Alexei and Haemophilia

[Elspeth]

The paper was listed as such simply because the journal had never published a historical case study before and the subject did not fit with any of its regular medical categories.

Really? That's a bit remiss of it.

Are they accepting historical interpretations of blood diseases as a general policy these days, or how did you manage to get them to go out on a limb for you?

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

No matter who did the research, it still stands on record as a medically accepted alternative interpretation of the historical facts in evidence that has passed the litmus test of a full and proper medical peer-review by a recognized panel of expert haematologists and professors before being approved for publication in an accredited medical journal that specializes in haematology.

An alternative interpretation of a historical case is a different matter from original new scientific research, which is what I thought you were claiming in post 80. Since, as you said, this sort of historical interpretation is something rather new for this journal, it isn't surprising that it didn't generate much in the way of response.

BTW, I don't know about the policy of this particular journal, but most journals don't let the authors know who did the peer review. Are you really certain they didn't just send it out to a couple of medical historians?

The only thing that can now disprove that same alternative interpretation of the evidence is if the investigating scientists who are now claiming to have identified Alexei actually do manage to find the necessary scientific proof of that long-suspected faulty Factor VIII gene.

Then by the same token, the only thing that can disprove the standard interpretation is if someone who claims to have identified Alexei can show that there's no genetic evidence of haemophilia while still standing by the identification of the remains as Alexei, and that claim has priority over your claim.

Apparently, that's now not going to happen... in which case... the medically accepted and peer-reviewed argument against the claim of haemophilia in the Russian Imperial family will continue to stand as a properly recognized and medically sound alternative interpretation of the facts.

The claim of haemophilia will also stand as the recognised interpretation that's also supported by the medical evidence. Scientifically, the earlier interpretations are the ones that matter unless the challenges have been confirmed. Your challenge has not been confirmed.

 

[J Kendrick]

How did you manage to get them to go out on a limb for you?

By researching and writing a medically sound paper that they had decided to be of considerable interest and value to the professional haematologists who subscribe to their journal.

Scientifically, the earlier interpretations are the ones that matter unless the challenges have been confirmed.

Being the first interpretations does not make them the right interpretations.

Your challenge has not been confirmed.

Neither has the popular interpretation of history.

Until the very necessary scientific proof of that long-suspected faulty Factor VIII gene has finally been produced by those who now claim to have found Alexei...

... we will remain at a stalemate.

JK

 

[Leslie2006]

i gotta wonder then why do many romanovs blame alix as the woman who brought in the royal deisase into the family kinda funny aint it

Because she did. Unless there was another direct blood connection between a Romanov and another hemophilia carrier than I'm unaware of?

 

[Anna was Franziska]

Until the very necessary scientific proof of that long-suspected faulty Factor VIII gene has finally been produced by those who now claim to have found Alexei...



JK

1. Does your comment 'claim to have found' indicate you do not believe the scientists and the Russian officials have found and identifed Alexei, and are accusing them of lying?

2. Even IF they tested for the faulty gene and got a positive result, would you believe it, or would you still claim it was falsified?

 

[COUNTESS]

This is all nonsense. Victoria had a son who was a hemophiliac, as well as several grandsons and great grandsons who all had the disease, from England to Spain to Germany to Russia. If it is just an academic argument, well you can add altrnatives, but realistically, he had hemophilia, his doctors noted that and it was rampant in the family.

 

[J Kendrick]

Even IF they tested for the faulty gene and got a positive result, would you believe it, or would you still claim it was falsified?

What would you say if they had tested for the suspected faulty gene and found a negative result?

What if they were to discover that there was nothing at all wrong with Alexei's Factor VIII gene?

There is no doubt that Alexei had certainly suffered from some kind of blood dyscrasia. On that point, we do not disagree. You believe, from what you have read, that it was a clotting factor deficiency. I know, from a very lengthy and detailed study of the evidence, that it was a platelet disorder.

I have no doubt about what the test results will reveal.

 

[tanya]

alexei and hemophiliac

I have no idea what diease alexei suffered from but i am a FEmale Hemophiliac and i can certainly attest to the fact that Females can be hemophiliacs. as i am one. and yes I have severe, heavy periods.

 

[Elspeth]

By researching and writing a medically sound paper that they had decided to be of considerable interest and value to the professional haematologists who subscribe to their journal.

That isn't how journals tend to work. However wonderful a submitted paper is, if it doesn't fall within the remit of the journal it won't go through the system, unless there's been some personal intervention somewhere.

Being the first interpretations does not make them the right interpretations.

If you don't think they're correct, then you can challenge them scientifically. However, you didn't challenge them at the scientific level that you're demanding they provide in order to challenge you. The physicians and scientific historians have looked at various pieces of evidence and reached a particular conclusion. You've done likewise and reached a different conclusion. You then claim that your conclusion somehow supersedes theirs and that in order to challenge your conclusion, scientists need to do this, that, and the other genetic analysis, and until they do it, your conclusion is the right one.

Science doesn't work that way. If a bunch of genetic analyses are required to falsify one hypothesis, then they're required to falsify another. You haven't falsified the original conclusion of haemophilia by presenting an alternative hypothesis based on historical evidence. If you wish to do that, then you're the one who needs to arrange to have the genetic tests done. Until you can falsify the haemophilia hypothesis scientifically, you're just a lone challenger of the consensus on non-scientific grounds.

Until the very necessary scientific proof of that long-suspected faulty Factor VIII gene has finally been produced by those who now claim to have found Alexei...

... we will remain at a stalemate.

JK

You can remain at a stalemate if you like. As long as you're holding other people to a higher standard than you're holding yourself to, this is much more like Canute trying to turn back the tide than a genuine stalemate.

 

[Menarue]

Or the famous Mrs Mopp who was wonderful with a broom when a puddle was to be removed but when the Atlantic high tide decided to invade her house.......

 

[fearghas]

Alexei did not have haemophilia

No the whole family was being poisoned!

 

[J Kendrick]

If you don't think they're correct, then you can challenge them scientifically.

There is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the haemophilia theory. How do you imagine that one can possibly make a "scientific" challenge against a popular medical theory for which no "scientific" evidence yet exists?

The only way that there will ever be any scientific evidence of a blood disorder -- whichever disorder it may have been -- is if those same investigating scientists ever do manage to find the necessary DNA evidence of that suspected faulty Factor VIII gene at locus Xq28 on the long arm of the X-Chromosome of both Alexei and his mother Alexandra.

 

[COUNTESS]

No the whole family was being poisoned!

By whom, for what reason and with what evidence?

 

[Camilo2002]

Of course it was hemophilia; no way it was a coincidence which affected so many QV descendants.

 

[J Kendrick]

Of course it was hemophilia; no way it was a coincidence which affected so many QV descendants.

More than 150 genetic blood disorders are now known to medical science. Most of those same blood disorders have been discovered only in the past 50 or 60 years or so, at least three decades or more after the Revolution had ended. Some three dozen of those same blood disorders can be passed from mother to son by X-linked inheritance. Hemophilia is certainly the best known of those disorders, but -- in fact -- it is just one of several possibilities.

We will never be able to know for certain exactly which one of the numerous medical possibilities it actually may have been... until the proper and very necessary genetic testing that can reveal solid and precise scientific DNA evidence of that same long-suspected disease has finally been completed.

 

[COUNTESS]

What great difference does that make?

 

[J Kendrick]

What great difference does that make?

What difference does it make whether or not the popular claims of history are true?

Surely, you didn't just ask that question....

 

[Elspeth]

There is no scientific evidence whatsoever to support the haemophilia theory. How do you imagine that one can possibly make a "scientific" challenge against a popular medical theory for which no "scientific" evidence yet exists?

You're demanding genetic evidence against your version of reality, though, and you've dismissed the consensus opinion on far less stringent grounds.

The only way that there will ever be any scientific evidence of a blood disorder -- whichever disorder it may have been -- is if those same investigating scientists ever do manage to find the necessary DNA evidence of that suspected faulty Factor VIII gene at locus Xq28 on the long arm of the X-Chromosome of both Alexei and his mother Alexandra.

No, because that isn't the only way a person can have haemophilia. Equally, without the appropriate genetic evidence, the haemophilia hypothesis can't be ruled out. In the meantime, the existence of haemophilia in the Spanish and Hessian royal families and in one of Queen Victoria's sons, along with a known mechanism whereby Victoria herself could have been a carrier (despite your assertion to the contrary), provides strong circumstantial evidence for the existence of haemophilia in her descendants, particularly the Hessian ones, which is the relevant point here.

You've said Victoria couldn't have been a carrier. That isn't true. You've said that the mutation causing haemophilia originates almost exclusively in males. That isn't true. I'm not sure about all this extremely careful and detailed research you've done, but if you've really drawn the above two conclusions from it, I'm not sure how watertight your other conclusions are likely to be.

 

[J Kendrick]

You're demanding genetic evidence against your version of reality, though, and you've dismissed the consensus opinion on far less stringent grounds.

No.

I am only saying that the consensus opinion must now be confirmed with solid genetic evidence... just as the investigating scientists have been attempting to do.

As for your contention that the grounds for dismissing the consensus opinion are "far less stringent", I remind you that the alternative hypothesis you now question has been put to the proper test of medical peer-review by recognized experts and professors in the medical science of haematology... and it has passed all of the medical requirements that were expected of it and has been published with their full approval.

 

[fearghas]

By whom, for what reason and with what evidence?

I was being sarcastic (hence the rolled eyes) someone had mentioned this possibility earlier.

 

[Anna was Franziska]

There will be no testing for the gene. The scientists have already explained there wasn't enough usable specimen to do both the DNA test and the gene test and the DNA test took priority. There is literally, tragically, not enough left of Alexei to do the test. Techically they could get the gene from Alexandra or one of her relatives, but I doubt they're going to disturb anyone's remains just to prove that there was hemophilia in the family. It's already proven that Alexei died in 1918 and therefore was not Tammet, so there's no need for you Kendrick to keep fighting that the didn't have it just because Tammet didn't and that is why you've challenged it all these years.

 

[ottobre]

Where is your informations about scientists from (TV, magazine, Internet or what) ?

 

[Anna was Franziska]

The internet.

 

[J Kendrick]

It's already proven that Alexei died in 1918 and therefore was not Tammet, so there's no need for you Kendrick to keep fighting that the didn't have it just because Tammet didn't and that is why you've challenged it all these years.

How many times do I have to tell you?

Properly confirming the true medical identity of the blood disease with solid genetic evidence has nothing to do with claimants or the identification of remains. It is only concerned with finally verifying the popular medical claims of history that have still not been proved.

 

[Anna was Franziska]

Well, since there is no more bone left from Alexei, and they aren't going to do the test, why not just stop complaining about it? I mean, nothing anyone could do will ever convince you anyway. You're already saying 'claimed to identify Alexei' meaning you don't accept the DNA results. Even if they tested them and they came back postive you would never accept them so what's the point? You are going to think what you want anyway, but you will never convince anyone else. So what's this argument about?

 

[J Kendrick]

Well, since there is no more bone left from Alexei, and they aren't going to do the test, why not just stop complaining about it?

Because the claims of history are medically unsound and MUST still be proved.

 

[Anna was Franziska]

Well, since they CAN'T be, what's the point in harping on about it?

 

[ottobre]

why CAN'T BE? Just because you see smth in the Internet? I think there is still a chance.

 

[J Kendrick]

Well, since they CAN'T be, what's the point in harping on about it?

You will find my answer in the American Journal of Hematology, Volume 77, Number 1, September 2004, Pages 92-102, first published on August, 12, 2004 on the occasion of Alexei's 100th birthday. It was the front page news headline in Russia's St. Petersburg Times on Friday of that same week in August of 2004 and is now a matter of public record in the US National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.

 

[ottobre]

You will find my answer in the American Journal of Hematology, Volume 77, Number 1, September 2004, Pages 92-102, first published on August, 12, 2004 on the occasion of Alexei's 100th birthday. It was the front page news headline in Russia's St. Petersburg Times on Friday of that same week in August of 2004 and is now a matter of public record in the US National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.

At least textbooks will never be revised, as negative results in case of haemophilia on ancient material means nothing...

 

[Elspeth]

Because the claims of history are medically unsound and MUST still be proved.

This from someone who doesn't see the need to prove his own claims.

What's medically unsound about them? You claimed that haemophilia had to have started with Leopold and couldn't have started with Victoria. That's untrue. You haven't explained the pattern of blood disease in the various royal families descended from Victoria - where the only people affected were consistent with the pattern of haemophilia (and not with the pattern of Rh-associated hemolytic anemia). So far your claims have been a lot more unsound than theirs.