U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin has cracked a rib of U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill while performing the Heimlich maneuver on the fellow Democrat when she began choking.
A spokesman for Manchin told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that McCaskill began choking during a luncheon for Senate Democrats on Thursday. Manchin used the Heimlich maneuver to dislodge the blockage in McCaskill's throat, but he cracked a rib in the process.
In a conscious choking emergency, where a person can't cough, speak or breathe, the (American Red Cross) procedure is to ask the person if he or she is choking and get consent to give aid. Then administer five strong back blows between the shoulder blades with the heel of your hand, "as forceful as you deem necessary to save that person's life," (representative Gabriele) Romanucci said.
The back blows are a less-invasive technique that might help clear the airway, so the Red Cross advises trying them first, he said.
"If that technique is not successful, then we would go to the abdominal thrust," he said.
How should a mainstream news organization respond after being made aware that a published story contains bad information that may seriously injure babies?
In somewhat identical situations, here's how FOX TV News affiliates in Oklahoma City and Cleveland responded.
On June 13, FOX25 News in Oklahoma City aired How to help someone who's choking by staff reporter Jordann Lucero.
Here's a screenshot from her story with my highlighting:
Via that part of her story, here's an interview with a member of the Oklahoma City Fire Department:
Here's the problem.
No legitimate medical organization or medical expert recommends performing stomach thrusts (aka abdominal thrusts aka the Heimlich maneuver) on babies.
As I've reported, executives at the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Red Cross (ARC) wrote me that the treatment "may cause injuries" to babies.
(To my knowledge, the only organization that recommends and teaches the treatment is Cincinnati's Heimlich Heroes program, a dubious operation whose charter is to promote my dad's "legacy.")
After spotting Ms. Lucero's report I e-mailed AHA and ARC guidelines to Oklahoma City Battalion Chief and Public Relations Officer Benny Fulkerson.
A few hours later I received his reply:
Mr. Heimlich,
Sir, we just want to thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. After review, it has been determined that you are absolutely correct. The treatment demonstrated in the video was not in accordance with the AHA [American Heart Association] standard which we operate under. Please know that we feel terrible that this occurred, and we are working with Fox 25 to correct this information for their viewers. As a public safety organization, we take extremely seriously our role as an authority about all things related to fire and life safety. We do have amazing personnel who work very hard every day to serve our citizens. When we make mistakes, we take every measure to correct them and learn from them.
Again, thank you so much for contacting us about this. We are eager to get this information corrected.
I then received a thank-you from FOX25 New Director Adam Pursch who informed me that the story was being re-reported.
DiPiazza: (The Akron Fire Department's Lt. Joe) Shumaker says
don’t be afraid of hurting the baby, and forceful motions are the only
thing that will help them breathe again.
Shumaker: “Can you cause some injury? Can you break a bone? Can
you crack a rib? Perhaps, but in the end run the child will be breathing
which is what we want as a result,” he said.
Who'd be irresponsible enough to stand behind the recommendation that first responders shouldn't worry about breaking a
baby's bones?
Among others: Akron Mayor Daniel Horrigan, Fire Chief Clarence Tucker, and FOX8 News Director Andy Fishman.
Akron, OH, Mayor Daniel Horrigan & Fire Chief Clarence Tucker (source)
Last February I sent all of them the same information I sent last week to the responsible parties in Oklahoma City
However, rather than fixing the error in order to protect babies from potential injury or worse, they all backed up Lt. Shumaker who, in fact, is certified according to AHA standards:
Here's the grammatically-challenged reply I received from Mr. Fishman at FOX8 which more or less corresponds to the replies I received from the offices of the mayor and the fire department:
According to a press release they issued about a year ago, the Cincinnati-area American Heritage Girls is the "premier national character development organization for young women that embraces Christian values...Currently, American Heritage Girls has over 43,000 Members [sic] located in every state..."
According to a 2014 press release, the American Heritage Girls formed a "National Cooperative Venture" with Heimlich Heroes, a "Deaconess Associations, Inc. and Heimlich Institute initiative that teaches kids as young as seven how to become a hero by learning to perform the Heimlich Maneuver correctly in order to save a life. Both organizations are based in Cincinnati."
In honor of Heimlich Heroes week American Heritage Girls corporate office trained their staff using our Teen and Adult program!
Kristi Tatro, National Director of Girl Impact, spearheaded the training to set an example for their members and community.
AHG staff members went through the Heimlich Heroes Teen and Adult training using our new training video...
Tatro said, “AHG highly endorses and encourages this program. It’s easy and fun to learn!”
Via this clip from the Heimlich Heroes "new training video," here's the problem:
I'm unaware of any medical organization or medical expert that recommends performing "the Heimlich" (abdominal thrusts) on choking infants.
Why not?
According to recent e-mails I received from executives at the American Heart Association and American Red Cross, doing so "may cause injuries."
Further, I'm unaware of any published research on the subject.
In other words, the American Heritage Girls "highly endorses and encourages" teaching the public to perform an unapproved, potentially harmful medical procedure on babies.
I'm e-mailing this item to Ms. Tatro with an invitation to respond.
Here's the fourth and final segment of Drowning in Funworld by Long Beach, CA, journalist Pamela Mills-Senn.
It's the dramatic backstory behind her landmark March 30, 2000 article that became the road map for much of the research by my wife Karen and me, work that resulted in hundreds of mainstream print and broadcast media reports.
Drowning in Funworld was first published 11 years ago this week by the now-defunct Cincinnati Beacon blog. It's my privilege to make it available again -- PMH
And so the writing began. The editor and I were concerned that - since it appeared Ellis & Associates had made a questionable decision in changing their drowning rescue protocol to the Heimlich maneuver - the article would be buried if we focused too much attention on them. We decided instead to concentrate on Heimlich and his research and hoped that interested parties (the waterparks, public pools, lakes, and amusement parks that had hired Ellis to provide lifeguard training) would put two and two together and ask some hard questions of the company. This is why you'll notice, if you look at the Funworld article, there is just one section related to Ellis, although they are mentioned towards the end of the piece as well.
In total, I wrote three drafts. The first was sent to the editor so he could weed down the word count, which approached 10,000 words. The second, based on his revisions, was then sent out to everyone that was interviewed or provided information (with the exception of Dr. Henry Heimlich). No one received the full article, just sections with their input except in those cases where I also asked sources to review my comments on research methodology, general drowning information, etc. Ellis received only his section and comments.
The third draft incorporated their comments, revisions and corrections and was sent to the editor. In turn, he sent the entire article out to Heimlich to give him a last chance to comment.
During my research, I would ask Heimlich to explain the discrepancies I was encountering.
For example, I asked him why he incorrectly extrapolated Dr. Linda Quan's data, why he didn't tell people this was a regional study? He responded that he did make people aware of its regional nature. But this was only occasionally true. He very often failed to mention the regional nature of this study and that consequently, data from this study was restricted in its applications. Unless you were educated in statistics, you would not appreciate the study's limits.
And when I asked him why he falsely stated that the lifeguards in Quan's study had been trained in CPR, he accused Quan of lying. He wrote:
Mouth-to-mouth was adopted for drowning in 1961 and was spread by the (American Red Cross) to lifeguards and the public very quickly. I find it hard to believe that 23 years later [Quan’s study covered 10 years beginning in 1974] they were not yet teaching CPR to lifeguards in Seattle. I’d like to see written proof from Quan. There is certainly no published statement in any of Quan's writing indicating that she improved outcomes by adding CPR to the lifeguard’s protocol for the first time [remember that I mentioned a later study conducted by Quan demonstrated this very thing]. How could she leave that out if it were possibly true? It sounds like something she thought of belatedly, after I quoted her findings of 42% mortality.
Interestingly - referring to Heimlich’s contention that by 1974 the majority of lifeguards were well aware of and well-trained in CPR - as I was researching the Funworld article I attended an industry trade show in Atlanta, which gave me the opportunity to sit in on an Ellis presentation about their aquatic services. At this presentation, they showed a video of a kid that had drowned in a public pool (the video was shot by a bystander). The trade show was in early 2000, I believe and the video was recent. The guards at that pool pulled the kid out and then did essentially nothing. They acted completely baffled, something that would never happen to Ellis-trained guards - or so the message was.
The presenter said these guards had received CPR training, although he wouldn’t say from whom. The point is that while Heimlich appears disbelieving that any guard could be untrained (or poorly-trained) in CPR, decades later, Ellis was willing to state this was the case.
This is how it went with Heimlich. He would start out by appearing to answer questions about his research, etc. but then in a weird sort of circular approach, sidestep the question either by referencing the very studies I was asking him about, or refer me back to his own chapters, writings and correspondence. It smacked of a sort of "because I say so," logic.
He would also refer to Ellis' adoption of his maneuver as evidence of its merit, not addressing the fact that this adoption was, in fact, based on his questionable science and misused data.
Throughout, he accused researchers of outright fraud, or of not understanding their own data. He also believed that the Institute of Medicine misinterpreted their findings and had made deliberate omissions around his work. At times, Heimlich almost sounded like a conspiracy theorist.
The third and final copy, the one sent to Heimlich after all the others had reviewed it, stood unchanged, in spite of his rebuttals. It was time to show the report in its entirety to Ellis.
I believe the editor showed it to Ellis and others who were attending a meeting of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractionssafety committee. [Funworldis published by IAAPA.] I can't recall whether this committee was focused entirely on waterpark safety or also concerned itself with amusement parks.
The report's impact was immediate. The committee was upset and concerned that the news media, which routinely reads the trade publications of major industries, would get wind of the report. Although the article was to have run in the magazine, and later when it grew longer, to be included with the magazine as a supplemental report, ultimately it was kept out of the publication altogether. Instead, a month or so later, it was mailed out to IAAPA members as a "Special Report," effectively keeping it out of the public eye — although whether this, or costs, was the motivating factor, only the publisher knows. [Editor's note: The privately-distributed Funworld article was dated March 30, 2000. A few months later, the Los Angeles Times reported the story.]
One drowning authority I relied heavily on during my research was Jerome Modell M.D., at the time a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Florida's College of Medicine. As I said in the Funworld article, Modell's work in drowning is internationally known and referenced. As of that writing, he had also acted as an expert witness in drowning litigation on approximately 150 occasions.
When Modell heard that the article was not going to be published in the magazine, he fired off a letter to John Graff, the president and CEO of IAAPA. In it he said:
For you now to deny the printing of this material indicates to me that…the report did not result in a manuscript that fit your personal prejudices. I can tell you that as a scientist, on many occasions, experiments that I and my colleagues have performed have produced results that did not meet our pretesting biases, but in the end, resulted in an even more significant contribution that had our predetermined biases been true.
For the above reasons, I believe that your censorship of this article was inappropriate; some have even expressed the opinion to me that external pressure, or perhaps a vested interest in a different outcome, may have influenced your judgment in this matter. I personally chose not to believe this, but I urge you, in the interest of safety for all of us who are interested in water sports, to publish this article in Funworld magazine at the earliest possible date.
Graff was unmoved.
Within days of receiving the article, Ellis quietly changed their protocol back to CPR, claiming they had decided to do so partly because of the Institute of Medicine's findings and decision not to endorse the maneuver for drowning or revisit the issue. (The first IOM committee reviewed the issue in 1991 and the second IOM committed reviewed this again in 1994. This was not a recent decision and Ellis should have been well aware of it).
Another reason Ellis gave was their submersion data. They started collecting data on the maneuver in 1995, when they changed their protocol. They also had older data, going back to 1985 when Ellis-trained guards were still responding with CPR. They had been touting their data as demonstrating the maneuver was superior to CPR, but the problem was, as Ellisrepresentative Larry Newell admitted, the two sets of data were not comparable, so no meaningful comparison between the two protocols was possible. In fact, it was impossible.
But they had to have known this before receiving the article.
Funworld's editor was fired, forced to resign, however you want to spin it, because of this article and because he backed it. All along, I had been thinking only of how I might be impacted. I had no idea the heat he was taking and had been taking for months. And yet, when he had the chance to kill the article, he didn't take it. I can’t tell you how much I admired him and still do.
In Part Three I mentioned the Save A Life Foundation and that they were the only organization outside of Ellis to endorse and teach the maneuver for drowning. At the time, Heimlich sat on that organization's medical advisory board, as did CPR developer Dr. Peter Safar. The medical director then was Stanley Zydlo, M.D.
He told me during an interview, that they initially advised folks to use CPR, but decided to switch to the maneuver based on the 42% fatality rate from Quan's study (and supplied to him by Heimlich) and also on CPR’s "median mortality rate of 40%" another figure supplied by Heimlich. Zydlo contrasted this to Ellis' stated mortality rate, attributed to the maneuver protocol, of just 3% and decided this was proof enough the maneuver worked far better than CPR.
But, said those whom I interviewed for this article, Ellis' low mortality rate is more likely the result of the very short submersion times (remember, Ellis says their average submersion time is 29 seconds) rather than the maneuver.
As far as I know, although I haven’t investigated, the Save A Life Foundation is still recommending the maneuver as a first response to drowning/near-drowning, in spite of receiving a copy of the article and in spite of Ellis’ reversal. [Editor's note: In the wake of dozens of media exposes alleging fraud, the Save A Life Foundation went out of business in 2009 andthe organization's founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri is a defendant in a wide-ranging federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a former SALF employee.]
After fulfilling a contract for another article, established when the editor was still in place, I never wrote for Funworld again. The editor found another job, and we kept in touch. We felt like we were the only ones in the world, except for a handful of others, who knew what we knew and we had weathered it together. But the knowledge of what people are willing to do to advance their agendas remains with you and changes you, and it changed me.
I remember the mixed feelings I had when Ellis reversed their decision. On the one hand, it confirmed that my research had uncovered real problems. Otherwise, I believe Jeff Ellis would have stood his ground and presented evidence favorable to his decision. He had every opportunity to do that.
But the quick reversal made it appear, in my mind anyway, that these problems were known all along, and this was troubling. Because it seemed to me that what had really taken place in the waterparks were the very human studies experiments that the IOM had said should not be approved. And it seemed like admission prices were high enough without tossing this into the mix.
We'd like to think we can count on the gatekeepers, like Ellis, to protect us from people like Dr. Heimlich, that would use us to their own purposes. I guess what I learned from this experience is that the gatekeepers need watching too.
Postscript: Several years after the publishing of the article, reports of Dr. Heimlich's "malariotherapy" experiments began appearing in the Los Angeles Times and other news outlets. Around that time, I was contacted by Peter Heimlich, Dr. Heimlich's youngest son. Peter and his wife Karen have worked tirelessly to expose problems surrounding Dr. Heimlich's research and claims.
Also in part I, on Tuesday I fact-checked what appeared to be these factual errors.
Radel claimed that the American Red Cross (ARC) did not use the term "Heimlich maneuver" in their first aid literature because my father demanded that they remove his name. In an e-mail in which I copied Bhatia, I asked the ARC if that was accurate.
Radel also reported that the Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver received the Lasker Award. I e-mailed the Lasker Foundation and got a prompt, courteous reply from David Keegan, the organization's Awards Program Director who confirmed Radel got that wrong.
Peter: We will run a correction on the Lasker awards. I would note it was correct that your father won the award. We already fixed the bad headline. Otherwise, we leave you to your blog.
Peter Bhatia Editor and Vice President, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and Ohio editor for the USA TODAY Network
Thank you for the heads-up and for the fixes, although I didn't appreciate your snide remark. Why blame me for catching reportorial errors when a lightweight like Cliff was assigned to write an obituary for someone as newsworthy and important as my father?
Based on your recent e-mail, my understanding is that the Enquirer has no intention of correcting the Belle Jacobson error; no interest in addressing Fred Webster's contradiction of my father's
dubious tale about the Chinese soldier; and no interest in including anything about my father falsely claiming credit for inventing the esophagus operation.
I also asked you for the name of Cliff's editor on the obit. Can you share that, please?
Finally, re: this from Cliff's article:
The Red Cross’ inclusion of the back
slaps offended Heimlich. So, in 1976, he asked the organization to remove his name from their first-aid literature for choking. That’s why the term "abdominal thrusts" is used.
Per my Monday inquiry to you, that last sentence is contradicted by information from the American Red Cross. I have an inquiry to the ARC and will let you know the result.
A journalist and reader's representative doesn't care whether or not his newspaper is providing readers with accurate information and also refuses to disclose the name of a supervising editor?
Whose idea was it to revisit this obscure story? I wanted to learn how it got into the paper, who was the supervising editor, and shouldn't the article be appended with a note informing readers that the treatment was unapproved and might injure or perhaps kill someone?
Joanne Lipman Senior Vice President, Chief Content Officer Gannett Inc.
Dear Ms. Lipman:
This is a complaint against Peter Bhattia of the Cincinnati Enquirer for professional misconduct. Would you please review the following and forward this e-mail to the responsible human resources managers at Gannett and the Enquirer? I would appreciate being copied on those e-mails.
Per the e-mails below my signature, today I fact-checked and tagged one of those errors -- Mr. Radel incorrectly reported that the Wright Brother and George Washington Carver received the Lasker Award. After I shared that information with Mr. Bhatia -- an e-mail to me from an executive at the Lasker Foundation -- he agreed to publish a correction for that error. He also agreed to correct the headline on Mr. Radel's article which erroneously identified my father as a Cincinnati native. (Per my e-mail to Mr. Bhatia, the headline error was tagged and reported by former Enquirer reporter Ben Kaufman in his most recent Cincinnati CityBeat media watch column.)
However, for reasons that remain unclear, Mr. Bhatia refused to address the other apparent errors I brought to his attention.
Further -- and considerably more disconcerting -- in an e-mail this afternoon he terminated our correspondence despite the fact that in an e-mail a few minutes earlier, I informed him that I had a fact-checking inquiry in to the American Red Cross (ARC) regarding this questionable information in Mr. Radel's article:
The Red Cross’ inclusion of the back slaps offended (Dr.) Heimlich. So, in 1976, he asked the organization to remove his name from their first-aid literature for choking. That’s why the term “abdominal thrusts” is used.
To reiterate, Mr. Bhatia made it clear he did not care how the ARC might respond to my inquiry. In other words, he did not care whether the information in Radel's article was accurate or not.
Shortly after receiving Mr. Bhatia's e-mail terminating our correspondence, I received the following e-mail. Please note that Mr. Bhatia was copied by Mr. Lauritzen.
Please accept our condolences regarding the passing of your father.
Following are responses to your questions.
Throughout history, the American Red Cross has recommended different protocols for removing foreign body obstructions blocking airways based on the most up-to-date science available on First Aid, CPR and Emergency Cardiovascular Care. Our current recommendation is using cycles of 5 back blows and 5 abdominal thrusts to treat conscious choking children and adults. For conscious choking infants, the Red Cross recommends using cycles of 5 back blows and 5 chest thrusts.
The American Red Cross uses the term ‘abdominal thrusts’ in our training materials because it describes the action that people are performing. The term represents the correct medical and generic term used in evidence reviews and guidelines documents. We do not have any record of Dr. Heimlich prohibiting us from using the term ‘Heimlich Maneuver’ and are not aware of the use of the term in any American Red Cross training materials including those developed before 1976.
Thank you.
Don Lauritzen
Communications Officer
American Red Cross
National Headquarters
431 18th Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
202.303.4775
Since Mr. Bhatia terminated his correspondence
with me, this is to request that you contact a responsible editor
at the Enquirer and arrange for a published correction to Mr.
Radel's article based on Mr. Lauritzen's e-mail.
2) As you may recall from my correspondence with
you last summer, in response to multiple polite requests,
without explanation Mr. Bhatia refused to provide me with the
name of the supervising editor for this August 18, 2016
Enquirer article, 15 years later: Lifeguard, swimmer recall close call by Brett Milam.
Today Mr. Bhatia also refused to provide me with name of the
editor responsible for Mr. Radel's obituary of my father.
This is to request that you contact a responsible
editor at the Enquirer, obtain the names of the supervising
editors on those two articles, and that you provide me with
those names.
3) In order to determine if Mr. Radel's article requires further
correcting, would you also please ask a responsible editor to
review the other reportorial concerns about Mr. Radel's article
which I brought to Mr. Bhatia's attention and which he refused to
address?
4) Finally, this is to request that your office provide me with a
determination if Mr. Bhatia's actions are in compliance with
Gannett policy.
Thank you for your
time/consideration and I look forward to your reply.
Michael Kilian, The Enquirer
Ben Kaufman, Cincinnati CityBeat
Yesterday Ms. Lipman e-mailed me that she'd turned the matter over to Brent Jones.
Here's the original and the revised headline on Radel's article:
The article is now appended with:
Even though Bhatia was informed by Don Lauritzen, at this writing the false information about the American Red Cross acceding to my father's demands is still in Radel's article.
At this writing, the USA Today version of the obit still includes this error:
Finally, I sincerely appreciated Don Lauritzen's kind condolence note and I promptly e-mailed him a warm thank-you.
Fairfax police officers came to the rescue of a choking man at a Subway restaurant on Thursday.
...Police said in a statement, "Officer Mulhern utilized his training and administered back blows and Heimlich maneuver. Due to the officers' quick actions, the man's airway was cleared and all were able to finish enjoying their meals."
The American Red Cross' first-aid procedure recommends five back slaps and then five abdominal thrusts for someone who's choking.
...Those recommendations "horrify" (Dr. Henry) Heimlich..."Many scientific studies" have proven "if a person is choking and the food is in the airway, if you hit them on the back, it causes the food
to go deeper and tighter into the airway."
(The) only known study comparing the Heimlich maneuver and back blows was performed by three Yale scientists: Richard L. Day, Edmund S. Crelin and Arthur B. DuBois.
The paper, published in 1982 in the journal Pediatrics, concluded that the Heimlich is superior. Back blows are not merely ineffective, they can force blockages down the throat and toward the larynx - exactly the wrong direction, the researchers concluded.
"Choking: The Heimlich Abdominal Thrust vs Back Blows: An Approach to Measurement of Inertial and Aerodynamic Forces," by Day, Crelin and DuBois, could well have been the final word.
Except that in acknowledgements at the end of the paper, the authors credit support from the "Dysphagia Foundation Inc. of Cincinnati Inc."
And records from the Ohio Secretary of State's office show that the Dysphagia Foundation was renamed "The Heimlich Institute" Aug. 30, 1982.
In other words, the Yale experts studying the Heimlich maneuver were apparently assisted by Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, developer and tireless promoter of the Heimlich maneuver. He referred to back blows as "death blows."
The connection between Heimlich and the Yale scientists appears to pose at least the appearance of a conflict of interest. ...(Dr. Heimlich) did not return phone calls.
Via a June 7, 1982 letter from my father to Dr. Day (embedded below):
I've already reported that my father's financial arrangement with Day was part of a bizarre campaign to eliminate backblows from choking rescue protocols.
"To win," as reporter Tom Francis put it, "the choking rescue crown."
And beginning in 1986 and for the next two decades, my father wore that crown. During those years, U.S. first aid guidelines recommended only his namesake treatment.
But if current first aid guidelines and the Fairfax cops are any indication, despite the efforts of my crooked father and his cronies, science appears to have righted itself.
Re: her September 14, 2015 New York Times article, What Comes After the Heimlich Maneuver, can "trusted authority on health" Jane Brody back up her own claims?
Ms. Brody didn't reply to my e-mails, so I've asked Margaret Sullivan, the paper's public editor, to jump in.
Check out this clip from an NBC Today Show segment, How to save the life of someone who's choking by reporter Jeff Rossen and producer Jovanna Billington -- the web page says July 17, 2015, but it aired Tuesday July 14th:
Long story short, Dr. Holly Andersen's claim about back blows is contradicted by the recommendations of the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association.
For years, along with most of the world's first aid organizations, the ARC and AHA have recommended back blows as an effective treatment for responding to a choking emergency.
Further, as widely reported, for about a decade the ARC has recommend back blows as the first treatment response:
As for her claim that rescuers should perform a Heimlich maneuver using one arm, I've been researching my father's career for over a decade and I've never heard of that.
I don't know where she came up with those recommendations, but since she provided medical information on national TV that was wrong and could conceivably harm kids and adults, I assumed Dr. Andersen and NBC would want to correct the errors.
So I shared the above information with New York Presbyterian Hospital's media department, and asked them to ask Dr. Andersen if she thought NBC should correct the errors.
I then sent a couple of courteous e-mails to Dr. Anderson and to Stephen J. Corwin MD, the hospital's CEO, asking if they wanted to comment.
I received multiple confirmations of receipt from both, but no other communications, so presumably their version of the Hippocratic Oath is, "First, admit no mistakes."
As for NBC, I sent self-described National Investigative Correspondent Jeff Rossen multiple courteous, well-documented e-mails explaining that his report included false and questionable medical recommendations.
Although each time I received prompt confirmations of receipt -- here's the most recent -- I received no further communications from him.
Since Rossen was apparently hiding under his desk, I sent a courteous, well-documented e-mail to NBC News Division head Andrew Lack, asking him to jump in.
Page down to read that e-mail, but here are some pulls:
(If Dr. Andersen's) going to appear on national TV as an expert, it's her responsibility to know what she's talking about and it's apparent she failed to adequately prepare. So why give her a pass, meanwhile leaving your audience with incorrect information?
...Based on my experience, if good journalists make an error, they welcome publishing corrections for at least two reasons. One, they want to get it right because they have pride in the accuracy of their reporting. Two, they care about maintaining their audience's trust. Based on Mr. Rossen's silence, apparently none of that matters to him, hence this outreach.
I received this confirmation of receipt but no further communication.
Rossen and Billington apparently weren't even paying attention to their own story.
If they had, shouldn't they have noticed this intro clip in the piece?
It shows an officer responding to a choking three-year-old and performing -- yep --a series of back blows, thereby, according to Rossen, "saving the boy's life."
Finally, this historical tie-in, a brief interview with retired Today Show weatherman Frank Field in which explains his crusade to promote the Heimlich maneuver shortly after my father introduced the treatment in 1974:
Cincinnati-based American Heritage Girls (AHG), an international faith-based character-development program for girls ages 5 through 18, has joined with Heimlich Heroes to teach its members how to perform the Heimlich Maneuver when a person chokes on food or a small object. The training will be available free to all AHG troops nationwide.
(The) American Heart Association and the American Red Cross, do not recommend using the Heimlich maneuver on unconscious patients...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.
Via a January 6, 2015 e-mail to me from Eric Perez MD, an emergency medicine expert in New York City who reviews medical treatment information for the National Institutes of Health:
To my knowledge, there is no definitive evidence for or against performing abdominal thrusts (on an) unconscious patient.
Further, apparently the "unconscious Heimlich" protocol has never been the subject of any published research, therefore it's experimental.
Public health and/or liability risk if someone gets hurt?
Since the announcement of the Heimlich Heroes/American Heritage Girls partnership last year, I've made multiple attempts -- most recently last week after seeing the above Facebook post -- in order to obtain a position statement and comment from AHG representatives if they're teaching their members to "Heimlich" unconscious choking victims.
If they are, AHG is using unwitting kids and troop leaders to circulate an unapproved, experimental medical treatment.
Which leads me to this April Fool's Day challenge to merry pranksters out there.
Make up a story that your pet saved you from choking and get it reported by a mainstream news outlet.
Share the results with me and I'll likely blog it. (Click here for my contact info.)
So don't just stand there wagging your tail. Unleash your wits and see if any reporters roll over.
###
4/2/15 UPDATE: As two eagle-eyed Sidebar readers (both of whom are journalists) wrote me, contrary to the headlines and text of the Mirror and Mail stories, Lexi the lab did not "Heimlich" his master.
The "Heimlich manoeuvre" (UK spelling) is an abdominal thrust -- a squeeze below the rib cage. Mr. Spencer's precocious pooch reportedly jumped on his back.
One of the sharp-eyed readers also suggested that Lexi be presented with a lifesaving award, so I'm sending a nomination to St John Ambulance UK and will report the results.
Also on Lexi's behalf, yesterday I submitted corrections requests to the Mirror and the Mail. More about that later....
