any, was afforded President Kennedy?"
On March 16th the autopists, Dr. Humes, Dr. Boswell and Dr. Finck had given their testimony in front of the Warren Commission. Note that this testimony is given 9 days prior to the Parkland doctors testimony. Dr. Humes was the lead autopist.
The following quotation is from Dr. Humes testimony given to the Warren Commission on Monday March 16th 1964. http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jf...Vol2_0178a.htm
Humes: "So when we examined the President in addition to the large wound which we found in conversation with Doctor Perry was the tracheotomy wound, there were two smaller wounds on the upper anterior chest:
Dulles: "These are apparently exit wounds?"
Humes: "Sir, these were knife wounds, these were incised wounds on either side of the chest, and I will give them in somewhat greater detail.
These wounds were bilateral. They were situated on the anterior chest wall in the nipple line, and each were 2 cm long in the transverse axis. The one on the right was situated 11 cm. above the nipple-the one on the left was situated 11 cm. on the nipple and the one on the right was 8 cm. above the nipple. Their intention was to incise through the president's chest to place tubes into his chest.
We examinded those wounds very carefully and found that they, however did not enter the chest cavity. They only went through the skin.
I presume that as they were performing that procedure it was obvious that the President had died, and they didn't pursue this"
Later in Humes testimony before the Warren Commission he again describes the surgical wounds.
Humes: "Now, we also made note of the types of wounds which I mentioned to you before in this testimony on the chest which were going to be used by the doctors there to place chest tubes. They also made other wounds, one on the left arm, and a wound on the anle of the President with the idea of administering intravenous blood and other fluids in hope of replacing the the blood which the President had lost from his extensive wounds."
Arlen Specter heard the Parkland doctors say on March 25th 1964 that they had inserted the chest tubes but Arlen did not tell the Parkland doctors that he had heard the autopists say on March 16th 1964 that chest tubes or IV's were not inserted. Arlen Specter did nothing to look into this controversy.
In 1977 during his testimony for the HSCA, House Select Committee on Assassinations, Dr. Carrico mentions the chest tubes.
Carrico: ...By that time, several other physicians had arrive, and I directed my attention to estabilishing more intravenous fluids, and administration of fluids and medications while they continued to work on the (the testimony is incomplete in the record at Mary Ferrell's website)
Further into his testimony:
Carrico: After the endotracheal tube was inserted, as I said, the next step is to try to restore breathing -- an airway, then you try to restore the circulation. And we had adequate but not perfect ventilation. The next thing we tried to do was get the circulation going. There were already a couple of IV lines started by incisions in the ankle. Another one was being done in the arm. The President was getting fluids through those to try to get his blood pressure up. I don't know if blood had been started at that point or not. He was given some corticosteroids, and Dr. Perry and Dr. Jones took over the primary management and I started making sure that the IVs, etc. were running properly.
Further in Carrico's testimony:
Purdy: What evidence did you obtain from the chest tubes?
Carrico: Again, this is second-hand, I didn't do this. But, when the chest tubes were inserted, there was a small amount of blood, and small amount of air, which could have resulted from the actual surgical manipulation or could conceivably have been commensrurated or compatible with some very small pneumothorax or hemothorac. But basically the chest tubes did not show any signs of massive injury and did not in their insertion improve the situation.
On February 13th 1996 Dr. Humes was interviewed by the ARRB, Assassination Record Review Board.
Question: Did you notice any surgical incisions anywhere on the body of President Kennedy when you first saw him?
Humes: Yeah, there was a gaping defect that obviously a tracheotomy incision in the anterior neck, and there were a couple of small--you never heard much about this, either. A couple of small incised wounds on the chest, and I forget == I wrote down, wherever I wrote it down, that it looked to me like somebody was going to think of putting in a chest tube. But they never did, because all they did was go through the skin. They obviously==I imagine they decided the President was deceased before they were going to pursue it. But somebody started, apparently, to insert chest tubes, which would not be an unreasonable thing to do. They were, you know, maybe two centimeters long, something like that, and between the ribs, low in the anterior chest.
I'm sure I described them in the protocol someplace.
Question: Were there any cutdown on any of the--
Humes: I think there was in one of the ankles. There was cutdown wound. I forget whether it was the right or left ankle now, to tell you the truth. If I had to guess, I'd say it was right, but I'm not sure.
There is so much evidence that the bodies were switched at the autopsy. Parkland doctors inserted chest tubes and did cutdowns for IV"s and infused fluid and blood. The corpse at the autopsy didn't have chest tubes inserted or have IV's sites that were actually used.
The corpse's gunshot wound to the back of the head was in the wrong place. So in the late 1960's the Clark Panel miracously said the bullet hole was 10cm higher up then what the autopists found.
The autopsy said the corpse' eyes were blue in color, but JFK's eyes were grey green.
The corpse had a disc that was bulging but JFK's problem wasn't a bulging disc. JFK had compression fractures.
Crenshaw states in his book, Trama room 1, that he took off JFK's shoes that one had a lift in it but the corpse at the morgue didn't have one leg shorter than the other.
JFK had a permament tan due to Addison's but no mention is made of this about the corpse at Bethesda.
The corpse had a well healed back scar but JFK had terrible infections in his back wound and would therefore have scars from those infections but no mention of this is made.
The description of JFK's face at Parkland was that his eyes were bulging out. The corpse at Bethesda did not have eyes that were bulging out. Arlen Specter gave a oral history in June 2012 for c-span, he remembered how the nurses' at Parkland hospital had said JFK's eyes were bulging out. For those of you haven't seen dead bodies bulging eyes do not become sunken after the body dies. Circulation stops and what's swollen stays swollen.
In Humes' JAMA interview in '92 he states JFK didn't have subcutaneous fat in his face from his Addison's. Well, the corpse didn't have subcutaneous fat in his face but JFK did. JFK often bemoaned how his face had become more moon shaped.
The reader will need to research all this for themselves. Mary Ferrell's website, AARC website. If I knew how to hyperlink in this blog I would put it in but I don't.
In 1977 HSCA did touch on the possiblity that the bodies could have been switched. They did numerous facial measurements so they said body switching could not have happened. Dr. Robert Morningstar has done research of how Jack Tippet looked similar to JFK. Please refer to his material.
Please forgive my typos.