You've just perfectly demonstrated all of the reasons why I am not at all eager to repeat the previous experience of our earlier discussions on the subject of this thread... both here on the AP Board and before that on the news group alt.talk. royalty.
You all delight in taking my previous writings totally out of context to support your own position. The latest quote you have chosen, written over ten years ago, was *NOT* written in reference to the medical questions that are being discussed in this thread. It was only written in reference to a set of mtDNA results that are *still* being withheld by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the British Forensic Science Service. The three men who are named therein... Dr. Gill.. a forensic scientist.. Dr. Ivanov.. a molecular biologist.. and the late Dr. Maples.. a forensic pathologist.. are *NOT* haematologists. Their silence is related only to their refusal to publish that certain set of mtDNA results that has been withheld for the past 13 years. Their silence is *NOT* directed at the blood disease question being discussed here in this thread.
As to the question of medical and non-medical professionals writing on this subject ...
The number of non-medical professionals who write here on this board in support of heamophilia... without any proven medical *laboratory* evidence to support their claim.. massively outweighs the number of those on the other side of the fence who have dared to suggest that there are several other medically valid possibilities that could explain Alexei's disease.
The first to have claimed in 1927 that Nicholas's four short diary entries about umbilical bleeding in 1904 was evidence of haemophilia... Catherine Radziwill... was *not* a medical doctor. Pierre Gilliard, writing in 1921 about an event that happened in 1912, was a French teacher. He was *not* a medical doctor. Gen. Spiridovich, writing in 1928... ten years after the murders.. was *not* a medical doctor. He was a professional soldier. Robert Massie, rewriting their words forty years later in 1967 as if they were his own, is *not* a medical doctor.
The Imperial surgeon Dr. Sergei Federov had *never* actually written that Alexei's disease was heamophilia. Dr. Evgeny Botkin, who had died at Nicholas II's side, had *never* actually written that Alexei's disease was heamophilia. The Imperial paediatrician, Dr C.A. Raukhfus, had *never* actually written that Alexei's disease was heamophilia. Dr. Vladimir Derevenko, whose own son Kolia was Alexei's best friend, had *never* actually written that Alexei's disease was heamophilia. Alexei's own parents, who certainly should have known the diagnosis, are known *never* to have said even once that their son's disease was haemophilia.
There is *no* actual first hand evidence. There is *no* physical laboratory evidence. It is merely nothing more than an unchallenged piece of classic Royal gossip, repeated over and over again by second and third hand sources whose claims have never been questioned..... until now.
Just because a story has never been challenged... does not make it true. Just because a story has been repeated thousands of times in hundreds of books... does not make it true. The stories of other historical characters like King Arthur and Robin Hood have also been repeated thousands of times in hundreds of books. It doesn't make those stories true, either.
Fourteen years ago, Dr. Mark Kulikowski, a History Professor at Oswego College at the State University of New York, wrote the following words in the conclusion of his 1992 dissertation titled "Rethinking the Origins of the Rasputin Legend":
"The world of scholarship has no room for fantasy. And yet, despite its largely sensational, unsubstantiated, and rumor-filled origins, the legend lives on in contemporary scholarship. A major reason for this has been the failure of scholars to question the legend's roots. Virtually all serious research on Rasputin since 1917 has considered the legend true, and has sought to fit the facts to it. This has led, at best, to very minor adjustments and to the idea that there is nothing new to say, which unfortunately means that writing on Rasputin has been left largely to popular authors who simply retell the old story. Still unaswered are some fundamental questions not only about Rasputin, but about our understanding of the end of the monarchy in Russia. Given the recent call to rethink major questions of Russian history, perhaps we can no longer afford to accept Rasputin as he appears to be."
Clearly, no one was listening back when Professor Kulikowski first spoke those words in 1992. Fourteen years later, nothing has changed.
JK
