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Via Mystery Study, an August 7 news report published by Barbados Today:

The Ministry of Health is officially probing the existence of a controversial asthma study purportedly done in Barbados and involving a famous American physician.

But amid continued external queries about whether the research “followed legal and ethical guidelines”, Acting Permanent Secretary Tennyson Springer said initial investigations had found no evidence of its existence.

The research in question reportedly focused on using the Heimlich Manoeuvre to help manage asthma in pediatric patients.

...Last month Springer responded on the Ministry of Health’s behalf and told (Peter) Heimlich that there was no knowledge of the study which was said to have involved 67 minors.

...An abstract of the study concluded that it “provided data to support the potential benefits of the modified Heimlich Manoeuvre as adjunctive therapy for asthma....

Prof. Everard N. Barton (source)

The abstract was published in the West Indian Medical Journal whose current editor is Professor Everard N. Barton of The University of the West Indies in Jamaica

Below is a letter I sent yesterday in which I asked him and the journal's editorial board to investigate the Barbados study and to make public their findings. Click here to download a copy.

Click here for my web page that includes links to other related media reports and more information.  

The Barbados Ministry of Health (MOH) just confirmed to me that they're investigating a medical research study conducted on dozens of children about a decade ago.

From the abstract of the unpublished study:

The study population consisted of 67 patients aged 6–16 years with a control group of 34 patients and a study group of 33 patients...This study has provided data to support the potential benefits of the modified Heimlich Manoeuvre as adjunctive therapy for asthma....

According to recently-available documents from my father's archives (maintained by the University of Cincinnati medical library), the study was rejected by Cincinnati's Deaconess Hospital, then offshored to Barbados after funding was obtained from  the Heimlich Institute and the Rotary Club of Cincinnati.

According to correspondence exchanged by my father, Anne St. John MD of Barbados's Queen Elizabeth Hospital (lead investigator), and Charles H. Pierce MD PhD of Cincinnati (who helped arrange the project) the experiment was:

1) Approved by the Ministry of Health's Ethics Board;
2) Overseen by an Institutional Review Board.

I simply wanted to verify those two claims, so in February I wrote to the Ministry of Health, the agency responsible for overseeing medical research conducted in Barbados.

Tennyson Springer (source)

Per the July 10 letter (which I received today) from MOH Permanent Secretary Tennyson Springer: 

(I) wish to acknowledge receipt of your correspondence and inform you that the matter is being investigated. So far, there has been no institutional memory or documentation of this research. However, the Ministry of Health will continue the probe into this alleged project.

Click here for my web page about the Barbados study, including links to articles published in the University of Cincinnati News Record and the Barbados Sunday Sun newspapers, and in Barbados Underground, a lively Bajan blog.