The Sidebar

Today, our nation celebrates National Heimlich Maneuver Day - along with National Nail Polish Day, National Olive Day, and National Say Something Nice Day. 

source

Tennyson Springer (source)

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.  

From Mystery Study by Shawn Cumberbatch, Barbados Today, August 7, 2013 (my emphasis):

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.

For the past several months Peter Heimlich, son of Henry Heimlich who is widely credited with developing the “choking rescue treatment” called the Heimlich Manoeuvre, has been requesting information from the Ministry of Health on the study.

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

..."(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 to probe into this alleged project."

Click here for a 156-page pdf file that documents the "alleged project," which was funded by Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute and the Rotary Foundation of Cincinnati.

Rotary?

From the organization's website:

Rotary is an organization of business and professional persons united worldwide who provide humanitarian service, encourage high ethical standards in all vocations and help build goodwill and peace in the world.

So why did they fund an experiment on dozens of children in Barbados after the project was refused by a hospital in their home town, Deaconess of Cincinnati?

And, given their interest in "high ethical standards," did Cincy Rotary do any monitoring of the experiment or follow-up, such as checking on the condition of the dozens of children who were used as research subjects?

Hey, don't ask me -- ask them:


More questions via the following e-mail I sent this morning to Dr. Dexter James, CEO of Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where the "mystery study" was supposed to have been conducted.

Click here to download a copy.

Click here for my web page documenting all this.

Dr. Dexter James and Bishop of Barbados, the Right Reverend Dr. John Holder (source)

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.

The University of Cincinnati News Record just published Questionable Study has UC Ties by reporter Benjamin Goldschmidt. 

Here's the takeaway:

On Nov. 19, the University of Cincinnati received one of five inquiry letters sent to organizations that could be linked to an offshore, potentially controversial experiment.

Peter Heimlich, son of Henry Heimlich - famous for the Heimlich Maneuver choking rescue treatment - sent the inquiry letters in hopes of obtaining more information on the experiment, which was performed on children in Barbados, according to a study published in the West Indian Medical Journal in 2005.

...The study tested whether or not a modified version of the Heimlich Maneuver could stop an acute asthma attack....The 67 children who participated were between the ages of six and 16.

Charles H. Pierce, MSc, MD, PhD, FCP, CPI

UC received one of the inquiry letters because Charles Pierce, adjunct professor of psychiatry at UC, was involved with applying for loans (sic) for the study....

Barbados Minister of Health Donville Inniss, MP

Other organizations and individuals also received the letters, including Rotary International, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and Donville Inniss, the minister of health in Barbados.

Records show that the study was funded by the Rotary Club of Cincinnati and the Heimlich Institute. (More about that in a future item.)

Dr. Anne St. John and HRH Prince Harry (January 2010)

...Pierce and Anne St. John, a doctor in Barbados who was involved in the study, claim (an Institutional Review Board) approved the project.

...“A couple weeks ago, I sent inquiries to Queen Elizabeth Hospital and to Donville Inniss, the Barbados Minister of Health, asking for the name of the IRB and when the (Ministry's) Ethics Committee approved the study,” Peter Heimlich said. “I haven't received any answers.”

More from the News Record:

(Dr. Pierce) said the modified version of the Heimlich Maneuver is harmless, and is meant to empty the lungs and give relief to an asthma patient and could prevent further asthma attacks.

Presumably Dr. St. John, the study's lead investigator, can clarify what sort of "modified version of the Heimlich maneuver" was performed on the child test subjects.

But here's what medical experts have said about the version of the treatment that my father has been hyping since at least 1996. (Click here for a Heimlich Institute press release.)

Loren Greenway, PhD

From a 2005 newsweekly article by Utah reporter Shane Johnson.

And in this clip from a November 17, 2006 ABC7 Chicago I-Team report by Chuck Goudie:

 The Heimlich maneuver will stop an asthma attack," (says Dr. Henry) Heimlich.

Heimlich also urges the maneuver be used on cystic fibrosis victims, all claims that have stunned the medical community and major medical organizations, which warn that the use of the Heimlich maneuver in those situations could be fatal.

The American Lung Association asked Chicago respiratory expert Dr. John Shannon to speak with us.

"It shouldn't be used at all in asthma or in cystic fibrosis or any other chronic inflamation disorder in the lung passages," said Dr. John Shannon, Stroger Cook County Hospital.

"There is a good possibility of making a person with asthma substantially worse."

To my knowledge, the only article about the treatment published in a medical magazine is Some Experts Are Skeptical About Reports That the Heimlich Maneuver Relieves Acute Asthma Attacks by Carolyn Gard from the February 1997 issue of Modern Medicine.

Click here to read the article, but regarding the Barbados study, this quote raises some reasonable questions:

(Asthma specialist Homer Boushey, MD says that he is) skeptical of studies that have not undergone peer review. Furthermore, he adds, the technique should first be tested on animals rather than humans.

Did the Barbados study undergo peer review? If so, by whom?

Has the "modified Heimlich for asthma" ever been tested on animals?

And has it ever been tested on adult subjects or just on the children in Barbados?

As I reported this morning, yesterday the website of Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute deleted its main pages recommending the Heimlich maneuver as an effective treatment for drowning rescue, to stop asthma attacks, and to treat cystic fibrosis.

Since then, presumably as the result of an e-mail I sent to Patrick Ward this morning (see below), apparently every mention of those treatments has been scrubbed from the organization's website.

This comes on the heels of a Special Report about the Heimlich for drowning in this month's Aquatics International magazine.

Presumably it also marks the end of almost four decades of my father's failed crusade to promote the  treatment, a campaign built entirely on fabricated evidence. From the AI article: 

“For 30 years, my father endlessly trumpeted the cases in the media and in medical journals as proof of his claims,” Peter (Heimlich) says. “I fact-checked all the cases and discovered that they ranged from dubious to outright fraud. For example, a couple of doctors who were the alleged rescuers in two of the ’miracle cases’ just happened to be longtime buddies of my father, a fact that none of them disclosed.” 

Via the Washington Post, here are some of the side effects of their trickery:

Dr. James Orlowski said he has documented nearly 40 (drowning) 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.

For more details, see my web page, Some of the victims - casualties of the Heimlich maneuver for drowning rescue.

Along with a couple dozen pages that were on the Heimlich Institute's website this morning but have since been deleted - click here for a list - here's a screenshot I took this morning from the site's home page:


From a few minutes ago, here's a screenshot from the same page:


In a future post, I'll share my opinion of why Deaconess Associations, the parent company of the Heimlich Institute, finally took action.

Hint: Deaconess has been putting the public at risk with this quackery since 1998 as well as funding and sponsoring the Heimlich "malariotherapy" atrocity experiments on AIDS patients.

And if the prominent business folk in charge of Deaconess have ever expressed concern about the scores of media stories reporting the life-threatening hazards associated with my father's unproven, discredited claims, their distress hasn't reached my ears.

Therefore, it's unlikely that these health care executives were suddenly overcome by pangs of conscience.

my 5/16/12 inquiry to the Heimlich Institute re: whether the organization still promotes the Heimlich maneu...

Note: I've updated this item with more details and added links since first posting it.

38 years after my father and his cronies started faking case reports to promote the Heimlich maneuver as a drowning rescue method and on the heels of a Special Report by Aquatics International magazine, the Heimlich Institute may finally have given up promoting the treatment.

That's not definitive, but yesterday the main pages promoting the Heimlich for drowning were deleted from the organization's website.

Same goes for the organization's specious claims that the maneuver is effective for treating asthma and cystic fibrosis.


Both treatments have been thoroughly discredited as unproven, useless, and potentially lethal by medical experts and medical organizations including the American Heart Association, the American Red Cross, and the American Lung Association.

At this writing, the deleted pages are still available via Google cache. If you click here for the cached version of the Heimlich home page, then hover over "The Heimlich Maneuver" on the main menu bar, here's what comes up:


But go to the Institute's home page today, hover over the same menu bar, and here's what you'll see:

 
If you clicked on the green bar labeled "drowning," it would take you to this contents page with links to articles and information, still available via Google's cache:


Here's what now comes up at http://heimlichinstitute.com/drowning.php, the URL for that page:


Same goes for http://heimlichinstitute.com/asthma.php, the Heimlich for asthma contents page that yesterday looked like this - screenshot courtesy of Google's cache - but is now also HTTP 404:


So has the Institute pulled the plug on both treatments?

That's inconclusive because the Heimlich website still hosts dozens of pages that had been linked to the main drowning and asthma pages. Click here for a list I made.

And the site's home page still includes...


I'll send an inquiry to Deaconess Associations Foundation, which since June 1998 has wholly owned the Heimlich Institute, and will report the results in a follow-up item.

UPDATE, 10:25AM:
my 5/16/12 inquiry to the Heimlich Institute re: whether the organization still promotes the Heimlich maneu...

Current Heimlich Institute corporate board