Thursday, March 28, 2019

SALF scandal update: Chicago fed judge green-lights Melongo v. Spizzirri et al civil rights lawsuit

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. 

Thursday, March 21, 2019

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

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”?


Monday, March 18, 2019

Media reports (and TV commercials) about the notorious "malariotherapy" experiments conducted by Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute that resulted from research by my wife & me

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