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August 14, 2019

John Devlin MD, Director
Emergency Medicine Residency Program
Naval Medical Center Portsmouth
620 John Paul Jones Circle
Portsmouth, VA 23708

Dear Dr. Devlin:

I’m the son of the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, known for “the Heimlich maneuver” anti-choking treatment. I have a journalism background and since 2003 research into my father’s career by my wife and me has resulted in scores of mainstream print and broadcast news reports that exposed my father as a remarkable – and dangerous – humbug.

Via an August 9, 2019 press release, Doctors Ask DoD to Investigate Naval Medical Center Portsmouths Live Animal Use:
Per my website and blog, I’ve been a critic of the Washington, DC-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and it’s founding president, Neal Barnard MD, because of his group’s problematic three-decade relationship with my father.

Since PCRM is on the warpath against your program, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some information which in my opinion raises reasonable questions about whether PCRM’s actions are motivated by evidence-based science or emotion-drivcn allegiance to our four-legged friends.

I’m also including a 1991 letter in which my father appears to thank Dr. Barnard for helping to fund notorious offshore experiments conducted by Cincinnati’s now-defunct Heimlich Institute in which U.S. Lyme Disease patients were infected with malaria, a quack “cure” dad called “malariotherapy.”

Via PCRM’s website:

Mission

The Physicians Committee is dedicated to saving and improving human and animal lives through plant-based diets and ethical and effective scientific research.

Vision

Creating a healthier world through a new emphasis on plant-based nutrition and scientific research conducted ethically, without using animals.

Via a 2011 column, junk science debunker Joseph A."Dr. Joe" Schwarcz PhD, Director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, expressed a somewhat different opinion:

I consider PCRM to be a fanatical animal rights group with a clear cut agenda of promoting a vegan lifestyle and eliminating all animal experimentation.

Via numerous published articles from 1994 to the present which I’ve compiled on my blog, PCRM has been called an “animal rights” activist group, a perspective that presumably triggered their attempt to disrupt your program.

Along those lines, via this profile of him in the Spring 2011 issue of American Dog magazine, Dr. Pippin minced no words about his priorities:
Some may disagree that eating a BLT or wearing leather shoes is “evil,” but clearly Dr. Pippin brings strongly-held personal convictions to his work.

Back to my father, who in 1977 was fired for misconduct from his last hospital job, arguably dad’s most notorious scam was “malariotherapy.” Despite having no background in immunology, from the early 1980s until his death in 2016, dad claimed infecting patients with malaria could cure a variety of diseases.[1]

From the late 1980s until at least 2005, dad’s shady Heimlich Institute conducted a series of unsupervised offshore experiments in which U.S. and foreign nationals suffering from cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS were infected with malaria.

Via Scientists Linked to Heimlich Investigated by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Sunday Enquirer, February 16, 2003:
Further, via a 2014 Hollywood Reporter expose, How Dr. Heimlich Maneuvered Hollywood Into Backing His Dangerous AIDS "Cure":

(An) investigation into Heimlich's fundraising efforts was undertaken by the major frauds section of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Fast forward to the day after dad died via a December 17, 2016 media release, The Physicians Committee Remembers Henry J. Heimlich for Innovative Medicine:
I can’t account for PCRM’s unwavering admiration for my dad which presumably includes “malariotherapy,” described by Lyme Disease patient Cyndi Monahan of New Jersey in Heimlich's Maneuver?, an article in the June 1991 issue of American Health:
As it happens, per this letter donated by my dad to the University of Cincinnati’s Henry J. Heimlich Archival Collection, Dr. Barnard may have helped pay for Ms. Monahan’s “treatment”:
Further, for decades Dr. Barnard and his organization advocated my father’s reckless 40-year promotion of the Heimlich maneuver (abdominal thrusts) as a treatment for near-drowning.

Even after research by my wife and me revealed that since 1974 dad used fraudulent case reports to promote his now thoroughly-discredited claims, in letters to newspapers and on ABC 20/20, Dr. Barnard continued to hype the treatment, whose use has reportedly been associated with dozens of poor outcome cases, including children.

So much for “responsible medicine.”

Finally, regarding the use of animals for training or for medical research, I have zero knowledge of the subject, therefore no opinion.

I do, however, have a devil’s advocate question.

Via Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary published in the June 1974 issue of Emergency Medicine in which dad first described the treatment he subsequently named "the Heimlich maneuver."
Since dad used beagles in his research, if they’d had been around at the time, would PCRM have attempted to shut down the research and thereby presumably derail the development of the Heimlich maneuver which, according to PCRM’s remembrance of my father, “has saved countless lives”?

If someone poses that question to Drs. Barnard, Pippin, and/or Reina Pohl MPH (the media contact on PCRM’s press release about your program), I’d be curious to know the response.

Thanks for your time/attention and I’d welcome your thoughts/questions.

Sincerely,

Peter M. Heimlich
[REDACTED]
Peachtree Corners, GA 30096 USA
ph: (208)474-7283
website: http://medfraud.info
blog: http://the-sidebar.com
e-mail: peter.heimlich@gmail.com
Twitter: @medfraud_pmh
bio: http://tinyurl.com/ych7o7dr

[1] My father credited the work of Julius Wagner-Jauregg, a German eugenicist and Nazi sympathizer as his inspiration.

[2] To my knowledge, PCRM hasn’t presented the award since 2010 at a celebrity-studded event that was reported by the LA Weekly.

[3] Presumably dad was referring to a series of video PSAs promoting PCRM in which he appeared.

Via (PA) State Rep. Jim Marshall’s infant choking bill to be amended to avoid teaching Heimlich procedure for use on babies by staff reporter J.D. Prose, Beaver County Times, June 17, 2019:

State Rep. Jim Marshall’s recent bill on infant CPR and choking prevention will need to be amended in the Senate after he learned that the well-known Heimlich maneuver is not recommended for babies.

...(Peter Heimlich) said his father’s namesake technique is not recommended for infants. Heimlich said medical groups, such as the American Red Cross, advise against using the procedure on infants.

...“Unfortunately, I didn’t receive Mr. Heimlich’s email until after the bill passed the House of Representatives, but we’ve passed along his information to the Senate so they can consider a corrective amendment when House Bill 783 is considered,” Marshall said in an email. “It is certainly my intent to ensure there is no confusion about the appropriate rescue procedures for a choking infant.”

In contrast to Rep. Marshall's prompt, responsible actions, an unaccountable, renegade "first aid training" program based in Cincinnati has been putting the lives of infants and others at risk around the nation since 2012.

Further a Fort Mitchell foundation is funding this madness.

I've asked Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, the IRS, and Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear to step in before someone gets killed.



About seven years ago, two Cincinnati nonprofits -- Deaconess Associations and my dad's Heimlich Institute -- launched Heimlich Heroes, a medical training project which claims to have provided classes to over 100,000 people across the nation -- including teaching them to perform abdominal thrusts on choking infants.

To my knowledge the treatment has never been recommend by any legitimate medical organization.

Why not?

As I've reported, the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Red Cross informed me that doing so "may cause injuries."

What kind of injuries?

According to the AHA:

Abdominal thrusts, however, may cause complications. For this reason, the Heimlich maneuver should never be performed unless it is necessary. Reported complications of the Heimlich maneuver include damage to internal organs, such as rupture or laceration of abdominal or thoracic viscera. In fact, victims who receive the Heimlich maneuver should be medically evaluated to rule out any life-threatening complications.

If those concerns apply to children and adults, it’s easy to imagine the potential complications for tiny, vulnerable bodies.

Perhaps astoundingly, Heimlich Heroes is fully aware of those concerns.


That's not the only problem.

Heimlich Heroes, a Cincinnati-based first aid program developed partly by Henry Heimlich, is teaching students to perform the Heimlich maneuver on unconscious choking victims. This means that school children are being taught a medical practice that is not recommended by the American Heart Association or Red Cross, two highly credible public health organizations.

Who would be reckless enough to encourage teaching the public an unapproved, experimental "treatment" that may serious injure infants -- or worse?

source

Recently I learned that the Elsa Heisel Sule Foundation of Fort Mitchell, KY has awarded Heimlich Heroes over $31,000, so I sent multiple inquiries to foundation executives asking if they were aware of the serious medical issues described above?

I didn't receive a reply, so I've filed a string of investigation requests to government agencies.

First, here's my letter to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine requesting that the state bring some discipline to this madness being perpetrated by Deaconess Associations and the Heimlich Institute -- whose longtime vice president is my brother Phil Heimlich, who a decade ago served on the Hamilton County Commission with the governor's son, Pat DeWine -- with a same-day reply from press secretary Dan Tierney informing me that my request is being processed. Click here to download a copy. 



Next, here's my letter to the IRS re: the nonprofit Sule Foundation putting lives at risk. Click here to download a copy.

I also asked the agency to revoke the Heimlich Institute's 501(c)3 nonprofit status because the organization -- whose decades of  outrageous medical misconduct and fraud has been widely-reported -- hasn't had any employees since 2005 and its most recent IRS tax filing (2017) showed zero assets.



Finally, here's my letter to KY Attorney General Andy Beshear re: the Sule Foundation funding the dangerous Heimlich Heroes program. Click here to download a copy.

source

About a month ago I blogged, Did animal rights activist Dr. Neal Barnard fund the Heimlich Institute's notorious "malariotherapy" experiments on US Lyme Disease patients? Would his organization have protested the dog lab research that produced "the Heimlich"? My letter to the Mayo Clinic about my dad's problematic 30-year relationship with PCRM.

Between the hash marks are excerpts from a similar letter I sent today. Click here for a copy via my Scribd account.


Jeremiah Schuur, MD, MHS
Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine
The Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island 02912

Jessica Smith MD
Director, Emergency Medicine Residency Program
Rhode Island Hospital
593 Eddy Street
Providence, RI 02903

Dear Drs. Schuur and Smith:

I’m the son of the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, known for the Heimlich maneuver anti-choking treatment.

...One of my research/reporting interests is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a high-profile Washington, DC nonprofit that’s been around since 1985. Per my website, I’ve also been a public critic of PCRM because of their problematic 30-year relationship with my dad.

...My Google News alert sent me this April 24, 2019 WPRO News story by Steve Klamkin, Physicians group protests live animal use in medical training who reported:

A Washington D.C. – based physicians group waged a protest outside Rhode Island Hospital Wednesday, calling for an end to the use of live animals in joint training with Brown University of emergency medicine residents.

“The skill acquisition and skill retention is just as good if not better with the simulators than with the live animals,” said Dr. Kerry Foley, a retired emergency medical physician with the group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

I also come across this February 1, 2019 Brown Daily Herald article by Cate Ryan, University affiliated residency program accused of violating federal act – Use of live pigs in research breaches Animal Welfare Act, advocacy group alleges who reported:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine called for federal regulators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to look into animal use at the Warren Alpert Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital.

...John Pippin, the PCRM’s director of academic affairs, told the Associated Press he is confident that the University violated the Animal Welfare Act. The Animal Welfare Act includes a clause stating that research involving animals must involve consideration of “alternatives to any procedure likely to produce pain to or distress in an experimental animal.”

I thought I’d take the opportunity to share with you information which in my opinion raises reasonable questions about the organization’s integrity.

Via PCRM’s website:

The Physicians Committee is dedicated to saving and improving human and animal lives through plant-based diets and ethical and effective scientific research.

Via a 2011 column, junk science debunker Joseph A."Dr. Joe" Schwarcz PhD, Director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, expressed this somewhat different opinion:

I consider PCRM to be a fanatical animal rights group with a clear cut agenda of promoting a vegan lifestyle and eliminating all animal experimentation.

In any event, via numerous published articles from 1994 to the present which I’ve compiled on my blog, PCRM has been called an “animal rights” activist group. If accurate, presumably that perspective influenced their protests of your institution.

Perhaps related, Dr. Pippin, explained his moral philosophy in a profile published in the Spring 2011 issue of American Dog magazine (emphasis added); click here to download a copy of the article:

“Animals have nobody but the animal protection community between them and egregious misuse, abuse, and death at the hands of our species,” (Dr. John Pippin) says. “For those of us with true hearts for animals, such evils as eating, wearing, fighting, breeding, imprisoning, hunting, and experimenting on our animal kin must be ended.”

For the past six years, Dr. Pippin has worked full time with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine…

My letter goes on to discuss:

1) PCRM's reckless promotion of my dad's thoroughly-discredited claims that abdominal thrusts (the Heimlich maneuver) should be used to resuscitate near-drowning victims. Research by my wife and me revealed it was a 40-year scam based entirely on bogus case reports in which, according to my dad, drowning victims were "miraculously revived" by bystanders -- two of whom were longtime cronies of my father, a fact none of them disclosed.

The result of their folly? Per the Washington Post, dozens of poor outcome cases have been associated with the treatment. Even after the treatment was thoroughly-discredited and the phony cases were exposed, PCRM founder/president Neal Barnard MD -- a non-practicing physician trained as a psychiatrist --continued to recommend the treatment.



2) For decades, Dr. Barnard and his organization which claims to promote "ethical and effective scientific research," turned a blind eye to Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute's notorious offshore human experiments in which US and foreign nationals suffering from cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS were infected with malaria.

My father, who had no training in immunology called the quack treatment "malariotherapy" and credited Julius Wagner-Jauregg, an early 20th century German eugenicist and Nazi sympathizer as his inspiration.

Here's how Cyndi Monahan, a New Jersey Lyme Disease patient described the treatment via a June 1991 American Health article, Heimlich's Maneuver?

"Within two days I started to get fevers as high as 106 degrees"...After Monahan's return from Mexico City, life consisted of hours of fever followed by chills - and intense pain. "My lower back felt like a truck slammed into it and I found that a malaria headache is the most excruciating pain you can imagine." Her New Jersey doctor allowed the malaria to persist untreated for five weeks. During that time she logged 130 "fever hours," when her temperature exceeded 101 degrees. She vomited constantly, lost 40 lb. and required intravenous fluids to compensate for dehydration. "We went until my body couldn't take it anymore," she recalled, "and then I took the antimalarial drug"...
"I'm going back for another treatment," she says. "Dr. Heimlich told me I may have to do it again. He's made all the arrangements with the doctors in Panama."

As it happens, per this May 30 1991 letter donated by my dad to the University of Cincinnati’s Henry J. Heimlich Archival Collection, Dr. Barnard may have helped finance Ms. Monahan’s “treatment.”



3) Finally, my letter documented how in the early 1970s ago my father developed the Heimlich maneuver using dogs as research models and I posed this devil’s advocate question.

Since dad used the beagles in his research, if PCRM had been around at the time would Dr. Barnard and his organization have attempted to shut down the research and thereby presumably derail the development of the Heimlich maneuver which, according to PCRM’s remembrance of my father, “has saved countless lives”?

source

Via $50-million fine for predatory publisher that swallowed up Canadian science journals by Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, April 4, 2019: 

A judge in Nevada has fined the world’s biggest publisher of fake science journals more than $50 million, quoting evidence from this newspaper that helped demonstrate the publisher’s deceptive practices.

Omics International, based in India, operates more than 700 science journals. In recent years, it has bought up two reputable science Canadian publishers — Pulsus Group and Andrew John Publishing — and converted them to companies that will publishing anything for cash.

On April 22, I blogged Medical journals published by "predatory" publisher claim three University of Toronto faculty members are editors -- here's the university's reply after I asked about that, about a couple Pulsus Group journals, Diabetes Management and Clinical Practice (Therapy).

The university replied that the journals' claims were inaccurate and that the three faculty members were instructing the journals to remove their names from the mastheads.

Per my item, recently when I asked Sally Richardson, a faculty member at London's Kingston/St. George's Universities about her name on the masthead of another Pulsus property, the International Journal of Clinical Skills (IJOCS), she replied:

My name shouldn’t be on this list as I haven’t been part of this journal for many years and will have my name removed.

(Yesterday I reported this item about the editorial policy at IJOCS, "Predatory" London-based medical journal: Publication dates of our articles & authors' names are "confidential.")

I thought it would be interesting to learn if other editors on the IJOCS masthead -- there are about two dozen -- were still affiliated with the journal.

As a trial run, this week I wrote to media reps at the four institutions highlighted below.

Today I received the first response re: Dr.. Vinod Patel at the University of Warwick, Coventry. I've posted that below this screenshot and will add responses from the others if/when they reply.


Thu, 25 Apr 2019 13:29:05 +0000

Dear Peter,

Professor Patel has not had any involvement with this journal for the past five years, and has therefore contacted the journal to have his name removed from the editorial board.

Kind regards,

Peter Thorley
Media Relations Manager (Warwick Medical School and Department of Physics) | Press & Media Relations | University of Warwick
Email: peter.thorley@warwick.ac.uk | Tel: 024 761 50868 | Mob: +44 (0) 7824 540863 | | University House | Coventry | CV4 8UW | Find us on the interactive map



4/27/19 e-mail to me:

Hi, thanks for getting in touch. FYI, I was on the Editorial Board of the IJOCS from its inception, as were several UK-based colleagues, and I seem to remember receiving hard copy of the first few issues. However I was never asked to do anything 'editorial', eg reviewing papers, attending meetings, offering comment, and quite frankly forgot all about it. I retired over four years ago, so have had no reason to think about it and obviously had no idea of the backstory you describe. I have contacted the journal to ask for my name to be removed from the Board membership list with immediate effect. Good luck with your endeavours!

Best wishes, John Spencer
 
Emeritus Professor John Spencer
Newcastle upon Tyne



4/26/19 statement from Melanoma Institute, Sydney, Australia via Jennifer Durante, Head of Communications & Fundraising

Associate Professor Robyn Saw is a Faculty Member of Melanoma Institute Australia. Associate Professor Saw has never been associated with the International Journal of Clinical Skills (IJOCS) publication, and has never authorised use of her name as ‘editor’ on the publication masthead. Melanoma Institute Australia requests Assoc Professor Saw’s name be immediately removed from the IJOCS editorial masthead, and all other references in relation to the publication, or legal action will be considered.

As I blogged about a week ago, in the course of reporting about a study published in the International Journal of Clinical Skills (IJOCS), I learned the journal is published by Pulsus Group, a company which has a London address, but is owned by Omics International. 

For more about Pulsus and Omics, the headlines of these two first-rate articles should provide some focus.

Medical Journals Have a Fake News Problem: With help from drug companies, Omics International is making millions as it roils the scientific community with sketchy publications by Esmé E. Deprez and Caroline Chen, Bloomberg News, August 29, 2017.

$50-million fine for predatory publisher that swallowed up Canadian science journals by Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen, April 4, 2019.

Per my item, Sally Richardson -- a faculty member at Kingston/St George’s University London -- was listed as "Senior Associate Editor" on the IJOCS's  masthead. 

In response to my inquiry, she replied, "My name shouldn’t be on this list as I haven’t been part of this journal for many years and will have my name removed." 

Sure enough, within a couple of days, her name vanished from the IJOCS masthead.

That got me wondering if mastheads on other Pulsus journals might also be inaccurate. 

Pulsus publishes IJOCS via OpenAccessJournals.com, so I started with the first journal listed on their website, Diabetes Management, whose masthead includes:

 
...and on the Editorial Advisory Board:


I've never reported about Dr. Denis Daneman, but I recognized Dr. David Jenkins's name  from a story I blogged a couple years ago about his involvement with a failed nutrition rating system called NuVal. He's a prominent name in the field of nutrition science, so I was curious to learn more about his role at Diabetes Management.

Are other University of Toronto faculty on mastheads of other journals in the OpenAccessJournals.com stable? 

A quick search led me to the masthead for another of their journals, Clinical Practice (Therapy), whose Editorial Board includes:


Last week I wrote Philippe Devos, the university's Media Relations Director, and asked him if he'd ask the three professors if the information on the mastheads was accurate.

This afternoon he replied:

In response to your questions, the University of Toronto has the following response:

Denis Daneman resigned all editorial associations with the journal Diabetes Management in August of 2016.

David Jenkins cannot recall ever agreeing to serve on the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Diabetes Management.

Bruce G. Pollock resigned all editorial associations with Clinical Practice (Therapy) in 2014.

We will be contacting the journals in question to request the names of these faculty members be removed from the respective mastheads.

Further, we have found the following contact info for Diabetes Management.

Daphne Boulicault, Commissioning Editor, d.boulicault@futuremedicine.com, Unitec House, 2 Albert Place, London, N3 1QB, UK, +44 (0)20 8371 6090

Jeanette Hedgson, Journal Coordinator, Diabetes Management, diabetes@openaccessjournals.com

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

More to come...

UPDATE, 4/25/19:

Drs. Daneman and Jenkins have been removed the masthead of Diabetes Managment.

Dr. Pollock has been removed from the masthead of Clinical Practice (Therapy).

Carol J. Spizziri is on the right end wearing a gold necklace (source) According to Where Did the Save-A-Life Money Go? by San Diego Reader reporter Don Bauder, as of 2010 Spizzirri lived in a San Marcos mobile home park.

Click here for media reports about the Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF) scandal.

Click here for media reports about former SALF employee Annabel Melongo's efforts to expose the mess including her ongoing, wide-ranging federal civil rights lawsuit against SALF founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri (formerly of Grayslake, IL) and a number of Illinois law enforcement officials.

Carol J. Spizzirri and Rita Mullins, former mayor of Palatine, IL, and second-in-command at the tainted Save-A-Life Foundation

Via Judge John Z. Lee's March 19, 2019 Memorandum Opinion & Order in response to defendants' motions for summary judgment, Melongo's lawsuit is apparently heading to trial. Click here to download a copy.





Here's Spizzirri's May 11, 2018 deposition (entered as a plaintiff's exhibit) in which my name turns up a number of times. (Click here to download a copy.) Followers of the scandal may recall that in 2007, SALF filed a specious, failed lawsuit against me and two other defendants which I discussed in The Downfall of a Non-Profit: The Ongoing Saga of the Save A Life Foundation, a thorough 2015 article by Patch reporter/editor Tim Moran. 

PCRM's "Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine," which to my knowledge has not been presented since 2010. More information via Heimlich Maneuvered -- A gala at Cindy Landon's honoring a top scientist discredited by his son gets a venue change by Paul Teetor, LA Weekly, April 8, 2010

Below the hash marks are excerpts from my March 20, 2019 letter. A copy via Scribd is embedded below. Click here to direct download.

Coincidentally, this week Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute's notorious "malariotherapy" experiments made headlines in China's Xinhua News Agency and STAT News. Click here for my compilation of related media reports and TV spots re: a 2008 US Congressional race.


Gianrico Farrugia MD
President and CEO, Mayo Clinic
200 First St. SW
Rochester, MN 55905

Dear Dr. Farrugia:

I’m the son of the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, known for the Heimlich maneuver anti-choking treatment.

...One of my research/reporting interests is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a high-profile Washington, DC nonprofit that’s been around since 1985. Per my website, I’ve also been a public critic of PCRM because of their problematic 30-year relationship with my dad.

...My Google News alert sent me a Rochester Post Bulletin article from last month by Jeff Kiger, Mayo Clinic criticized for using live pigs in doctor training, who reported:

After talking to Mayo Clinic for more than a year, the Washington, D.C.-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a complaint asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to investigate Mayo’s use of pigs in annual training emergency medical training.

...I thought I’d take the opportunity to share with you some information which in my opinion raises some interesting questions about the organization.

...(Via) numerous published articles from 1994 to the present which I’ve compiled on my blog, PCRM has been called an “animal rights” activist group. If accurate, presumably that perspective influenced the complaint they filed with the USDA against your institution.

...Via NoVa parks authority teaches lifeguards discredited Heimlich maneuver by Tom Jackman:

In Tampa, which has one of the highest drowning rates in the country, Dr. James Orlowski said he has documented nearly 40 cases where rescuers performing the Heimlich maneuver have caused complications for the victim. Orlowski is chief of pediatrics and pediatric intensive care at University Community Hospital in Tampa.

“You’ve got one man and a few small supporters,” Orlowski said, “that continue to push this in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

For decades, those supporters included PRCM and the group’s founding president, Neal Barnard MD.



...Even after the treatment had been thoroughly discredited and my father had been exposed as a dangerous scammer, Dr. Barnard continued to urge the public to perform the Heimlich maneuver on near-drowning victims.



...Via a 1982 Wall Street Journal article (in which he claimed he knew how to bring about world peace), dad claimed he could cure cancer by infecting patients with malaria. Dad credited Julius Wagner-Jauregg, a German eugenicist, Nazi sympathizer, and winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for Medicine as his inspiration for the concept.

Dad then began claiming malaria could cure Lyme Disease and, in collaboration with a New Jersey physician, the Heimlich Institute oversaw clandestine experiments on US Lyme Disease patients in Mexico City and Panama City...The project was shut down in 1992 after an investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because returning patients infected with malaria were bringing the disease into the US.

...What makes the history even more bizarre is that my dad (who died in December 2016) had no background or training in immunology. Nevertheless, because of the fame he acquired as a result of developing and promoting his namesake anti-choking maneuver, people trusted him and he was able to raise millions of dollars from private donors including Hollywood celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Ron Howard who helped fund the experiments on Chinese AIDS patients.

As it happens, in 2008 Eric Matteson MD, your prominent Mayo Clinic colleague, corresponded with PCRM's Dr. John Pippin about the “malariotherapy” experiments and his organization’s relationship with my father.

...Fast forward to December 17, 2016, the day after my dad’s death. Via a PCRM media release that day, The Physicians Committee Remembers Henry J. Heimlich for Innovative Medicine:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine salutes the life and career of Henry J. Heimlich, M.D., a tremendously innovative and creative scientist. The Heimlich maneuver, for which he is known, has saved countless lives.

...“Dr. Heimlich was the embodiment of innovation, compassion, and getting the job done,” says Physicians Committee president Neal Barnard, M.D., F.A.C.C.

...I can’t account for Dr. Barnard and his organization’s unwavering admiration for my dad, especially their unwillingness to distance themselves from the Heimlich Institute’s horrific “malariotherapy” experiments, described here by Cyndi Monahan, a New Jersey Lyme Disease patient via a June 1991 American Health article, Heimlich's Maneuver?

"Within two days I started to get fevers as high as 106 degrees"...After Monahan's return from Mexico City, life consisted of hours of fever followed by chills - and intense pain. "My lower back felt like a truck slammed into it and I found that a malaria headache is the most excruciating pain you can imagine." Her New Jersey doctor allowed the malaria to persist untreated for five weeks. During that time she logged 130 "fever hours," when her temperature exceeded 101 degrees. She vomited constantly, lost 40 lb. and required intravenous fluids to compensate for dehydration. "We went until my body couldn't take it anymore," she recalled, "and then I took the antimalarial drug"...

"I'm going back for another treatment," she says. "Dr. Heimlich told me I may have to do it again. He's made all the arrangements with the doctors in Panama."

As it happens, per this letter donated by my dad to the University of Cincinnati’s Henry J. Heimlich Archival Collection, Dr. Barnard may have helped finance Ms. Monahan’s “treatment”:

May 30, 1991

Neal D. Bernard, M.D.
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
P.O. Box 6322
Washington, D.C. 20015

Dear Neal:

I received your generous donation of $1,000.00 on May 20. Thank you so much for your continuing support of our research projects.

I'm pleased to report our first group of Lyme disease patients has completed malariatherapy at the clinic in Panama and their induced malaria is being cured. In fact, I leave tomorrow so that I can be there this weekend. The results so far are gratifying, and we hope to see even more progress in the weeks to come.

In about an hour, Susan and I will be meeting with Mike Handley to discuss the PSA's to focus on responsible medicine.

Keep in touch. As soon as I have finished documenting our recent malariatherapy group, a report will be sent to you for your interest.

Thought you might care to see the enclosed speech given at graduation of Eastern Virginia Medical College.

Thank you again for your support.

Sincerely,

Henry J. Heimlich
President
The Heimlich Institute
2368 Victory Parkway Suite 410
Cincinnati, OH 45206

Finally, re: the use of animals for training or for medical research, I have zero knowledge of the subject, therefore I have no opinion.

I do, however, have a devil’s advocate question that might be posed to Dr. Barnard, Dr. Pippin, and/or other PCRM representatives.

...Via Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary published in the June 1974 issue of Emergency Medicine in which dad first described the treatment he subsequently named the Heimlich maneuver.

...Standing behind the victim, the rescuer puts both arms around him just above the belt line, allowing head, arms, and upper torso to hang forward. Then, grasping his own right wrist with his left hand, the rescuer rapidly and strongly presses into the victim's abdomen, forcing the diaphragm upward, compressing the lungs, and expelling the obstructing bolus.

...The procedure is adapted from experimental work with four 38-pound beagles...After being given an intravenous anesthetic, each dog was "strangled" with a size 32 cuffed endotracheal tube inserted into the larynx. After the cuff was distended to create total obstruction of the trachea, the animal went into immediate respiratory distress as evidenced by spasmodic, paradoxical respiratory movements of the chest and diaphragm. At this point, with a sudden thrust. I pressed the palm of my hand deeply and firmly into the abdomen of the animal a short distance below the rib cage, thereby pushing upward on the diaphragm.

...We repeated the experiment more than 20 times on each animal with the same excellent results.

...Since dad used the beagles in his research, if PCRM had been around at the time would Dr. Barnard and his organization have attempted to shut down the research and thereby presumably derail the development of the Heimlich maneuver which, according to PCRM’s remembrance of my father, “has saved countless lives”?

My dad demonstrates his namesake anti-choking maneuver on Dr. Xiaoping Chen, Guangzhou (1995). Chen, who trained at UCLA and headed the Heimlich Institute's notorious"malariotherapy" experiments on AIDS patients, reportedly is now conducting controversial "malariotherapy" experiments on cancer patients. Click here and here.

Lifetime gratitude from my wife Karen M. Shulman & me to Robert S. Baratz MD PhD, Elizabeth Woeckner PhC, Paul Bronston MD, Tom Francis, and to the many journalists and others who contributed.

For more information, contact me and/or my brother Phil Heimlich, longtime vice president of Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute. Click here for many of the organization's annual IRS filings -- PMH 

UCLA, Dr. Xiaoping Chen, and the Heimlich Institute
10/2/02 investigation request Karen and I wrote (using the pseudonym "Dr. Bob Smith") and filed with UCLA that triggered the "malariotherapy" investigation of John Fahey MD and other university staff
Researchers' possible link to malariotherapy scrutinized by Edward Chiao and Jeyling Chou, Daily Bruin (UCLA), November 21, 2002 Two UCLA researchers cleared in investigation, The Daily Bruin, January 7, 2003
New evidence leads to reopening of malariotherapy case by Jeyling Chou, The Daily Bruin, February 10, 2003
Scientists Linked to Heimlich Investigated by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer (Sunday front page), February 16, 2003
UCLA Reopens Probe of Two Researchers - New information suggests they took part in experiments to inject AIDS patients with malaria-tainted blood, university says by Rebecca Trounson and Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2003
Therapy's value challenged by Jeyling Chou, The Daily Bruin, February 23, 2003
Malarial Treatment for Chinese AIDS Patients Prompts Inquiry in US by Donald G. McNeil Jr, New York Times, March 4, 2003
Heimlich Maneuvers into AIDS Therapy by Denna Beasley, Reuters via CNN.com, April 14, 2003:
UCLA ties doctor to lab misconduct - Statement determines researcher's involvement in outlawed human testing Jeyling Chou, Daily Bruin, April 15, 2003
Researcher Violated Rules, UCLA Says by Rebecca Trounson and Charles Ornstein, Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2003
Board rebukes AIDS evaluator - Doctor had helped Heimlich associate by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 18, 2003
Institute Performs AIDS Testing by Janet Liao, Cornell Daily Sun, April 30, 2003
Son of Henry Heimlich questions UCLA researchers' involvement in his father's controversial malariotherapy study by Naheed Rajwani and Alessandra Daskalakis, The Daily Bruin, May 6, 2013

Hollywood celebrities donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the Heimlich/Chen AIDS experiments
How Dr. Heimlich Maneuvered Hollywood Into Backing His Dangerous AIDS "Cure" by Seth Abramovitch, The Hollywood Reporter, August 14, 2014
When 'Chicago Hope' Dealt in Heimlich, Malariotherapy and AIDS by Seth Abramovitch, The Hollywood Reporter, August 14, 2014

Dad gets kicked out of international AIDS conference
Heimlich May Discuss Malaria Therapy for AIDS by Anita Wadhwani, Nashville Tennessean, October 30, 2004
Conference Uninvites Doctor Advocating Malaria Therapy for AIDS by Anita Wadhwani, Nashville Tennessean (front page), October 30, 2004

My 2013 letter to St. Louis University re: Chen
Saint Louis University defends Chinese malaria research linked to discredited AIDS study by Alan Scher Zagier, Associated Press, August 21, 2013
St. Louis University Under Fire for Work with Doctor Who Infected AIDS Patients with Malaria by Sam Levin, Riverfront Times, September 9, 2013

2008 Congressional race TV ads tie candidate to Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy for AIDS" experiments
Democratic Congressional Candidate's Ties to Bizarre AIDS Research by Joseph Rhee, ABC News, July 3, 2008

Dangerous experiments: a cover-up: Steve Black for Congress, OH 2nd District U.S. Congressional race, Democratic primary, Spring 2008

Victoria Victoria Wulsin -- Not Exactly Your Good Doctor: Jean Schmidt for Congress, OH 2nd District U.S. Congressional general election, October 2008

Efforts by Karen and me to bring the information to public attention
Outmaneuvered Parts I & II by Thomas Francis, Radar Magazine, November 10-11, 2005
Heimlich family maneuvers - Famed doctor plans Portland visit; Son says he's dangerous, works to discredit him by Peter Korn, The Portland (OR) Tribune, April 13, 2007
Is Dr. Heimlich Really a Savior? by Brian Ross, ABC 20/20, June 8, 2007

From an investigations request letter I sent yesterday to James A. Donahue III, Executive Deputy Attorney General in the Public Protection Division of the Office of the Pennsylvania Attorney General in Harrisburg. (Click here to download a copy.)

As you may be aware, InventHelp and Intromark are defendants in $100+m class action lawsuits alleging fraud. On my blog, I’ve compiled links to court filings, media reports, and other information regarding the case.

...About a year and a half ago, I came across this press release published by PRNewswire.com:

Inventor and InventHelp Client Develops First-Aid Choking Device (SFO-369)

The HEIMRICK is being submitted to companies by InventHelp, a leading invention submission company.

PITTSBURGH, PA (PRWEB) June 09, 2017

An inventor from Fremont, Pa., has developed the HEIMRICK, a device that automatically performs the Heimlich maneuver on a choking victim at a restaurant or related establishment.

“I invented this to prevent people from choking and dying. It’s a safety device that can be available in various eating establishments,” said the inventor.

The HEIMRICK provides a means of accurately performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking victim. It provides a greater level of effectiveness than manual methods. It will assist individuals with lack of knowledge on how to manually perform the Heimlich. In addition, the size of the victim versus the size of the person helping is irrelevant. This safety device will mechanically help and possibly save a choking victim.

The original design was submitted to the San Francisco office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 16-SFO-369, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention

Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com - https://www.youtube.com/user/inventhelp

Contact Author
Chrissa Chverchko
InventHelp
+1 (412) 288-2136
Ext: 4118 Email >

One of my research/reporting interests is anti-choking devices which have been marketed over the decades, so this sounded like a newsworthy item for my blog.

I’d never heard of the HEIMRICK and the vague description piqued my interest. What did it look like? How does it “automatically” perform the Heimlich maneuver? Could it help save lives?

Perhaps not surprisingly, I assumed InventHelp and the unnamed Fremont, Pennsylvania inventor would be delighted to learn that the son of the developer of “the Heimlich” wanted to report about the HEIMRICK.

However, despite multiple phone messages and e-mails to Ms. Chverchko and other InventHelp employees plus a tweet to (company president Robert) Susa. I didn’t receive any response.

Further, I was unable to locate the HEIMRICK inventor’s hometown of Fremont, Pennsylvania...(It’s) unclear if Fremont, Pennsylvania exists.

More recently it occurred to me to revisit the HEIMRICK. As a businessman, I’m always looking for interesting opportunities.

...I repeatedly asked Mr. Susa and (Intromark's Robby) Smith for more details about the HEIMRICK including: a photo or drawing of the device; the name of the inventor, and any other information to help evaluate whether I might wish to manufacture and/or market the device. I also informed them that I was unable to locate Fremont, PA. Despite repeated inquiries, I never received any of the requested information.

...If I was an InventHelp client, I’d want to be made aware of every inquiry from potential manufacturers/marketers so that I could make my own evaluations. And wouldn’t the HEIMRICK inventor want to be informed that the son of Dr. Heimlich was inquiring about a business relationship?

...Further, I’ve been unable to locate any information about the HEIMRICK except for InventHelp’s press release, therefore I have no way to contact the inventor. Therefore I‘m concerned that InventHelp and Intromark are denying the inventor and me the opportunity to pursue what might be a mutually-beneficial business relationship.

As a result of my experiences re: the HEIMRICK, I was curious to learn more about InventHelp’s press release solicitations of potential manufacturers and marketers for their clients’ products.

PRNewswire’s website archives only the most recent six months of these solicitations. According to these screenshots I made this afternoon, from August 20, 2018 through February 18, 2019 (today), InventHelp issued 2,081 press release solicitations for different inventions, an average of 347 per month.




Further, in the course of researching the company’s press releases, I noted a similarity between a number of purportedly unique inventions...(For example) from August 28, 2013 through September 7, 2018 InventHelp issued 19 press release solicitations for 19 different inventions, all of which claim to combine soap bar slivers into a larger bar of soap....Please click here for a pdf compilation of the 19 press releases.

...1. August 28, 2013 , InventHelp Introduces The Soap Saver - Invention Conserves Bars of Soap (LAX-405), La Verne, CA

2. September 11, 2013, InventHelp Inventor Develops Soap Rejuvenator (RBH-220), Wake Forest, NC

3. October 28, 2013, InventHelp Client Creates Soap-Saving Accessory (CLT-877), Charlotte, NC

4. October 31, 2013, InventHelp Inventor Develops Bar-Soap Accessory (SAH-402), Placerville, CA

5. December 19, 2013, InventHelp Introduces Device that Allows For Conservation of Soap Slivers (HLW-1138), Fort Pierce, FL

6. April 25, 2015, InventHelp Inventor Develops Bathing Accessory (LCC-244), Harrisburg, PA

7. October 3, 2015, Soap Saver Invented by InventHelp Client (BGF-906), Troy, MI

8. October 4, 2015, InventHelp Inventor Develops Device for Reusing Bar Soap (CLT-961), Sherills Ford, NC

9. October 21, 2015, InventHelp Inventor Designs Soap Saving Device (JSN-105), Jacksonville, FL

10. November 5, 2015, InventHelp Inventor Develops Device for Reusing Bar Soap (BRK-2093), Smiths Station, AL

11. October 25, 2016, InventHelp Client's Device Promotes Conservation of Bar Soap (HLW-1658), Hialeah, FL

12. December 2, 2016, InventHelp Invention Allows For More Thorough and Efficient Use of Soap During Bathing and Showering (PND-4723), Marlton, NJ

13. December 21, 2016, InventHelp Device Allows For Conservation of Bar Soap (LAX-797), Thousand Oaks, CA

14. April 1, 2017, InventHelp Inventor Develops Device to Reuse Slivers of Bar Soap (HLW1763), Temple, GA

15. September 30, 2017, Inventor Develops Device to Reform Soap Slivers (BRK-2326), Homewood, AL

16. November 22, 2017, Inventor Develops Convenient Soap-Saving Accessory (JMC-2500), Richmond, VA

17. June 18, 2018, InventHelp Inventor Develops Soap Bar Recycler (AAT-3089), Salem, NJ

18. July 12, 2018, InventHelp Inventor's Invention Recycles Bar Soap (LLF-227), Seffner, FL

19. September 7, 2018, InventHelp Inventor Develops Soap-Preservation Device, (NJD-1630) Belleville, NJ

Frankly, I don't know what to make of any of this, but I 'd appreciate it if your office would review the above information and any other relevant information in order to determine if InventHelp and Intromark are conducting business according to all requisite statutes and guidelines.

Finally, I'm still very much interested in obtaining contact information for the inventor of the HEIMRICK and the whereabouts of Fremont, PA. Would your office please request that information from InventHelp and inform me of their response?

A few weeks ago I blogged, A hole worth plugging? Many UK newspapers can "disappear" online news stories with impunity; today I asked the presiding authority to take a look.

Today the Press Gazette, the prominent UK media watchdog, published an article about my efforts, Blogger asks press regulator to consider sanctions against online publishers that pull articles without explanation by staff reporter Charlotte Tobitt.

Some key pulls:

A US blogger is pushing for a change to the Editors’ Code of Practice – the standards to which most UK newspapers are held – which would see publications sanctioned for pulling articles without explanation.

Peter Heimlich has asked the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee to consider “plugging” a hole in the code which allows publishers to delete online news articles “with impunity.”

...Heimlich referenced three articles published by Independent Press Standards Organisation member publications that relate to his area of research and which were deleted with no explanation: 

• Mail Online: Ed Byrne saves choking fan’s life, 2 January 2018
• Northampton Chronicle & Echo: Northampton care home staff save residents’ life after he started choking, 15 June 2018
• Milton Keynes Citizen: Milton Keynes man’s device saves 11 people from choking to death, 17 January 2019

Heimlich told Press Gazette: “’Here today, gone tomorrow’ reporting is not only junk journalism, it’s a thumb in the eye to readers: ‘If we get something wrong, we’ll just bury it and you don’t deserve an explanation.’"

...“I don’t know if the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee has ever reviewed/addressed the problem of member publications making like Winston Smith, but as a result of my experiences, I thought it was worth bringing to their attention. I’m curious to learn how they respond.”

...In a letter to Code Committee secretary Jonathan Grun, Heimlich wrote: “For instance, if an article includes false information, rather than exercising editorial responsibility to correct errors, a publication may simply eliminate the entire story.

“That may shield reporters and editors from embarrassment (or worse), but in my opinion the Orwellian ‘disappearing’ of published news reports is a disservice to readers and to the record.

“It’s also a slippery ethical slope. For example, if an advertiser doesn’t like critical information in a story, could a word in the ear of a person with authority at the newspaper lead to the offending article being sent down the memory hole?”

Grun told Press Gazette he had received Heimlich’s request and that “suggestions for amendments to the Editors’ Code are considered by the Editors’ Code Committee in due course”.

Will the Editors' Code Committee "plug the memory hole" into which "most UK newspapers" may "disappear" published news reports?

To find out, keep reading The Sidebar!