Doctors question Kelly 'suicide'

[Emillereid]

29.01.2004
By JEREMY LAURANCE in London

Fresh doubts about the death of Dr David Kelly, the British weapons expert, were raised yesterday by three doctors who questioned whether he took his own life.

<snip>

A forensic pathologist, Dr Nicholas Hunt, told the Hutton inquiry that Kelly had bled to death from a self-inflicted wound to his left wrist. But Dr David Halpin, a former consultant in trauma and orthopaedic medicine at Torbay Hospital, Devon, and two colleagues, question this account.

In a letter to the Guardian they say: "We view this as highly improbable. Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life threatening blood loss. Dr Hunt stated that the only artery that had been cut - the ulnar artery - had been completely transected. Complete transection causes the artery to quickly retract and close down, and this promotes clotting of the blood."

<snip>
Halpin said yesterday: "We would like this inquest reopened so that in this very important case, no stone is left unturned." ....

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3546211&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

It's getting hot for Tony -- no sooner is he 'vindicated' by the Hutton report in what critics are claiming is a whitewash than doctors start opening questioning the suicide of Kelly. UK DUers -- how much more can the public take before they throw the bum out??

[NJCher]

1. Mike Ruppert has some good material on this, too

Convinced me, particularly the parts about lividity. Ruppert seems to think that the person who found the body interrupted the person(s) placing the body because the way it was lying does not match the lividity.


Cher

[Zhade]

2. It's all rather suspicious. I believe Kelly was murdered.

The facts surrounding the purported cause of death do not add up.

[0007]

8. I agree!

[bobthedrummer]

13. I concur.

Murder is a professional risk if you are a micro-biologist working in bio-warfare.

[sweetheart]

3. That letter...

I transcribed it in to LBN from the paper... odd tha only new zealand picked it up beyond the guardian...

murder can't be left out.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=334777#334781

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. It has bothered me from the beginning

that they were so quick to call Kelly's death an apparent suicide, when there was nothing apparent about it at all. The authorities took a possible murder and within a day chalked it off as an apparent suicide? Reminded me of those old Sherlock Holmes stories where Scotland Yard was mostly made up of bumbling idiots who couldn't see a clue if it hit them in the face.

[gandalf]

5. If a commission is set up to investigate

and comes to the conclusion "it is very simple, exactly as reported", it is probably a cover-up. Depending on the case, the result is either a lonely, single, crazy killer (JFK, Olof Palme in Sweden), or a suicide (Kelly, Uwe Barschel in Germany), just what is more appropriate.

[Turley]

6. Well I'm no expert but

it seems if you take a handful of painkillers and slit your wrist, you stand a good chance of getting your ticket punched.

[Bridget Burke]

7. That's why we have experts.

Let's allow them to do their job, OK?

[seventhson]

9. especially if someone has a gun to your head and is threatening to kill

your family.

[DrBB]

10. Wrong

He slit one wrist--in fact, only one artery--CROSSWISE. It doesn't work, sorry. That's not how it's done, did you know that? People commonly assume this, but to die this way, you have to make a number of long incisions lengthwise down the forearm, and even then it's not a sure thing. To actually bleed out, you need to make an effort to keep the blood flowing--this is why it's often done in a warm bath.

Like I say, a lot of people don't know this--it's usually portrayed as being done the other way. But um, Kelly was, like, y'know, an advanced biochemist specializing in weapons research--how to kill people, in other words. Think he wouldn't have known?

Within hours of his death I was posting this question: did he cut across or down? For my part, I think these doctors have it exactly right.

[Minstrel Boy]

11. He was found to have ingested only a quarter of one tablet,

yet 29 tablets were missing from the packet found at the scene and his blood showed levels of toxicity. Kelly did not lose enough blood for him to have bled to death. The lividity was wrong, suggesting he'd been moved after death. He had abrasions on his head and limbs.

And let's not mention who he was, what he was doing, and to whom he was doing it.

[JohnyCanuck]

12. I don't believe they've ever accounted for the electrodes on his chest.

I've found that suspicious as well. With all the publicity about this case, if he had recently received an ECG or been fitted with a holter monitor you would think a doctor would have come forward by now and offered an explanation to the authorities.

Heart experts today said it was "unusual" for someone to wear electrode pads while walking following revelations that government scientist David Kelly had four of the special monitors on his chest when his body was found in an Oxfordshire wood.

Dr Kelly - the BBC's source for a report claiming the government altered the contents of a dossier about Iraq - had probably been wearing a 24-hour electro-cardiogram recorder, also known as a Holter monitor, medical experts said.

But it was odd that the pads that are connected to the device had not been removed by doctors and were left attached to his chest, they said.

"If I was in a morgue and his body was presented to me I would have thought it had come out of a coronary care unit or an operating theatre," said Professor Konrad Jamrozik, of Imperial College Hospital London.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1010866,00.html

[Emillereid]

14. Anybody know of any official response to the doctors' suspicions?

Or for that matter -- any word from his family?