The Sidebar

Via Police officers come to the rescue of choking man at Subway restaurant by Kendra Mann, WJLA News, July 2nd 2016:
Via Heimlich maneuver's creator fights Red Cross by Cliff Radel, Cincinnati Enquirer, January 21, 2013:
Via Red Cross reverses policy on choking aid by Abram Katz, October 23, 2006 (based on my research and tip):

And records from the Ohio Secretary of State's office show that the Dysphagia Foundation was renamed "The Heimlich Institute" Aug. 30, 1982.

source

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.  

Associated Press photo (source)

Per my previous item, for years my father's been telling a bizarre, self-aggrandizing lie that the American Friends Service Committee shipped "tens of thousands" of Heimlich chest valves to the North Vietnamese army and civilian population during the war.

Who was the editor responsible for letting that whopper into my father's recent memoir, Heimlich's Maneuvers, published last week by Prometheus Books?

I don't know, but here's another editorial oops in the book.

Abram Katz (source)

Years ago I uncovered this Yale-based scam and gave it to medical writer Abram Katz who reported it in the October 23, 2006 New Haven Register:

(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.

Richard L. Day MD (source)

Via a remembrance article about Dr. Day by Edwin Kiester Jr. published in the August 2005 University of Pittsburgh medical school magazine (emphasis added):

(Before his death in 1989, Dr. Day) questioned the accepted advice for sharp back blows to dislodge food particles jammed in the airway. So he designed a series of models to simulate the throat and used them to test the effectiveness of back blows against Henry Heimlich’s recommended method of squeezing the midsection. With a colleague at Yale, Arthur DuBois, he documented the inertial and aerodynamic forces at work in each method. They showed the Heimlich maneuver was more effective, and that back blows had the potential to move obstructions deeper into the throat. Their findings persuaded the American Heart Association to stop recommending back blows for dealing with choking. (The research was partially funded by Heimlich’s own foundation.)

From Choking: The Heimlich Abdominal Thrust vs Back Blows: An Approach to Measurement ofInertial and Aerodynamic Forces by Richard L. Day, MD, Edmund S. Crelin, PhD, DSc, and
Arthur B. DuBois, MD From the Departments of Pediatrics and Anatomy (Surgery), Yale University School at Medicine, and John B. Pierce Foundation, New Haven, Connecticut published in Pediatrics, July 1982:


From the website of the Ohio Secretary of State:


Note that the name change is dated a month after the publication of the Pediatrics article.

Via Heimlich's Maneuvers, here's what my father wrote (and Prometheus published), leaving out the fact that he paid for the study:



Finally, via the Yale Archives:

This goes back a couple of months but it bugs me, so I'm documenting it.

On January 21, the Cincinnati Enquirer published IN-DEPTH: Red Cross' recommendations 'horrify' Heimlich, a front page report by staff reporter Cliff Radel about my father's displeasure with the American Red Cross (ARC) for downgrading the Heimlich maneuver to a secondary treatment response for choking. (The original version is archived, but click here to read it via USA Today.)

The ARC now recommends performing a series of backblows; if that fails to remove the obstruction, rescuers should then proceed with "abdominal thrusts."

Here's a clip from an accompanying video interview Radel conducted with my father:



"The Red Cross teaches not the Heimlich maneuver anymore. They call it the abdominal thrust. This is probably the most important thing I have to say. The Heimlich maneuver is putting your fist above the belly button -- you can even save yourself -- but below the rib cage and pressing inward and upward. And what that does is it pushes the diaphragm up which compresses the lung and causes a huge flow of air that we've measured, that simply carries the object out -- it can only go in one direction and it comes completely out. An abdominal thrust -- not only doesn't it save a life because it doesn't push the diaphragm up but it causes deathly injuries -- a ruptured liver or spleen or something of that nature. So it's extremely important that you do the Heimlich maneuver and not the abdominal thrust."

The day it appeared I e-mailed this question to Don Lauritzen, an ARC media rep:

Is there a difference between the "Heimlich maneuver" and abdominal thrusts as taught by the ARC?

His reply?

No.

So I e-mailed Radel and asked if the Enquirer intended to inform its readers he had provided a platform for the erroneous ramblings of an almost 93-year-old man who reportedly lives in a retirement community.

I also asked Radel why his article failed to inform readers that the ARC's "backblows-before-Heimlich" update happened in Spring 2006 and if he asked my father why he'd waited almost seven years to make a fuss.

In other words, why was Radel's front page story newsworthy?

Randy Essex (source)

Radel didn't reply, but I got this in a January 24 e-mail from Enquirer editor Randy Essex:

Cliff isn’t able to do further reporting to answer your questions; he needs to move on to other things.

Essex also wrote me that he joined the Enquirer in June of last year, so he wasn't on board for Radel's previous rah-rah article that ran on April 12, 2012, Young students soon to become Heimlich Heroes.

Here's a fair question.

Why is the Enquirer -- the newspaper that in Spring 2003 ran front page articles exposing my father as a "liar and a thief" and for conducting medical atrocity experiments on Chinese AIDS patients -- now apparently trying to rehabilitate his reputation?


This item has been slightly updated.

Over the past couple of decades, if you came upon a choking child or adult, the Canadian Red Cross recommended that you perform a series of abdominal thrusts (aka the Heimlich maneuver).

As I reported in August (and today it became official), the CRC has updated its first aid training guidelines. They now recommend first performing a series of back blows. If that fails to remove the obstruction, rescuers are instructed to proceed with abdominal thrusts.

This information might make the difference between life and death or help prevent a choking victim from suffering brain damage.

But don't expect to read about it in the press or see the story on TV. The CRC wrote me that they have no intention of sending out a press release.

Here's another question. Five years ago, the American Red Cross made the same update. What took the CRC so long to catch up?

I've sent multiple inquiries to CRC officials, including  Conrad Sauvé, who heads the organization. I can't get him or anyone else to answer those questions. (See below for the correspondence.)

So at the moment, it appears the only way the public is able to obtain this potentially lifesaving information is by paying for a CRC training class - $160 according to this website - or by reading The Sidebar.

 
This item has been slightly updated for clarity.

There's a persistent myth in the world of first aid that slapping a choking victim on the back is dangerous. The rationale is that doing so supposedly drives food or another obstruction deeper into the airway.

A year after he introduced "the Heimlich maneuver" in 1974, my father began making this claim. He didn't have any evidence, but for the next 30 years, he kept saying it and the media kept reporting it.

Here's the first published example of which I'm aware, a feature by Irene Wright, who, according to Amazon.com, "was a reporter for 25 years with The Cincinnati Enquirer and the newspaper's first female bureau chief."


The efforts to circulate and codify this baloney by my father and a few cronies - one of whom was the US Surgeon General - were successful, at least for a couple of decades.

A few years ago, syndicated columnist Lenore Skenazy nicely summed up the history in a few paragraphs:

I grew up with the belief that back slaps were verboten - the First Aid equivalent of hitting a drowning man on the head with a cement life preserver. Nope, said American Red Cross spokeswoman Pamela King: Back slaps were always part of the protocol - in Europe.

Choke me with a foie gras sandwich. They were? Then how'd they get such a bad rap over here?

Their infamy seems to have been promoted by the guy whose name was not back slap. The guy whose name was (and still is - he's 87) Heimlich.

Back blows are "death blows," Heimlich declared as he lobbied for his own maneuver's acceptance 30 years ago. In 1985, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop endorsed this view, dubbing back slaps "hazardous." After that, only the Heimlich maneuver was considered kosher.

What most people don't realize, said Heimlich's son, Peter Heimlich, is that "Koop was an old friend of my father's and he did it as a buddy favor."

Needless to say, even after a wrong idea is righted, almost inevitably it will continue to find voice.

To wit, How much do you know about emergency first aid? by Gail Larkin, a January 31, 2011 first aid column in the Staten Island Advance that asked readers whether this question was true or false:


Her answer?







Based on my experience, the media doesn't enjoy running corrections, but when good journalists commit errors of fact, they fix 'em pronto.

Brian J. Laline

So I submitted a short corrections request to news editor Brian J. Laline in which I provided documentation from the American Red Cross and American Heart Association, both of which recommend backblows as an effective treatment for choking.

That seemed like sufficient evidence to make the point and I assumed he'd arrange for the paper to run a quick fix.

But you know the saying about what happens when you assume.

Instead of handling what should have been a simple editorial decision, Laline punted my e-mail to Ms. Larkin.

And here my troubles began.

Next came a string of defensive e-mails from Larkin filled with outdated and poorly-sourced information. That struck me as odd because she informed me that she's a paramedic. The first responders I've encountered in my work have unfailingly been sticklers for accuracy and keeping their skills up to date.

But I remained patient and polite and did my best to inform her of the facts, none of which appeared to register. In fact, Larkin seemed resistant to even wanting to understand. For example, in a February 3 e-mail she wrote:

(The) American Heart Association (AHA) continues to discourage instructors from teaching back blows.  

I knew this was false so I suggested she contact the AHA. I even provided her with contact information for Tagni McCrae, the organization's Communications Manager.

A week later, then again a week after that, I sent polite follow-up e-mails to Larkin asking if she'd contacted the AHA. I didn't receive a reply from her. Keep in mind that a month had passed since her column appeared.

It was evident that Larkin didn't intend to follow-through, so I did:


I then forwarded this to Larkin. She remained adamant. No correction was forthcoming.

Ever seen this bumper sticker?


Maybe it applies to me for spending so much of my time on this!

But I'd come this far, so to close the loop, I e-mailed all the details to editor Brian Laline and re-submitted my corrections request.

No response. (No surprise.)

I wouldn't be chewing this over on my blog except for the fact that a few days ago my trusty Google News sent me the latest by Gail Larkin, published Monday by the Advance. It's another "how much do you know?" column entitled Summer accident quiz that includes:









Is it just me or does this seem like a weaselly move? 
 
More importantly, it's unclear how refusing to correct an obvious error, then trying to clean up the record in a subsequent column, benefits readers.

Much more importantly, if the Advance is unwilling to publish a correction for such a minor yet unambiguous factual error like this one, how are the big goofs being handled?

Not my problem, hooray!     

Finally, I don't understand what Gail Larkin means by "if you are familiar with (backblows)" in her recent column. I mean, what kind of familiarization is required to slap someone on the back?

Based on my correspondence with her, it's Ms. Larkin who needs to familiarize herself with the subjects about which she's reporting.

7/23/11 UPDATE: On July 11, while reporting this story, I e-mailed editor Brian Laline and asked if the Advance had published a correction to Larkin's error. (I couldn't find one, but I wanted to verify.) Today I received a "deleted without being read" response from him. Seems like someone's not keeping up with their editorial responsibilities...or their correspondence!