That said -- I should be interested to hear Mr. Kendrick's reaction to the rebuttals made here to his article in the American Journal of Hematology,
Okay then.... Let's deal with this...
by qualified medical specialists who are well acquainted with what thrombocytopenia really does to an infant or young child as opposed to what hemophilia really did to the Tsarevich.
What qualified "medical specialists" ? Have you ever actually read my paper in the American Journal of Hematology (AJH), or are you simply passing judgement on the basis of a few scant details that you've managed to find elsewhere on the Internet? In the past eight months since its publication just one day before the Tsarevich Alexei's 100th birthday last August, there have been no challenges at all by any of the regular readers of the AJH, all of whom are medical professionals with far more knowledge in the fields of haematology and oncology than most if not all of the members who post to this board.
Given that your alleged "rebuttal" has been based entirely on the same mistake in understanding that was made by Staff Writer Galina Stolyarova in the St. Petersburg Times "Top Story" of last August 13th, 2004, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that you don't know any more about the actual content of that same September 2004 AJH paper than the very few words that you've read in the abstract.
Do not just assume that the single biggest word in that particular medical paper is all there is to it. Thrombocytopenia by itself is not the cause. Thrombocytopenia is only just one of a number of symptoms of a very much greater underlying medical condition. If you actually did read that entire AJH paper from beginning to end, then surely as God made little green apples, you would undoubtedly be complaining about a great deal more than just that one single word.
To back reference from an end-stage cancer of the blood to the anecdotally well-documented coagulation disorder shown by Alexei and other members of his family tree, based on the back-referencing complexes of an elderly man faced with a disease tragic in itself, stems not from science but sympathy for a hometown eccentric and his grieving widow.
Do not presume to know how the research was done. Do not presume to know the history and character of any of the key players in a case that you know nothing about, outside of the few small pieces of information that you may have picked up on the Internet.
If you are truly serious about making a rebuttal, then do the medical and historical research, write your own medical paper, and submit it to the journal of your choice...just as I have done. I'm curious to know just how long it will take you to pass the peer review process. If you're very lucky, you might manage to see your work reach publication in about one and a half to two years time, at the earliest.
Start with a clean sheet. First do an in-depth study of every possible haematological disorder known to modern medical science.. and not just that one single X-linked recessive disorder that you so religiously favour. Put aside the popular haemophilia legend for just a moment, if you can, and then pick out every single piece of evidence in Alexei's history that even remotely resembles a symptom... even in those cases when he had apparently injured himself and should have produced evidence of haemorrhage but never did.
Take every single one of those symptoms that you've found and apply them to all of that new information you've now learned about all of the nearly 200 possible blood disorders that are fully capable of producing the same sort of evidence of haemorrhage that is seen in Alexei's case history... and come up with your own completely independent diagnosis. Then write your own medical paper and submit it to peer review.
There's just one catch. You must provide a medically acceptable explanation for Alexei's most famous sudden recovery at Spala. You are not allowed to attribute spontaneous recovery from near-death haemorrhage to mystics or spoon benders. Crediting Rasputin with sending miracle get-well telegrams may well have worked for the violent Revolutionaries who needed a convenient scapegoat to justify their actions, but that sort of explanation has no place at all in 21st century medicine.
Your research is guaranteed to run into serious trouble right from the outset, because spontaneous recovery is *not* known to occur in cases of an X-linked clotting factor deficiency. The only medically acceptable explanation in modern haematology for a sudden recovery from near-fatal haemorrhage of the type that was seen at Spala is the same explanation that you have so vehemently opposed, so you'll need to come up with an entirely new explanation for spontaneous recovery that today's haematologists still don't know about.
Sorry to be such a nuisance... but...
Now that a new diagnosis that explains Alexei's recovery at Spala, debunks the Rasputin legend, and points directly to the medical evidence in the Tammet case has been accepted and approved for publication by peer review, has been deemed to be medically sound, and is now a matter of public record in the archives of the National Library of Medicine....
You're pretty much stuck with it.
JK
