The Sidebar

My dad demonstrates his namesake anti-choking maneuver on Dr. Xiaoping Chen, Guangzhou (1995). Chen, who trained at UCLA and headed the Heimlich Institute's notorious"malariotherapy" experiments on AIDS patients, reportedly is now conducting controversial "malariotherapy" experiments on cancer patients. Click here and here.

Lifetime gratitude from my wife Karen M. Shulman & me to Robert S. Baratz MD PhD, Elizabeth Woeckner PhC, Paul Bronston MD, Tom Francis, and to the many journalists and others who contributed.

For more information, contact me and/or my brother Phil Heimlich, longtime vice president of Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute. Click here for many of the organization's annual IRS filings -- PMH 

UCLA, Dr. Xiaoping Chen, and the Heimlich Institute
10/2/02 investigation request Karen and I wrote (using the pseudonym "Dr. Bob Smith") and filed with UCLA that triggered the "malariotherapy" investigation of John Fahey MD and other university staff
Researchers' possible link to malariotherapy scrutinized by Edward Chiao and Jeyling Chou, Daily Bruin (UCLA), November 21, 2002 Two UCLA researchers cleared in investigation, The Daily Bruin, January 7, 2003
New evidence leads to reopening of malariotherapy case by Jeyling Chou, The Daily Bruin, February 10, 2003
Scientists Linked to Heimlich Investigated by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer (Sunday front page), February 16, 2003
UCLA Reopens Probe of Two Researchers - New information suggests they took part in experiments to inject AIDS patients with malaria-tainted blood, university says by Rebecca Trounson and Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2003
Therapy's value challenged by Jeyling Chou, The Daily Bruin, February 23, 2003
Malarial Treatment for Chinese AIDS Patients Prompts Inquiry in US by Donald G. McNeil Jr, New York Times, March 4, 2003
Heimlich Maneuvers into AIDS Therapy by Denna Beasley, Reuters via CNN.com, April 14, 2003:
UCLA ties doctor to lab misconduct - Statement determines researcher's involvement in outlawed human testing Jeyling Chou, Daily Bruin, April 15, 2003
Researcher Violated Rules, UCLA Says by Rebecca Trounson and Charles Ornstein, Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2003
Board rebukes AIDS evaluator - Doctor had helped Heimlich associate by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 18, 2003
Institute Performs AIDS Testing by Janet Liao, Cornell Daily Sun, April 30, 2003
Son of Henry Heimlich questions UCLA researchers' involvement in his father's controversial malariotherapy study by Naheed Rajwani and Alessandra Daskalakis, The Daily Bruin, May 6, 2013

Hollywood celebrities donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the Heimlich/Chen AIDS experiments
How Dr. Heimlich Maneuvered Hollywood Into Backing His Dangerous AIDS "Cure" by Seth Abramovitch, The Hollywood Reporter, August 14, 2014
When 'Chicago Hope' Dealt in Heimlich, Malariotherapy and AIDS by Seth Abramovitch, The Hollywood Reporter, August 14, 2014

Dad gets kicked out of international AIDS conference
Heimlich May Discuss Malaria Therapy for AIDS by Anita Wadhwani, Nashville Tennessean, October 30, 2004
Conference Uninvites Doctor Advocating Malaria Therapy for AIDS by Anita Wadhwani, Nashville Tennessean (front page), October 30, 2004

My 2013 letter to St. Louis University re: Chen
Saint Louis University defends Chinese malaria research linked to discredited AIDS study by Alan Scher Zagier, Associated Press, August 21, 2013
St. Louis University Under Fire for Work with Doctor Who Infected AIDS Patients with Malaria by Sam Levin, Riverfront Times, September 9, 2013

2008 Congressional race TV ads tie candidate to Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy for AIDS" experiments
Democratic Congressional Candidate's Ties to Bizarre AIDS Research by Joseph Rhee, ABC News, July 3, 2008

Dangerous experiments: a cover-up: Steve Black for Congress, OH 2nd District U.S. Congressional race, Democratic primary, Spring 2008

Victoria Victoria Wulsin -- Not Exactly Your Good Doctor: Jean Schmidt for Congress, OH 2nd District U.S. Congressional general election, October 2008

Efforts by Karen and me to bring the information to public attention
Outmaneuvered Parts I & II by Thomas Francis, Radar Magazine, November 10-11, 2005
Heimlich family maneuvers - Famed doctor plans Portland visit; Son says he's dangerous, works to discredit him by Peter Korn, The Portland (OR) Tribune, April 13, 2007
Is Dr. Heimlich Really a Savior? by Brian Ross, ABC 20/20, June 8, 2007

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Via the posted comments under Detainee dies after choking on food in Saitama police station cell, Japan Today, November 5, 2018: 

Janet Heimlich Nov. 8 05:15 pm JST



Peter M. Heimlich Nov. 9 01:12 am JST

I caught a factual error and a half-truth in my sister Janet Heimlich's post. I've also posted links to a first-rate 2009 Australian Broadcasting documentary re: the history of our father's namesake anti-choking treatment and a thought-provoking recent blog item by a U.S. cardiologist.

The American Heart Association (and most first aid agencies worldwide) recommend back blows as an effective treatment for responding to a choking emergency. More via this page on my website http://tinyurl.com/hnuxyxs "One study shows that back blows can drive an object deeper into the throat."

Janet -- a former journalist who edited our dad's 2014 memoir http://tinyurl.com/yau8h6nd -- is presumably referring to the now-tainted study by the late Richard Day L. MD et al of Yale published by the journal Pediatrics in 1982.

Research by my wife Karen M. Shulman and me revealed that our dad, the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, clandestinely funded the study.

Prior to 2005, AHA guidelines included citations of the Day study. That year I shared our research with Jerry Potts, PhD, Director of Science at the AHA's ECC Programs. The citation has not appeared in subsequent AHA guidelines.

Because of the Yale connection, I also shared our research with veteran medical reporter Abram Katz at the New Haven Register which resulted in this 10/23/06 report http://tinyurl.com/zvesjs9

Also see this 6/7/82 thank-you letter from dad to Dr. Day which I obtained from the Yale archives http://tinyurl.com/j3n8jbk "The Heimlich manoeuvre" by Aviva Ziegler, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 7/27/09 http://tinyurl.com/y92fwr6w "A Call To Reconsider The Heimlich Experiment: Let’s Scientifically Determine The Best Approach To Choking Victims" by Anthony Pearson MD, The Skeptical Cardiologist (Dr. Pearson's blog), 8/15/18 http://tinyurl.com/ybnxkqvs 


BelCanto Nov. 9 12:26 pm JST

I'm liking where this comment section is going! 


Peter M. Heimlich Nov. 13 10:51 am JST

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I probably wouldn't turn down those royalties, but to date I've never asked for or received any. And if any other members of my family have, it's news to me.

Therefore, the above claims seem to be a so-called urban myth.

Where did it get started?

Best guess is this item...

...published here:

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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?

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.

Rob Butcher, Cincinnati Reds' Director of Media Relations (source)

According to the Cincinnati Reds, by asking questions about a first aid training program being taught in Ohio schools, I'm up to no good.

This started last month I asked the Ohio and Hamilton County Health Departments to review the "Heimlich Heroes" program because it teaches students and others to perform the Heimlich maneuver on unconscious choking victims.

As I reported, that treatment is not recommended by the American Red Cross or the American Heart Association.

Terri Huntington and my father at February 18, 2014 book-signing at Cincinnati's Joseph-Beth Booksellers (source)

I'm unaware of any published research that supports the treatment or any medical professionals who recommend it, so a few days ago I e-mailed these and other questions to "Heimlich Heroes" program manager Terri Huntington:

According to the training videos on your website, your program teaches students to perform the Heimlich maneuver on unconscious choking victims. Would you please direct me to any published research studies, to any medical organizations, and/or to any licensed medical professionals that recommend this treatment?

Your program's home page features a photo and quote from Cincinnati Reds baseball player Todd Frazier. On what date did Mr. Frazier or his representative endorse your program?

Her March 24, 2014 reply:

Although we appreciate your interest in our organization, we are not comfortable with the focus of your questions. As such, neither Deaconess nor any of its affiliates, including Heimlich Heroes, will respond to any additional inquiries from you and politely request that you refrain from contacting us further.

You appear to be on some kind of mission to prevent people from helping others. Feel free to write the Reds have no comment.

WGN radio host Jonathon Brandmeier (source)

My father's never gotten proper credit as a master media manipulator who for decades used his charm to spin uninformed journalists.

As I told reporter Paul Teetor of the LA Weekly:

"My father is such a brilliant promoter, he could teach P.T. Barnum a few tricks."

But as a result of the dozens of media reports that exposed him as a career scammer -- for example, check out Chuck Goudie's tough ABC7 Chicago expose that aired over seven years ago -- presumably it's gotten more difficult for my father to find marks.

Also, who would consider my father -- a 94-year-old with a history of making delusional claims, who hasn't held a medical license since 2002, and who lives in a retirement community -- to be a medical authority?

Enter WGN Chicago talk show host Jonathon Brandmeier.*

Check out these clips I stitched together from Are you choking?! Dr. Heimlich is here, a March 12, 2014 interview Brandmeier and his second banana conducted with my father (with my brother Phil Heimlich on hand). In keeping with the show's yuckfest approach, I added clown horns where I spliced the clips.  




Briefly, after falling for my father's long-discredited hokum that rescuers should never use back blows to revive a choking victim, Brandmeier then imprudently advises WGN listeners to "forget the Red Cross" recommendations on how to respond to a choking emergency.

While you're at it, forget liability as well.

By the way, my father's claim that the American Red Cross is the only organization to recommend back blows is false. On the contrary, virtually every major first aid organization, including the Canadian Red Cross and the UK's St John Ambulance recommends performing back blows as the first response to choking.

In other words, Dr. Maneuver is clueless about his own claimed field of expertise.

And just after the 2:00 mark, my father recommends performing "the Heimlich maneuver" on choking infants. That treatment has never been recommended by any legitimate first aid agency because it may result in serious harm.

What if a WGN listener follows his advice and hurts a baby?

That's one of the questions I'll be asking the Tribune Company -- they own WGN.

They also own the Chicago Tribune which a few weeks ago published a well-researched first-person article by Ian Mitchell that included:

In a conscious choking emergency, where a person can't cough, speak or breathe, the 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," (Red Cross instructor 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 (aka Heimlich maneuver)," he said.

"Less-invasive" = Less potentially harmful.

What sort of potential harm?

See Case reports of complications from “the Heimlich maneuver,” a list I compiled of about 40 medical journal articles.

Finally, there's this clip in which Brandmeier & his sidekick guffaw about the hilarious concept:

What if the great Dr. Heimlich himself actually performed "the Heimlich" on a choking victim? Wouldn't that be a hoot?

When Brandmeier asks if that ever happened, my father replied, "I have not been in that position."




Punk'd by a nonagenarian!

Click here for the full article and other news outlets that ran with the story (BBC, New Yorker, etc.)

* CORRECTION (4/18/14): The audio of the interview is posted on the website of WGN-FM, so I assumed it aired on that station. After posting my item, I was informed by Tribune Radio Vice President Todd Manley that, in fact, the show aired on sister station WGWG-LP, 87.7FM. As of today, there's no indication of that on the website, hence my error.

E.W. Scripps Company corporate slogan (source)

As an experienced source whose work has helped generate lots of news stories, I've never had a reporter refuse to provide me with a copy of a story to which I'd contributed.

Never say never.

WCPO-Digital, a new Internet venture owned by Cincinnati-based media conglomerate E.W. Scripps, requires sources to become paid subscribers in order to read stories in which they participated.

In other words, sources provide their time and information for free to WCPO-Digital reporters, but must pay for the privilege of reading the results.

The policy came to my attention as a result of the February 9, 2014 WCPO-Digital story by staff reporter Lucy May, Henry Heimlich: At 94, Cincinnati's famous, polarizing doctor still working to shape his legacy.

Click the title link and you'll learn the story's behind a subscription paywall.

Here's what Ms. May's colleague, WCPO-Digital staff reporter Dan Monk, and Ms. May tweeted the day the story was published:


Part of Ms. May's story is about my research into my father's bizarre career and my efforts to bring the information to public attention. I was also a principle source for story and Ms. May used quotes from an interview I gave her.

Check out this offer she made to me and Joy Patrick, another source/interview subject for her story:



My same-day acceptance, copied to her editor Christine Graves and the managers responsible for WCPO-Digital:



True to her word, here's Ms. May's snail mail follow-up including the cash:

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, 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] See my March 31, 2014 item, My letter today requesting Prometheus Books to retract my father's "gross distortion of Vietnamese and U.S. history"


 
Via New autobiography tells story of the man behind the Heimlich maneuver by Chris Boyette, CNN, February 12, 2014:

(Yesterday, Dr. Henry) Heimlich, 94, released his autobiography, "Heimlich's Maneuvers'' (published by Prometheus Books).

...Heimlich's son, Peter Heimlich, writes a blog, on which he has spent years trying to draw attention to his father's "wide-ranging, unseen history of fraud."

Not always unseen.

Paul Kurtz PhD (source)

Sometimes my father's scams are so obvious it's difficult to believe anyone would fall for them, certainly not a publisher like Prometheus Books, founded by the late Paul Kurtz, a prominent debunker of junk science. 

Nevertheless, from Chapter 17 of Heimlich's Maneuvers, here's a mawkish, absurd story my father has told for years and which has been published in a handful of other publications:

I remember another incident in which I was overcome with emotion. It occurred in February 1993, when I was invited to accompany a team of twenty cardiac and thoracic surgeons to Vietnam, a trip arranged by the citizen ambassadors of People to People International...In Hanoi, our plane was met by a contingent of North Vietnamese cardiac and thoracic surgeons. The head of the Vietnamese delegation introduced each member of our team until he came to me.

“Dr. Heimlich, you need no introduction,” I remember him saying. “Everyone in Vietnam knows your name.” I assumed he was talking about the Heimlich Maneuver, but, in fact, he was referring to the chest drain valve. “Your valve has saved tens of thousands of our people during the war, both civilian and military,” he said. I never knew the North Vietnamese had used the valve during the war. It had been supplied to them by the Quaker organization American Friends Service Committee. The next morning, at a meeting of American and Vietnamese doctors, the chairman opened his session saying, “Dr. Heimlich will live forever in the hearts of the Vietnamese people.” Hearing his words, I cried openly.

Reading my father's words, I sighed openly.

Apparently the editors at Prometheus are unfamiliar with the Trading with the Enemy Act and/or didn't stop to consider the consequences of a U.S. organization allegedly providing medical supplies to an enemy army and population during wartime.

My wife Karen, me, and investigative reporter Thomas Francis

Apparently they also don't read Radar Magazine.

From Thomas Francis's two-part Radar expose about my father, published in November 2005:

Next, Peter and Karen took aim at a lesser-known invention, the "Heimlich chest drain valve," which was used on the battlefield in Vietnam to save soldiers from dying of a collapsed lung caused by a chest wound. According to Heimlich's press statements the invention saved tens of thousands of lives, including among the North Vietnamese, after the American Friends Service Committee shipped valves to both sides in the war. Henry often tells the story of a trip to Vietnam during which he received a hero's welcome because of his valve.

But the Quakers have no record of distributing the valve. Peter contacted the American Friends Service Committee, the Quaker group that provides aid in foreign conflicts. "They checked deep in the archives and contacted several staffers from the '60s," says Peter. "No one had even heard of the Heimlich valve." AFSC spokeswoman Janis Shields says that if the valves had been shipped to North Vietnam, there would have been documents. The AFSC's shipments to North Vietnam consisted primarily of penicillin.

Eight years after being busted for a preposterous lie that distorts Vietnamese and U.S. history, and which implies that the AFSC and Heimlich valve manufacturer Becton, Dickinson and Company committed treason, it's unclear why my father continues to tell the story.

It's also unclear why Prometheus Books was willing to publish it.

I'll try to get answers to those questions and will report the results in a follow-up. 


This item has been revised.

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.)

As Sidebar readers know, my father was badly busted by investigative reporter Robert Anglen in this March 16, 2003 Cincinnati Enquirer front-pager:


A decade after that  drubbing, my father's still trying to falsely claim credit for inventing the Reversed Gastric Tube operation (RGT) to replace a damaged esopahagus.

Click here for an e-mail I received from Lisa Michalski, Senior Publicist at Prometheus Books, that includes my father's version of events about the invention of the RGT that's slated to be published next week in his autobiography, Heimlich's Maneuvers.

I'm not going to go into the weeds, but here's the tallest one in Dr. Maneuver's garden:
One hand giveth while the other hand taketh credit -- and putteth his own name first.

Then there's this:

Still, I am proud of the fact that I was the first surgeon in the Western world to perform the reversed gastric tube operation.

According to the website of  Greg Burke, who was quoted in the Enquirer expose, that may also be fertilizer:

The first doctor to use the gastric tube in North America was Dr. James Fallis from Canada.

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Miruna Munteanu is a prominent print and broadcast journalist in Bucharest who reported these two articles in Romanian news outlets about my father's attempt to steal credit from Dr. Gavriliu. (The links lead to English versions via Google Translate.)

The Genius of a Romanian Surgeon is Recognized, ZIUA, April 1, 2006, which includes an interview with me.

A Miserable Pension for a Legendary Surgeon, November 7, 2008, Jurnalul.ro:

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 (US) dollars. And a not unimportant detail, Dr. Henry Heimlich is a multimillionaire.

Last week Ms. Munteanu sent this e-mail:

Dear Mrs. Michalski,

I've just learned that Prometheus Books is about to publish an autobiography of Dr. Henry Heimlich, who is famous in my native Romania not for his choking maneuver, but for trying to steal credit for the RGT surgical procedure from Dr. Dan Gavriliu. I'm afraid not only the paternity of this procedure has been established beyond any possible doubt, but also the fact that - for decades - Dr. Heimlich disingenuously posed as its inventor (for American audiences, at least).

As a journalist, I've documented the whole affair back in 2006. You can surely understand my interest for the way Dr. Heimlich's autobiography is dealing with this shameful episode. Dr. Gavriliu might be now dead, but his legacy is not at all forgotten.

In Europe (and anywhere else except for the US) there never was a Heimlich-Gavriliu procedure. Dr. Heimlich was just one of (approximately) 60 foreign surgeons allowed in the 50's to assist Dr. Gavriliu while performing his innovative RGT procedure. He might have been the first American to perform it after seeing it done in Bucharest, but this gives him no right to name it.

To continue to fraudulently attach Heimlich's name to Gavriliu's is highly offensive. I hope the book you are about to publish will not perpetuate this injustice. I'm looking forward to reading it.

Best regards,

Miruna Munteanu

 As of last night, she hasn't received a reply.

Dr. Dan Gavriliu (right) being inducted into the Royal College of Surgeons by Sir Rodney Smith (center), Leeds, 1976 (photo courtesy of Dr. Gavriliu)

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

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: