The Sidebar

Via an item about AHG's annual convention this week in Anderson, Indiana, today through Saturday

Per my June 12 item, I filed a handful of complaints with government and private organizations against the Cincinnati-based American Heritage Girls, a self-described "Christ-centered" alternative to the Girl Scouts of America.

My gripe?

In association with Cincinnati's Heimlich Heroes first aid training program, AHG is apparently teaching thousands of girls around the country to perform abdominal thrusts (the Heimlich maneuver) to revive unconscious choking victims.

The treatment is reportedly is not approved by the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association and apparently has never been researched.

In other words, Heimlich Heroes and AHG are apparently circulating an experimental medical treatment.

Why?

Dunno. I've sent multiple courteous inquiries to both organizations, but I've never gotten an answer to that question.

What happens if someone gets hurt as a result?

Dunno. Ask their attorneys.

But here's something I do know.

Follow the Heimlich Institute's activities and you're likely to turn up unexpected, often-newsworthy information.

For example, Heimlich's Maneuver's, my father's autobiography published last year by Prometheus Books, has a chapter called "Anti-Semitism" that includes:

(Our community experienced) prejudice that was common in the 1930s. Specifically, prejudice against Jews. In school, Jewish children were sidelined. The principal read Christian prayers during assembly. And in December, many school activities were given a Christmas theme. (We Jews quietly resisted, however. When the class sang Christmas carols, we substituted the name “Moses” for Christ and “Chanukah” for Christmas.)

When I was in my young teens, my mother asked if I would prefer to use a middle name other than Judah. I believe she was attempting to protect me from the harm that might have come from having a Jewish-sounding name. In those days, Jews were denied work and acceptance into college simply because of their faith. I followed my mother’s advice when I was in high school and changed my middle name to “Jay.” (About twenty years ago, I went back to my original name. Today I proudly call myself Henry Judah Heimlich.)

...(It) was rare when I spent time with non-Jews and was not made to feel self-conscious about my religion.

And via Four questions with Dr. Henry Heimlich by staff reporter Barrett Brunsman, Cincinnati Business Courier, February 11, 2014:

BB: Your book notes that you encountered anti-Semitism in college and during your career. Was it significant that the Cincinnati hospital was Jewish?

HJH: It was significant in that Jewish doctors were not taken into non-Jewish hospitals in those days. That's the only place I could possibly be -- in a Jewish hospital. Those days are gone forever, I'm pleased to say.

Discrimination against Jews may have diminished in the medical profession, but it's proudly practiced by the Heimlich Institute's partner organization -- yes -- the American Heritage Girls.

Based on their "statement of faith," any woman who doesn't fit this description is barred from holding leadership positions in the organization.

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Dedication page of Heimlich's Maneuvers

That means my mother -- daughter of dance studio mogul Moses Teichman, better known as Arthur Murray -- and my aunt Cele would not have been permitted to lead an AHG troop.

source

Same goes for my sisters Elisabeth Heimlich of Cincinnati and Janet Heimlich of Austin, TX, who edited Heimlich's Maneuvers and authored a nonfiction book about religious extremism and founded a related nonprofit intended to prevent kids from being harmed by religious kooks.

But wait, there's more.

Arguably the most prestigious public recognition my father ever received was being awarded the Albert Lasker Award in 1984.

Via the Lasker website:

The Lasker Awards are among the most respected science prizes in the world. Since 1945, the Awards Program has recognized the contributions of scientists, physicians, and public servants who have made major advances in the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of human disease. Lasker Awards often presage future recognition by the Nobel committee, so they have become popularly known as "America's Nobels." Eighty-six Lasker laureates have received the Nobel Prize, including 44 in the last three decades.

Via Heimlich's Maneuvers:

Many people ask me how I came up with (the Heimlich maneuver)...I invented it just as I have all my other techniques and devices -- that is, through scientific research.

Via AHG's website, here's their approach to science:



Who's the knucklehead responsible for the Heimlich Institute's decision to partner with an organization that wouldn't permit members of Dr. Heimlich's own family to hold positions of authority and whose approach to science is based on the book of Genesis?

Dunno. Ask them.

Terri Huntington (who runs Heimlich Heroes) and my father at a book-signing event last year for his memoir, Heimlich's Maneuvers

FYI, I provided Terri Huntington of Heimlich Heroes and AHG founder/executive director Patti Garibay with the opportunity to comment for this item.

I haven't receive a reply from either, but if they or another representative of their organizations wish to submit a response, they can click here to e-mail me.

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As I reported last week, under the username Avid NY Reader, book publicist Lori Ames wrote me that she had posted 5-star Amazon reviews for her clients' books, including this one for my father's recent memoir.

Mary Osako (source)

Click here for a subsequent inquiry I sent to Amazon spokesperson Mary Osako which included links to eight five-star book reviews posted on Amazon by Avid NY Reader paired with information that identified the eight authors as clients of Ms. Ames.

My inquiry simply asked Ms. Osako if this was in compliance with Amazon policy.

I didn't get a reply, but since then the eight reviews have disappeared.

For example, here's what my father's book's review page looks like at this writing:


Click here for a pdf of Avid NY Reader's Amazon page from a few weeks ago that includes the now-MIA reviews.

If any reporters working the PR or book publishing beats are reading this, here's a story idea.

Per my previous item, four years ago I tagged an unrelated book publicist in Clearwater, FL, doing the same thing for my mother's memoir and 71 other client authors.

Is it just a coincidence that unrelated publicists for both of my parents' books happened to post shill reviews on Amazon or is this a common practice in the world of book publishing?

And are publicists offering glowing five-star Amazon reviews to clients as an incentive?

Call it Scamazon redux. 

In Spring 2010, a couple of years before her death, my mother's memoir was published. At the time my research caught a Clearwater, Florida press agent posting dozens of glowing 5-star shill reviews on Amazon.com for my mother's book and scores of other authors she represented.

That turned into Scamazon, a three-part story published by the (now-defunct) Cincinnati Beacon (Part I, Part II, Part III) that was picked up by other media outlets in the US (click here, here, and here) and France (click here). The Clearwater publicist's Amazon account was deleted and the Public Relations Society of America issued a two-page ethics statement.

Four years later, an unrelated New York publicist representing my father's recently-published memoir just admitted to writing this:


The Amazon profile of "Avid NY Reader" includes 17 other glowing five-star book reviews.

Via Internet searches, I connected Lori Ames, the Long Island publicist representing my father's book, to all of the reviews.

Yesterday I e-mailed her and simply asked if she knew anything about "Avid NY Reader." (I copied Amazon spokeswoman Mary Osako who four years ago dealt with the Clearwater publicist's shill reviews.)

Here's her same-day reply:

From: Lori Ames <lori@theprfreelancer.com>
To: Peter Heimlich <peter.heimlich@gmail.com>
Cc: Mary Osako
Subject: Re: media inquiry re: Amazon reviewer "Avid NY Reader"
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 15:04:55 -0400

Peter:

As you have already surmised, I am Avid NY Reader.

In the last 7 years I have posted 20 reviews on Amazon. 17 for books by clients or people I know (which averages out to 2.5 reviews a year; a very small percentage of books to which I have any connection). 3 for books or products I've purchased. I have also purchased thousands of dollars of merchandise through Amazon for my home and my business for which  have not posted reviews.

I have always tried to be responsive and professional regarding your inquiries. If you are going to publicly take me to task for posting a review about your father's book, then you needn't direct any additional queries to my attention.

Hope all is well with you and Karen.

Lori

Lori Ames
President
ThePRFreelancer, Inc.
lori@theprfreelancer.com631-539-4558
 
ThePRFreelancer.com
Facebook: ThePRFreelancer
Twitter: @theprfreelancer

ThePRFreelancer, Inc
141 John Street, Suite 200
Babylon, NY 11702

Here's a screenshot of her bio from a previous job:


I'll ask Amazon to comment and will report the results.

As I reported, yesterday the American Spectator magazine published writer William Tucker's lengthy, glowing review of my father's autobiography, Heimlich's Maneuvers, in which he recommended that my father be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Per my item, Tucker repeated my father's long-debunked lie that the American Friends Service Committee supplied North Vietnam with "tens of thousands" of Heimlich chest valves during the war.

Considerably more serious than getting snookered by a nonagenarian, Tucker's book review in the Arlington, Virginia-based national political magazine failed to disclose that last year my father reportedly donated $8,000 to help take a play he wrote "on a nationwide tour."

Via the April 9, 2013 Rockland County Times of Nanuet, NY:

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Today I'll ask an American Spectator editor if this is acceptable policy and will report the results in a future Sidebar item.

UPDATE: According to this bio, William Tucker lives in Piermont, NY. His phone numbers are listed at the end of a 2010 Journal News item about his play.

This item was slightly revised for clarity.

Perhaps surprisingly, my father's memoir Heimlich's Maneuvers, recently published by Prometheus Books, hasn't been getting many reviews.

But today the American Spectator, a conservative political magazine, published a lengthy, glowing review.

Perhaps more surprising, the reviewer swallowed and repeated a string of my father's lies about the war in Vietnam.

Via The Lifesaving Dr. Heimlich: An underappreciated American hero and pioneer by William Tucker:

(Dr. Heimlich) saved the lives of thousands of soldiers with another invention you probably never heard of -- the Heimlich valve.

...The Heimlich Valve became standard equipment in every soldier’s pack in Vietnam and saved tens of thousands of lives. Then when Dr. Heimlich visited Vietnam in 1999 he was astonished to find everybody knew his name. It turned out the Quakers had supplied North Vietnam with Heimlich Valves and it had saved thousands on that side as well. It was the most emotional experience of his life.

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Judging by the above bio, I'm surprised that a veteran reporter would fall for the absurd claim that the valve was carried by every soldier who fought in Vietnam.

That nonsense and my father's false claim that the Heimlich valve saved the lives of "tens of thousands" of American soldiers were debunked in this published correction I generated after the broadcast of an error-ridden 2009 Voice of America story, Dr. Henry Heimlich, Medical Innovator:


Finally, per my recent item, My letter today requesting Prometheus Books to retract my father's "gross distortion of Vietnamese and U.S. history," my father's bizarre claim that the Quakers (the American Friends Services Committee) supplied Heimlich Chest Drain Valves to North Vietnam was thoroughly debunked in Radar Magazine eight years ago.

source

Presumably a flag-waving magazine like the American Spectator and Mr. Tucker are interested in accurately representing U.S. military history, so I'm sending them this item and inviting them to comment for a follow-up.

Finally, also from the review:

The good doctor is now 94 and living in an assisted facility in Cincinnati....Heimlich ends his book with this sentence: "I'm not done yet."

Nor should America be done with honoring this peerless pioneer. I suggest President Obama make plans right now for awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It’s hard to think of anyone who deserves it more.

For starters, how about someone who doesn't make up self-aggrandizing lies about U.S. and Vietnamese history?

RIGHT TO LEFT (March 2005): My brother, former Cincinnati city councilman/former Hamilton County commissioner Phil Heimlich; his wife/my sister-in-law, Rebecca Heimlich; Christopher Finney, my father's attorney and former law partner at Finney, Stagnaro, Saba and Patterson; two guys I don't recognize; former Ohio Representative Tom Brinkman (in green suit); former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro. (source)

Via Henry Heimlich: At 94, Cincinnati's famous, polarizing doctor still working to shape his legacy by staff reporter Lucy May, WCPO-Digital, February 9, 2014. (The story's behind a subscription paywall -- click here for the page with the quote.)

(Dr.) Heimlich also persists in arguing malariotherapy – the practice of injecting patients with a curable form of malaria – should be researched as a possible treatment for AIDS and other diseases.

...A World Health Organization report called Heimlich-backed experiments in the late 1990s that infected AIDS patients in China with malaria one of the “atrocities” committed by doctors in recent memory.

But Heimlich hasn’t backed down on either.

For his staunchest supporters, that’s all they need to hear.

“I can assure you if I had AIDS or another disease he thought it might work with –- shoot me up,” Heimlich’s son, Phil, said of malariotherapy.

The article does not report that Phil is the longtime vice president of the Heimlich Institute, the Cincinnati nonprofit that funded and supervised the experiments on Chinese AIDS patients and other "malariotherapy" experiments conducted on U.S. and foreign patients in Mexico, Panama, Ethiopia, and Gabon.


This item has been updated.

Part I, February 3, 2014: Prometheus Books is poised to (literally) disappear my father's closest career colleague -- the claimed co-developer of the Heimlich maneuver -- from his forthcoming autobiography

Part II, February 11, 2014: Former wife of "Patrick Maneuver" doc calls out my father for disappearing her ex from "Heimlich's Maneuvers," published today by Prometheus Books

The HARP group (circa 1975): Neil A. Armstrong, University of Cincinnati; Henry J. Heimlich, MD, Jewish Hospital, Cincinnati; Edward A. Patrick MD, PhD, Purdue University. Standing: George Rieveschl, Jr., PhD, ScD, University of Cincinnati (source)

N. Jeffrey Blankenship of Florence, KY, attorney and friend of the late Dr. Edward A. Patrick, has written a letter of concern to Jonathan Kurtz, president of Prometheus Books, the company that recently published my father's memoir, Heimlich's Maneuvers.

Here's the focus of Blankenship's letter, which is viewable below. (Click here to download a copy.)

I understand that, for some reason, you have chosen to publish memoirs by Dr. Henry Heimlich, which completely omits any reference to one of the critical partners of his development of research throughout his career, Dr. Edward Patrick, Ph.D.

...Dr. Ed Patrick, now says he helped invent the [Heimlich Maneuver], which he calls “Patrick-Heimlich Maneuver.”  Although Dr. Heimlich denied those claims, I remember meeting with Dr. Patrick myself and, although I am not an engineer, Dr. Patrick explained to me the engineering basis which he had provided to Dr. Heimlich for the maneuver.

...I am sure you can see that you should at least explore this information and allocate to Dr. Patrick some credit for his contribution to a number of Dr. Heimlich’s accomplishments. Dr. Patrick was an integral member of the Institute of Science of Medicine and Engineering (based at the University of Cincinnati), commonly known as the HARP group. HARP was an acronym for Heimlich, (Neil) Armstrong, (George) Reivershel [sic], and (Ed) Patrick, M.D., Ph.D.

As of recently, Neil Armstrong was the last of the three remaining partners of Dr. Heimlich to die...(It) is interesting to me that Dr. Heimlich chooses to publish these memoirs after all of the partners who could contribute to this publication have pre-deceased him.

Here's the version of the HARP group photo -- oops, make that "HAR" -- from my father's book:





This item has been slightly revised.

Part I, January 21, 2014: Publishers Weekly and Kirkus get it wrong, then update their reviews of my father's memoir to credit Dr. Dan Gavriliu

Part II, February 6, 2014: Bucharest journalist Miruna Munteanu calls out Prometheus Books for my father "trying to steal credit" for an innovative operation invented by respected Romanian surgeon

In my father's recently-published memoir, Heimlich's Maneuvers, he rightly credits the late Romanian surgeon Dan Gavriliu with inventing an esophagus replacement operation known as the Reversed Gastric Tube.

Since my father got tarred and feathered on the front page of the March 16, 2003 Cincinnati Enquirer for his decades of falsely claiming to have invented the procedure --  for an example, see the video clip at the end of this item -- presumably he realized he'd be playing with fire if he tried to get away with that in his book.

Via the 2003 Enquirer expose:





But check out the weasel version my father dishes up in his book.

He admits that he didn't invent the procedure, but still claims name credit and has the chutzpah to put his own name ahead of Dr. Gavriliu's!

Anyway, for some reason pre-publication reviews of the book credited my father with inventing the procedure.

Per part I of this series, last month I got published corrections from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews that resulted in updated reviews giving inventor's credit to Dr. Gavriliu.

A few days ago I scored a Romanian hat trick.

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Here's the review published last month by the American Library Association's Booklist:


From the updated review arranged by Booklist Senior Editor Donna Seaman:


Here's a 1999 video clip in which my father tells a studio audience -- which includes my mother (the late Jane Heimlich, his sister Cele Rosenthal, and my sisters, Janet and Elisabeth Heimlich -- that he invented the RGT operation.

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:

UPDATE: Later the same day I broke the story, it was picked up by WCPO-Digital: Dr. Henry Heimlich: Letter accuses famed doctor of being 'dishonest' in his new memoir by staff reporter Lucy May (behind a subscription paywall)

My parents, Jane and Henry Heimlich, at the wedding reception of the late Edward A. Patrick MD PhD and Joy Lake Patrick (with Joy's son Rick), July 23, 2000 (photo courtesy of Joy Lake Patrick)

The Doctor Is Out, Part I, February 3, 2014: Prometheus Books is poised to (literally) disappear my father's closest career colleague -- the claimed co-developer of the Heimlich maneuver -- from his forthcoming autobiography

Joy Lake Patrick (via Facebook)

Here's Part II, this letter sent today to my father by Joy Lake Patrick, ex-wife of the late Edward A. Patrick MD, PhD. (Click here to download a copy.)

Via a September 21, 2011 column by Joe Schwarcz PhD, Director, McGill University's Office for Science and Society:

(The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) identifies itself as a “Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting preventive medicine, especially better nutrition, and higher standards in research.” I disagree with that description. I consider PCRM to be a fanatical animal rights group with a clear cut agenda of promoting a vegan lifestyle and eliminating all animal experimentation.

Sidebar readers know about my beef (sorry) with vegan-centric PCRM.

Presumably to keep my famous father on their "advisory board," the deep-pockets nonprofit and its founder/president, Neal Barnard MD -- a non-practicing psychiatrist who dresses to impress by donning a white lab coat -- turn a blind eye to the Heimlich Institute's notorious "malariotherapy" experiments and put the public at risk by promoting the use of the Heimlich maneuver for drowning rescue.

For example, this clip from Brian Ross's ABC 20/20 report about my father's dangerous claims and my efforts to bring the information to public attention:



And when my father needs a gushing squib for his forthcoming memoir?


I can only pray that he's right and that no one else has ever lived a life remotely like my father's "journey," including his relationships with narco doctors who lost their licenses and went to prison.

Since my father turns 94 this week, is living in a retirement home, and hasn't held a medical license since 2002, it's unclear what his duties consist of as an advisory board member for PCRM.

I only hope he didn't participate in their latest campaign.



Hat tip to L.V. Anderson at Slate!

As I reported last week, Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews published corrections to their reviews of my father's forthcoming autobiography being published in a few weeks by Prometheus Books, Heimlich's Maneuvers.

The updated reviews rightly credited the eminent Romanian surgeon, the late Dr. Dan Gavriliu, with inventing a surgical procedure that for decades my father falsely (and shamelessly) claimed to have invented.

Since then I've gotten two more published corrections -- and the book hasn't even been published yet!

Barrett Brunsman (source)

My first score was in Heimlich’s Maneuvers: Autobiography of Cincinnati doctor acknowledges controversy, a January 21st Cincinnati Business Courier feature by staff reporter Barrett Brunsman.

Before getting to that, let me give big ups to Brunsman for his recent article about Queen City attorney Christopher Finney's departure from his own law firm.

"(An) arch-conservative legal activist who has a history of working on anti-gay rights causes," Finney has been my father's attorney for at least a decade.

Per a must-read 2006 Cincinnati CityBeat story by Kevin Osborne about a fanny-slapping freak-out that made Finney the literal butt of ensuing jokes, he also co-owned a real estate business with my brother Phil called Three Centurions:

The company apparently is named after a term coined by millionaire evangelist Bill Gothard, whom (Phil) Heimlich admires.

Back to Brunsman's story about my father's long-delayed memoir, here's a screenshot from the original article:


But per this lengthy correction I obtained from the Voice of America re: reporter Adam Phillips's error-ridden 2009 story, Dr. Henry Heimlich, Medical Innovator:

After I sent him the VOA correction, Brunsman promptly e-mailed me a thank-you and informed me he'd changed "credited with saving the lives of thousands of wounded American soldiers" to:

I replied:

I'd suggest that "hundreds of" is more accurate and informative to readers. Your opinion?

No answer. No further update.

Hundreds of lives, thousands of lives? Like whatever, dude.

Psst, Barrett, if you're reading this, you probably did the right thing by not contradicting my father's claim.

Last year, after the Biz Courier published a story by staff reporter James Ritchie that included critical information about my father, the article was disappeared and editor Rob Daumeyer refused to discuss it.

That's too bad, because I wanted to ask him if someone at Deaconess Associations, the $350 million health care corporation that owns the Heimlich Institute, had pulled his choke chain.

I got another correction from an unexpected venue, a new website called HenryHeimlich.com, apparently set up to promote Heimlich's Maneuvers.

Here's a screen shot last week from my father's bio page on the site:


To quote Borat -- NOT!

Melinda Zemper (source)

So I sent the correct information (which I'd obtained from a New York State agency) to Melinda Zemper, press agent for the Heimlich Institute and Deaconess, and a board member of the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting.

Here's the resulting fix on the page as of today:



To anyone else writing about my father's career, if you need a fact-checker, per Chris Montez's groovy, improbable 1966 hit version of the classic song written by the great Tony Hatch, here's my invitation:

Click here for the complete article

Via Thomas Francis's two-part November 2005 "Heimlich expose" in Radar Magazine:

Dr. Heimlich's first claim to medical fame was a surgical technique that involved replacing a patient's damaged esophagus with a gastric tube. In 1955 Heimlich had published a paper in the journal Surgery describing how he had performed the operation on dogs. A Romanian physician, Dr. Dan Gavriliu, wrote to Surgery to point out that he'd been performing the same operation successfully on humans for four years.

Karen discovered a 1957 article in Surgery written by Heimlich in which he conceded that Gavriliu was indeed first to perform the operation on humans. It might have been chalked up to coincidence - two inventors arriving at an idea within a few years of each other - except that Heimlich still takes credit for the "Heimlich Operation" on his website.

...Peter leaked the story to the Cincinnati Enquirer, whose front page expose in March 2003 quoted Gavriliu as calling Heimlich a "thief." In the article Heimlich admitted again that Gavriliu had been the first to perform the procedure and insisted he had given Gavriliu credit, which he had, though selectively and in most cases well out of the public eye.

Via Heimlich Falsely Claims He Invented Procedure by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer, March 16, 2003

(Heimlich) for years has taken full credit for the operation.

In the 1998 Encyclopedia Britannica medical annual:

"I conceived of an operation to replace the esophagus. After successfully performing the procedure on a series of patients, I presented the results at an American Medical Association meeting."

In the May-June 1995 issue of Navy Medicine:

"My specialty resulted from developing the reversed gastric tube operation for esophageal replacement. Previous attempts at replacing the esophagus out of the upper stomach and intestine were not very successful."

In Who's Who in America 2002:

"I have never been satisfied with existing methods and seek to simplify and improve them. After devising an operation for replacement of the esophagus, I became aware that with one such discovery I could help more people in a few weeks than in my entire lifetime as a surgeon in the operating room."

"Let Heimlich be a pig if he wants to steal an operation and put his name on it," says retired New York surgeon Eugene Albu. "He changed the name from the Gavriliu Operation to the Gavriliu-Heimlich Operation. Then it became the Heimlich Operation later on."

After the Enquirer gave my father his long-overdue comeuppance, who'd be daft enough to try to  defend him?


My brother may be ready and willing (if not particularly able) to deliver such baloney, but the facts have been settled in the reality-based community, right?

For example, here's an editor's  note in the 2007 edition of Dr. Josef Fischer's Mastery of Surgery:


Nevertheless --  per an item I blogged a couple weeks ago, How did (the) long-debunked "Heimlich Operation" lie get into Publishers Weekly review of my father's autobiography? -- the truth is still pulling its boots on.

Here's a screenshot from the original Publishers Weekly review:


After I wrote to PW Reviews Director Louise Ermelino, the  review was updated:


The same thing happened with a November 26, 2013 review by Kirkus Reviews. Here's the before and after:



Both updates still provide my father with a measure of (undeserved) credit, but they're short reviews and readers who see Dr. Dan Gavriliu's name can Google their way to learning more.


And if you're fluent in Romanian, you can read the chapter from Dan's 2004 autobiography, Memories...Memories... (which he sent me at the time) in which he discusses my father's conduct and how Robert Anglen's Enquirer article came to be published.

Miruna Munteanu (source)

There have also been a couple of strong articles in the Romanian press by veteran reporter Miruna Munteanu of Bucharest.

Here are links to her stories via Google Translate, The genius of a Romanian surgeon was recognized (ZIUA, April 1, 2006, which includes an interview with me) and A miserable pension for  legendary surgeon (Jurnalul.ro, November 7, 2008) which includes:

Acclaimed professor Dan Gavriliu the first surgeon in the world who succeeded in 1951, complete replacement of an organ inventing reverse gastric tube procedure, lives today at age 93 with a pension of 749 lei per month.

...Professor Dan Gavriliu receives the monthly equivalent of about 250 dollars. And a not unimportant detail, Dr. Henry Heimlich is a multimillionaire.

In Part II, I'll be addressing problems with my father's version in his memoir that's due to be published by Prometheus Books on February 11.