The Sidebar: "The Heimlich Operation," a lie that won't die, Part III: I scored a third published correction to a review of my father's book to credit Romanian surgeon Dan Gavriliu for inventing the RGT operation

Saturday, February 22, 2014

"The Heimlich Operation," a lie that won't die, Part III: I scored a third published correction to a review of my father's book to credit Romanian surgeon Dan Gavriliu for inventing the RGT operation

Part I, January 21, 2014: Publishers Weekly and Kirkus get it wrong, then update their reviews of my father's memoir to credit Dr. Dan Gavriliu

Part II, February 6, 2014: Bucharest journalist Miruna Munteanu calls out Prometheus Books for my father "trying to steal credit" for an innovative operation invented by respected Romanian surgeon

In my father's recently-published memoir, Heimlich's Maneuvers, he rightly credits the late Romanian surgeon Dan Gavriliu with inventing an esophagus replacement operation known as the Reversed Gastric Tube.

Since my father got tarred and feathered on the front page of the March 16, 2003 Cincinnati Enquirer for his decades of falsely claiming to have invented the procedure -- for an example, see the video clip at the end of this item -- presumably he realized he'd be playing with fire if he tried to get away with that in his book.

Via the 2003 Enquirer expose:

But check out the weasel version my father dishes up in his book.

He admits that he didn't invent the procedure, but still claims name credit and has the chutzpah to put his own name ahead of Dr. Gavriliu's!

Anyway, for some reason pre-publication reviews of the book credited my father with inventing the procedure.

Per part I of this series, last month I got published corrections from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews that resulted in updated reviews giving inventor's credit to Dr. Gavriliu.

A few days ago I scored a Romanian hat trick.

source

Here's the review published last month by the American Library Association's Booklist:

From the updated review arranged by Booklist Senior Editor Donna Seaman:

Here's a 1999 video clip in which my father tells a studio audience -- which includes my mother (the late Jane Heimlich, his sister Cele Rosenthal, and my sisters, Janet and Elisabeth Heimlich -- that he invented the RGT operation.