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August 14, 2019

John Devlin MD, Director
Emergency Medicine Residency Program
Naval Medical Center Portsmouth
620 John Paul Jones Circle
Portsmouth, VA 23708

Dear Dr. Devlin:

I’m the son of the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, known for “the Heimlich maneuver” anti-choking treatment. I have a journalism background and since 2003 research into my father’s career by my wife and me has resulted in scores of mainstream print and broadcast news reports that exposed my father as a remarkable – and dangerous – humbug.

Via an August 9, 2019 press release, Doctors Ask DoD to Investigate Naval Medical Center Portsmouths Live Animal Use:
Per my website and blog, I’ve been a critic of the Washington, DC-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and it’s founding president, Neal Barnard MD, because of his group’s problematic three-decade relationship with my father.

Since PCRM is on the warpath against your program, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some information which in my opinion raises reasonable questions about whether PCRM’s actions are motivated by evidence-based science or emotion-drivcn allegiance to our four-legged friends.

I’m also including a 1991 letter in which my father appears to thank Dr. Barnard for helping to fund notorious offshore experiments conducted by Cincinnati’s now-defunct Heimlich Institute in which U.S. Lyme Disease patients were infected with malaria, a quack “cure” dad called “malariotherapy.”

Via PCRM’s website:

Mission

The Physicians Committee is dedicated to saving and improving human and animal lives through plant-based diets and ethical and effective scientific research.

Vision

Creating a healthier world through a new emphasis on plant-based nutrition and scientific research conducted ethically, without using animals.

Via a 2011 column, junk science debunker Joseph A."Dr. Joe" Schwarcz PhD, Director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, expressed a somewhat different opinion:

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.

Via numerous published articles from 1994 to the present which I’ve compiled on my blog, PCRM has been called an “animal rights” activist group, a perspective that presumably triggered their attempt to disrupt your program.

Along those lines, via this profile of him in the Spring 2011 issue of American Dog magazine, Dr. Pippin minced no words about his priorities:
Some may disagree that eating a BLT or wearing leather shoes is “evil,” but clearly Dr. Pippin brings strongly-held personal convictions to his work.

Back to my father, who in 1977 was fired for misconduct from his last hospital job, arguably dad’s most notorious scam was “malariotherapy.” Despite having no background in immunology, from the early 1980s until his death in 2016, dad claimed infecting patients with malaria could cure a variety of diseases.[1]

From the late 1980s until at least 2005, dad’s shady Heimlich Institute conducted a series of unsupervised offshore experiments in which U.S. and foreign nationals suffering from cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS were infected with malaria.

Via Scientists Linked to Heimlich Investigated by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Sunday Enquirer, February 16, 2003:
Further, via a 2014 Hollywood Reporter expose, How Dr. Heimlich Maneuvered Hollywood Into Backing His Dangerous AIDS "Cure":

(An) investigation into Heimlich's fundraising efforts was undertaken by the major frauds section of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Fast forward to the day after dad died via a December 17, 2016 media release, The Physicians Committee Remembers Henry J. Heimlich for Innovative Medicine:
I can’t account for PCRM’s unwavering admiration for my dad which presumably includes “malariotherapy,” described by Lyme Disease patient Cyndi Monahan of New Jersey in Heimlich's Maneuver?, an article in the June 1991 issue of American Health:
As it happens, per this letter donated by my dad to the University of Cincinnati’s Henry J. Heimlich Archival Collection, Dr. Barnard may have helped pay for Ms. Monahan’s “treatment”:
Further, for decades Dr. Barnard and his organization advocated my father’s reckless 40-year promotion of the Heimlich maneuver (abdominal thrusts) as a treatment for near-drowning.

Even after research by my wife and me revealed that since 1974 dad used fraudulent case reports to promote his now thoroughly-discredited claims, in letters to newspapers and on ABC 20/20, Dr. Barnard continued to hype the treatment, whose use has reportedly been associated with dozens of poor outcome cases, including children.

So much for “responsible medicine.”

Finally, regarding the use of animals for training or for medical research, I have zero knowledge of the subject, therefore no opinion.

I do, however, have a devil’s advocate question.

Via Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary published in the June 1974 issue of Emergency Medicine in which dad first described the treatment he subsequently named "the Heimlich maneuver."
Since dad used beagles in his research, if they’d had been around at the time, would PCRM have attempted to shut down the research and thereby presumably derail the development of the Heimlich maneuver which, according to PCRM’s remembrance of my father, “has saved countless lives”?

If someone poses that question to Drs. Barnard, Pippin, and/or Reina Pohl MPH (the media contact on PCRM’s press release about your program), I’d be curious to know the response.

Thanks for your time/attention and I’d welcome your thoughts/questions.

Sincerely,

Peter M. Heimlich
[REDACTED]
Peachtree Corners, GA 30096 USA
ph: (208)474-7283
website: http://medfraud.info
blog: http://the-sidebar.com
e-mail: peter.heimlich@gmail.com
Twitter: @medfraud_pmh
bio: http://tinyurl.com/ych7o7dr

[1] My father credited the work of Julius Wagner-Jauregg, a German eugenicist and Nazi sympathizer as his inspiration.

[2] To my knowledge, PCRM hasn’t presented the award since 2010 at a celebrity-studded event that was reported by the LA Weekly.

[3] Presumably dad was referring to a series of video PSAs promoting PCRM in which he appeared.

source

About a month ago I blogged, Did animal rights activist Dr. Neal Barnard fund the Heimlich Institute's notorious "malariotherapy" experiments on US Lyme Disease patients? Would his organization have protested the dog lab research that produced "the Heimlich"? My letter to the Mayo Clinic about my dad's problematic 30-year relationship with PCRM.

Between the hash marks are excerpts from a similar letter I sent today. Click here for a copy via my Scribd account.


Jeremiah Schuur, MD, MHS
Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine
The Alpert Medical School of Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island 02912

Jessica Smith MD
Director, Emergency Medicine Residency Program
Rhode Island Hospital
593 Eddy Street
Providence, RI 02903

Dear Drs. Schuur and Smith:

I’m the son of the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, known for the Heimlich maneuver anti-choking treatment.

...One of my research/reporting interests is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a high-profile Washington, DC nonprofit that’s been around since 1985. Per my website, I’ve also been a public critic of PCRM because of their problematic 30-year relationship with my dad.

...My Google News alert sent me this April 24, 2019 WPRO News story by Steve Klamkin, Physicians group protests live animal use in medical training who reported:

A Washington D.C. – based physicians group waged a protest outside Rhode Island Hospital Wednesday, calling for an end to the use of live animals in joint training with Brown University of emergency medicine residents.

“The skill acquisition and skill retention is just as good if not better with the simulators than with the live animals,” said Dr. Kerry Foley, a retired emergency medical physician with the group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

I also come across this February 1, 2019 Brown Daily Herald article by Cate Ryan, University affiliated residency program accused of violating federal act – Use of live pigs in research breaches Animal Welfare Act, advocacy group alleges who reported:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine called for federal regulators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to look into animal use at the Warren Alpert Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital.

...John Pippin, the PCRM’s director of academic affairs, told the Associated Press he is confident that the University violated the Animal Welfare Act. The Animal Welfare Act includes a clause stating that research involving animals must involve consideration of “alternatives to any procedure likely to produce pain to or distress in an experimental animal.”

I thought I’d take the opportunity to share with you information which in my opinion raises reasonable questions about the organization’s integrity.

Via PCRM’s website:

The Physicians Committee is dedicated to saving and improving human and animal lives through plant-based diets and ethical and effective scientific research.

Via a 2011 column, junk science debunker Joseph A."Dr. Joe" Schwarcz PhD, Director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, expressed this somewhat different opinion:

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.

In any event, via numerous published articles from 1994 to the present which I’ve compiled on my blog, PCRM has been called an “animal rights” activist group. If accurate, presumably that perspective influenced their protests of your institution.

Perhaps related, Dr. Pippin, explained his moral philosophy in a profile published in the Spring 2011 issue of American Dog magazine (emphasis added); click here to download a copy of the article:

“Animals have nobody but the animal protection community between them and egregious misuse, abuse, and death at the hands of our species,” (Dr. John Pippin) says. “For those of us with true hearts for animals, such evils as eating, wearing, fighting, breeding, imprisoning, hunting, and experimenting on our animal kin must be ended.”

For the past six years, Dr. Pippin has worked full time with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine…

My letter goes on to discuss:

1) PCRM's reckless promotion of my dad's thoroughly-discredited claims that abdominal thrusts (the Heimlich maneuver) should be used to resuscitate near-drowning victims. Research by my wife and me revealed it was a 40-year scam based entirely on bogus case reports in which, according to my dad, drowning victims were "miraculously revived" by bystanders -- two of whom were longtime cronies of my father, a fact none of them disclosed.

The result of their folly? Per the Washington Post, dozens of poor outcome cases have been associated with the treatment. Even after the treatment was thoroughly-discredited and the phony cases were exposed, PCRM founder/president Neal Barnard MD -- a non-practicing physician trained as a psychiatrist --continued to recommend the treatment.



2) For decades, Dr. Barnard and his organization which claims to promote "ethical and effective scientific research," turned a blind eye to Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute's notorious offshore human experiments in which US and foreign nationals suffering from cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS were infected with malaria.

My father, who had no training in immunology called the quack treatment "malariotherapy" and credited Julius Wagner-Jauregg, an early 20th century German eugenicist and Nazi sympathizer as his inspiration.

Here's how Cyndi Monahan, a New Jersey Lyme Disease patient described the treatment via a June 1991 American Health article, Heimlich's Maneuver?

"Within two days I started to get fevers as high as 106 degrees"...After Monahan's return from Mexico City, life consisted of hours of fever followed by chills - and intense pain. "My lower back felt like a truck slammed into it and I found that a malaria headache is the most excruciating pain you can imagine." Her New Jersey doctor allowed the malaria to persist untreated for five weeks. During that time she logged 130 "fever hours," when her temperature exceeded 101 degrees. She vomited constantly, lost 40 lb. and required intravenous fluids to compensate for dehydration. "We went until my body couldn't take it anymore," she recalled, "and then I took the antimalarial drug"...
"I'm going back for another treatment," she says. "Dr. Heimlich told me I may have to do it again. He's made all the arrangements with the doctors in Panama."

As it happens, per this May 30 1991 letter donated by my dad to the University of Cincinnati’s Henry J. Heimlich Archival Collection, Dr. Barnard may have helped finance Ms. Monahan’s “treatment.”



3) Finally, my letter documented how in the early 1970s ago my father developed the Heimlich maneuver using dogs as research models and I posed this devil’s advocate question.

Since dad used the beagles in his research, if PCRM had been around at the time would Dr. Barnard and his organization have attempted to shut down the research and thereby presumably derail the development of the Heimlich maneuver which, according to PCRM’s remembrance of my father, “has saved countless lives”?

PCRM's "Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine," which to my knowledge has not been presented since 2010. More information via Heimlich Maneuvered -- A gala at Cindy Landon's honoring a top scientist discredited by his son gets a venue change by Paul Teetor, LA Weekly, April 8, 2010

Below the hash marks are excerpts from my March 20, 2019 letter. A copy via Scribd is embedded below. Click here to direct download.

Coincidentally, this week Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute's notorious "malariotherapy" experiments made headlines in China's Xinhua News Agency and STAT News. Click here for my compilation of related media reports and TV spots re: a 2008 US Congressional race.


Gianrico Farrugia MD
President and CEO, Mayo Clinic
200 First St. SW
Rochester, MN 55905

Dear Dr. Farrugia:

I’m the son of the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, known for the Heimlich maneuver anti-choking treatment.

...One of my research/reporting interests is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a high-profile Washington, DC nonprofit that’s been around since 1985. Per my website, I’ve also been a public critic of PCRM because of their problematic 30-year relationship with my dad.

...My Google News alert sent me a Rochester Post Bulletin article from last month by Jeff Kiger, Mayo Clinic criticized for using live pigs in doctor training, who reported:

After talking to Mayo Clinic for more than a year, the Washington, D.C.-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a complaint asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to investigate Mayo’s use of pigs in annual training emergency medical training.

...I thought I’d take the opportunity to share with you some information which in my opinion raises some interesting questions about the organization.

...(Via) numerous published articles from 1994 to the present which I’ve compiled on my blog, PCRM has been called an “animal rights” activist group. If accurate, presumably that perspective influenced the complaint they filed with the USDA against your institution.

...Via NoVa parks authority teaches lifeguards discredited Heimlich maneuver by Tom Jackman:

In Tampa, which has one of the highest drowning rates in the country, Dr. James Orlowski said he has documented nearly 40 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.

“You’ve got one man and a few small supporters,” Orlowski said, “that continue to push this in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

For decades, those supporters included PRCM and the group’s founding president, Neal Barnard MD.



...Even after the treatment had been thoroughly discredited and my father had been exposed as a dangerous scammer, Dr. Barnard continued to urge the public to perform the Heimlich maneuver on near-drowning victims.



...Via a 1982 Wall Street Journal article (in which he claimed he knew how to bring about world peace), dad claimed he could cure cancer by infecting patients with malaria. Dad credited Julius Wagner-Jauregg, a German eugenicist, Nazi sympathizer, and winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for Medicine as his inspiration for the concept.

Dad then began claiming malaria could cure Lyme Disease and, in collaboration with a New Jersey physician, the Heimlich Institute oversaw clandestine experiments on US Lyme Disease patients in Mexico City and Panama City...The project was shut down in 1992 after an investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because returning patients infected with malaria were bringing the disease into the US.

...What makes the history even more bizarre is that my dad (who died in December 2016) had no background or training in immunology. Nevertheless, because of the fame he acquired as a result of developing and promoting his namesake anti-choking maneuver, people trusted him and he was able to raise millions of dollars from private donors including Hollywood celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Ron Howard who helped fund the experiments on Chinese AIDS patients.

As it happens, in 2008 Eric Matteson MD, your prominent Mayo Clinic colleague, corresponded with PCRM's Dr. John Pippin about the “malariotherapy” experiments and his organization’s relationship with my father.

...Fast forward to December 17, 2016, the day after my dad’s death. Via a PCRM media release that day, The Physicians Committee Remembers Henry J. Heimlich for Innovative Medicine:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine salutes the life and career of Henry J. Heimlich, M.D., a tremendously innovative and creative scientist. The Heimlich maneuver, for which he is known, has saved countless lives.

...“Dr. Heimlich was the embodiment of innovation, compassion, and getting the job done,” says Physicians Committee president Neal Barnard, M.D., F.A.C.C.

...I can’t account for Dr. Barnard and his organization’s unwavering admiration for my dad, especially their unwillingness to distance themselves from the Heimlich Institute’s horrific “malariotherapy” experiments, described here by Cyndi Monahan, a New Jersey Lyme Disease patient via a June 1991 American Health article, Heimlich's Maneuver?

"Within two days I started to get fevers as high as 106 degrees"...After Monahan's return from Mexico City, life consisted of hours of fever followed by chills - and intense pain. "My lower back felt like a truck slammed into it and I found that a malaria headache is the most excruciating pain you can imagine." Her New Jersey doctor allowed the malaria to persist untreated for five weeks. During that time she logged 130 "fever hours," when her temperature exceeded 101 degrees. She vomited constantly, lost 40 lb. and required intravenous fluids to compensate for dehydration. "We went until my body couldn't take it anymore," she recalled, "and then I took the antimalarial drug"...

"I'm going back for another treatment," she says. "Dr. Heimlich told me I may have to do it again. He's made all the arrangements with the doctors in Panama."

As it happens, per this letter donated by my dad to the University of Cincinnati’s Henry J. Heimlich Archival Collection, Dr. Barnard may have helped finance Ms. Monahan’s “treatment”:

May 30, 1991

Neal D. Bernard, M.D.
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
P.O. Box 6322
Washington, D.C. 20015

Dear Neal:

I received your generous donation of $1,000.00 on May 20. Thank you so much for your continuing support of our research projects.

I'm pleased to report our first group of Lyme disease patients has completed malariatherapy at the clinic in Panama and their induced malaria is being cured. In fact, I leave tomorrow so that I can be there this weekend. The results so far are gratifying, and we hope to see even more progress in the weeks to come.

In about an hour, Susan and I will be meeting with Mike Handley to discuss the PSA's to focus on responsible medicine.

Keep in touch. As soon as I have finished documenting our recent malariatherapy group, a report will be sent to you for your interest.

Thought you might care to see the enclosed speech given at graduation of Eastern Virginia Medical College.

Thank you again for your support.

Sincerely,

Henry J. Heimlich
President
The Heimlich Institute
2368 Victory Parkway Suite 410
Cincinnati, OH 45206

Finally, re: the use of animals for training or for medical research, I have zero knowledge of the subject, therefore I have no opinion.

I do, however, have a devil’s advocate question that might be posed to Dr. Barnard, Dr. Pippin, and/or other PCRM representatives.

...Via Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary published in the June 1974 issue of Emergency Medicine in which dad first described the treatment he subsequently named the Heimlich maneuver.

...Standing behind the victim, the rescuer puts both arms around him just above the belt line, allowing head, arms, and upper torso to hang forward. Then, grasping his own right wrist with his left hand, the rescuer rapidly and strongly presses into the victim's abdomen, forcing the diaphragm upward, compressing the lungs, and expelling the obstructing bolus.

...The procedure is adapted from experimental work with four 38-pound beagles...After being given an intravenous anesthetic, each dog was "strangled" with a size 32 cuffed endotracheal tube inserted into the larynx. After the cuff was distended to create total obstruction of the trachea, the animal went into immediate respiratory distress as evidenced by spasmodic, paradoxical respiratory movements of the chest and diaphragm. At this point, with a sudden thrust. I pressed the palm of my hand deeply and firmly into the abdomen of the animal a short distance below the rib cage, thereby pushing upward on the diaphragm.

...We repeated the experiment more than 20 times on each animal with the same excellent results.

...Since dad used the beagles in his research, if PCRM had been around at the time would Dr. Barnard and his organization have attempted to shut down the research and thereby presumably derail the development of the Heimlich maneuver which, according to PCRM’s remembrance of my father, “has saved countless lives”?

source

January 31, 2019

James Goldston
President
ABC News
47 West 66th Street
New York, NY 10023

Dear Mr. Goldston:

This is to respectfully request that you review the following information and provide me with a determination if a recent news report by a member of the ABC News Medical Unit is in compliance with ABC News editorial standards and guidelines. Also, for an item I’m reporting on my blog, I’d appreciate your answers to some quick related questions.

Via A plant-based diet benefits not only humans but the Earth, too: Report by Dr. Robin Ortiz, January 22, 2019:

A diet heavy on whole grains and plants won’t only benefit human health, it’ll benefit the planet too, according to a report published this week by a commission of dozens of experts from 16 countries.

The report, published in The Lancet, attempted to determine the optimal diet for both humans and the earth, and found that if people around the globe followed a plant-based diet, it would save over 10 million lives — preventing 20 percent of adult deaths per year.

...Eating red and processed meat is unhealthy for you and the planet.

People who eat a lot of meat have an increased risk for all causes of death, disease and causing environmental harm. It also cited a lack of evidence that red meat is a nutritional necessity. In one of the studies the report cited, vegans had a 12 percent lower risk of death.

“A global shift to a plant-based diet is a win-win for both human health and the environment,” Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, told ABC News. “Animal products are not only major drivers of our planet’s top killers — like heart disease and obesity — but they’re also major drivers of what’s killing the planet itself: climate change, land use, water use, and air and water pollution.”

Every Person’s effort can make a serious change.

If you are ready to try an environmentally and heart healthy transition to a mostly plant-based diet, Barnard and his colleagues recently launched the free 21-Day Vegan Kickstart app. Physicians and medical centers, such as NYC Health and Bellevue Hospital and the Barnard Medical Center are also beginning to incorporate plant-based nutrition and lifestyle medicine practice into clinical care. You can also ease into the transition by going meatless just one day a week.

...Dr. Robin Ortiz is a physician in internal medicine and pediatrics and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.

Via an interview with Dr. Ortiz that aired January 9, 2019 (about two weeks before her ABC News story was published) on The Exam Room, self-described as “the ultimate vegan podcast” from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (transcribed below my signature):

• Dr. Ortiz is a longtime vegan and actively promotes a vegan diet on her website and via social media.
• For the past five years Dr. Ortiz has been a member of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a high-profile Washington, DC-based activist nonprofit that aggressively promotes a vegan diet.
• As part of her medical training, Dr. Ortiz recently completed a four-week rotation at the Barnard Medical Center (BMC). The BMC’s founding president is PCRM founding president Neal Barnard MD whom Dr. Ortiz describes as a “guru” and a “legend.” (PCRM and the BMC are in the same building at 5100 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016.)
• In the interview, a PCRM staffer described Dr. Ortiz as “the future of plant-based medicine” and stated that she will be an invited speaker at an upcoming PCRM international medical conference. Dr. Ortiz stated that she “hopes (her) relationship with PCRM and BMC is just beginning.”

1) None of the above information was included in Dr. Ortiz’s ABC report. Should any of the information have been included? If so, which parts?

2) Was the story assigned to Dr. Ortiz or did she suggest it?

3) Did any PRCM representatives assist Dr. Ortiz in her reporting?

4) Recenty I blogged an item compiling published mainstream sources that describe PCRM as an "animal rights" group. Whether or not Dr. Ortiz agrees with that, since she has been a member of the organization for five years, it stands to reason she’s aware of that description. Should her ABC report have included that information?

On January 25, I tweeted this question to Dr. Ortiz:

Here’s her same-day reply:

5) When politely asked to provide the names of editorial superiors, are reporters for ABC News encouraged to provide that information?

Thank you for your time/consideration and I look forward to your reply.

Full disclosure, I’ve been a public critic of PCRM and Dr. Barnard re: their problematic 30-year relationship with my father, the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, known for his namesake anti-choking maneuver.

Sincerely,

Peter M. Heimlich
(REDACTED)
Peachtree Corners, GA 30096 USA
ph: (208)474-7283
website: http://medfraud.info
blog: http://the-sidebar.com
e-mail: peter.heimlich@gmail.com
Twitter: @medfraud_pmh
bio: http://tinyurl.com/ych7o7dr

#####

Via https://www.pcrm.org/podcast

The Exam Room™ is the ultimate vegan podcast from the Physicians Committee (for Responsible Medicine). Dr. Neal Barnard, a real-life rock star and authority on plant-based living, motivates and inspires the vegan-curious and those who have been plant-powered for life. Learn the secrets to radically improving your health as show host “The Weight Loss Champion” Chuck Carroll, who lost 265 pounds and kept it off, goes one-on-one with others who have transformed their lives.

Via the web page describing the January 9, 2019 Exam Room podcast:

Also, on the show, you’ll hear from someone at the forefront of the future of nutrition and medicine. Robin Ortiz, M.D., brings her passion and infectious energy to The Exam Room™ to talk about her transformation from a semi-rebellious teenager to a doctor with a keen eye for all things plant-based.

She gives her thoughts on the lack of nutrition education in medical school and talks about being viewed as a “hippy doc” by her colleagues because of her diet. But Dr. Ortiz’s endless supply of optimism and an increasing amount of research is proving that she’s on the right track.

Mr. Carroll’s interview with Dr. Ortiz starts at timestamp 20:30. 



(21:00) Chuck Carroll: (Dr. Robin Ortiz) is the future of plant-based medicine…She will be a featured speaker at (PCRM’s) international conference on nutrition and medicine at some point in her career.

(22:00) CC: This is the Exam Rood podcast brought to you by the Physicians Committee (for Responsible Medicine)...We have one of those future plant-based rock stars...She’s just wrapping up a rotation upstairs at the Barnard Medical Center (BMC). With that we welcome to the program Dr. Robin Ortiz...How’s it been upstairs? This is your final day as we’re taping and I’m sorry. I know we’re gonna miss you.

Dr. Robin Ortiz: I’m gonna miss you guys more than probably most rotations I’ve been on.

CC: How was it? I would assume biasedly that it’s lived up to expectations?

RO: “Lived up to expectations” would be an understatement for sure. So my expectations coming in were I’ve been plant-based myself for quite some time. I know the nutrition, I know the gurus out there like the wonderful Dr. (Neal) Barnard)…I’m coming here to learn a little extra about specific nutritional resources or references. A little bit of information to take home and maybe convince a colleague or two. But I think I’m leaving with a whole new toolbox that I didn’t even know existed which is how to actually help patients understand and I jokingly use the metaphor “digest,” with pun intended, the information that’s out there and take all of the overwhelming amounts of nutritional information that we hear about all the time and simplify it. And I’ve learned a whole new way to do that. And I think no book or video or lecture or conference can teach you that, the way you can when you see patients one on one with dieticians or physicians or MPs or in the various classes that are taught here. It’s a whole other layer of learning that it’s insane that we don’t get that.

(36:25) CC: We’re going to have you speaking at ICNM, our big conference here. [PCRM’s annual International Conference on Nutrition in Medicine.] It’s gonna happen. I hope you realize that.

(40:05) RO: We have these amazing legends that we’re looking up to like Dr. (Neal) Barnard…

(44:00) RO: (My medical colleagues) know me as the hippie that advocates for plant-based nutrition.

(45:50) RO: I hope that I will now being armed with the knowledge of this rotation (at BMC) be able to move forward (my advocacy of a plant-based diet)...I will get out there and spread the message.

(47:00) CC: You can be a rock star. You can be a rock star. Last thing because I think somebody might be listening to this and say, “Hey, well you know what, I am a medical student or “Hey, I’m a resident -- I might be interested in coming doing a rotation at BMC. So you how did you stumble across this?

(48:30) RO: The Barnard Medical Center I came across because as long-standing in plant-based nutrition, I’ve long-followed PCRM. I was a student member and I went to the Veg Fests in DC and Baltimore before it was the cool thing to be a vegan so you might call me a hipster. No, but I went and heard a speaker at the time who – I’m also terrible with names but – somebody who I think was from PCRM or a related organization and (I) was talking to someone on the sidelines about an up and coming medical center that Dr. Barnard was thinking of opening so we’re talking about five years ago -- this was maybe when I was earlier in training. I had – my ears perked and I said I gotta be on the lookout for this. So I was already following the organization, but then I think it was by nature of social media or something that I actually saw the center open three years ago and I was in residency at the time and I just knew that in some way I was going to reach out and do something and then here I am fourth year when I have a lot more elective time and just went ahead and made the elective happen and had my organization agree to let me come.

And although I owed them one or two shifts in clinic, that paid off because I got to go take back to my patients what I’m learning here, so awesome! And you know I had reached out to the department here with my application and it worked out timing-wise, and here I am and it was just amazing. I walk out on day one and Dr. Loomis [James Loomis Jr. MD] is standing there and, y’know I’d just seen Game Changers* and I was like, oh my goodness, where am I? So it was a little shocking and I’ve loved every second of it.

CC: Look at you, havin’ this whirlwind. What has it been, three weeks, four weeks?

RO: Four weeks with Thanksgiving in the middle. I got a couple days that I wasn’t here. But y’know, plant-based Thanksgiving.

CC: (It seems like) that went by fast.

RO: Flew by!

CC: We got the e-mail that you were coming (here), like, yesterday

RO: I know, it feels like yesterday for me, too, but I hope the relationship with PCRM and BMC is just beginning.

* Via http://gamechangersmovie.com/

Directed by Louie Psihoyos and executive produced by James Cameron, The Game Changers tells the story of James Wilks — elite special forces trainer and winner of The Ultimate Fighter — as he travels the world on a quest for the truth behind the world's most dangerous myth: that meat is necessary for protein, strength and optimal health. Meeting elite athletes, special ops soldiers, visionary scientists, cultural icons, and everyday heroes, what James discovers permanently changes his relationship with food and his definition of true strength.

Via http://gamechangersmovie.com/the-cast/detail/dr.-james-loomis

Dr. James Loomis, MD is a board certified internist who served as team physician for the St. Louis Rams and the St. Louis Cardinals. He is currently Medical Director at the Barnard Medical Center in Washington, D.C. and also serves on the clinical faculty of the department of internal medicine at Washington University School of Medicine.

Via Complaint to be filed against Hershey Med for using live pigs in training program by staff reporter Merriell Moyer, Lebanon (PA) Daily News, December 18, 2018:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a nonprofit health organization that encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research and medical training.

Via A Tiff with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a September 21, 2011 archived blog item by junk science debunker Joseph A."Dr. Joe" Schwarcz PhD, Director of 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.

Based on PCRM's unprincipled 30-year relationship with my father, I'm with Dr. Joe.

For journalists and others who need credible citations to accurately identify the organization, I made a compilation of published mainstream sources that tag PCRM as an "animal rights" group. (See below the images of a couple of PCRM billboards used to gin up media attention.)

I'd welcome other examples. Please feel free to send via e-mail and I may add them to the list.

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'Interesting' Juxtaposition by Sharon M. Russell, Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, The Scientist (letter to the editor), March 1994

The juxtaposition in the Nov. 15, 1993, issue of The Scientist -- Nobel laureate David Hubel's thoughtful essay regarding the threat to medical progress posed by the animal rights movement ("Animal Rights Movement Threatens Progress Of U.S. Medical Research," page 11) and the letter by antivivisectionist Neal Barnard (page 12) -- was interesting, to say the least.

In his article, Hubel pointed out the ties between the terrorist Animal Liberation Front and the above-ground People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A January 1992 publication of the Office of Technology Assessment (Technology Against Terrorism: Structuring Security) links these groups with Barnard's own organization, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, whose views, the OTA report notes, appear "to have little support within the medical community" (page 27).

Defending the Use Of Animal Research, Ralph Dell MD Chairman, Board of Directors, Fred Quimby VMD, PhD, Vice Chairman, Frank Jones Secretary, Stanley P. Liebenberg DVM Treasurer, Marianne O'Boyle Koch Executive Director, The Health, Safety and Research Alliance of New York State, Goshen, NY, New York Times (letter to the editor), May 5, 1996:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is an animal-rights organization posing as part of the establishment.

Dietary Guidelines Need Cultural Diversity, Group Says by V. Dion Haynes, Chicago Tribune, June 24, 1999:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a vegetarian and animal-rights group, wants the USDA to make meats and dairy products optional, offering green leafy vegetables and fruits in their places, particularly for some minorities.

The PETA Connection by Jacqueline Calnan, President, Americans for Medical Progress, (letter to the editor, Washington Post, January 19, 2002:

As can be seen on PCRM's own Web site, despite its name, fewer than 5 percent of PCRM's members have medical degrees. The group has a long history of opposing important research programs funded by respected health charities such as the American Heart Association, the March of Dimes, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the American Cancer Society.

PCRM opposes any use of laboratory animals in biomedical research, regardless of benefit. It was created in 1984 to provide a false patina of scientific credibilty to the extreme animal rights agenda espoused by PETA and other groups. Its involvement in animal rights activism remains strong.

PCRM's president, Neal Barnard, is also president of the Foundation to Support Animal Protection, which is housed in PETA's headquarters in Norfolk. PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk is the foundation's vice president. According to IRS records, in 2000, the sole grant awarded by the foundation was to PCRM, in the amount of $432,524, nearly a fifth of PCRM's budget.

It is unfortunate that your paper failed to give its readers the information they need to assess the credibility and motives of PCRM.

Profile: Neal Barnard by Meredith Wadman, Nature, June 1, 2006:

Descended from a long line of cattle ranchers, Neal Barnard seems an unlikely advocate for animal rights.

Beware deception in diabetes book by Bradley J. Fikes, staff writer, San Diego Union Tribune, January 21, 2007:

(Dr. Neal) Barnard is president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which wants to eliminate consumption of animal foods and end all animal research. He and the PCRM itself are closely aligned with the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA. Barnard was president of the PETA Foundation until recently. His books are advertised on PETA's Web site.

The Animal Research Wars, P. Michael Cohn, James V. Parker, Palgrave McMillan Books, May 2008:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, led by Neal Barnard, MD, sounds like a bona fide independent and professional medical group. It turns out that less than 10 percent of PCRM member ship consists of physicians and that it receives funding from The Foundation to Support Animal Protection, an organization that evidently funds various charitable, educational, and scientific groups including PeTA and PCRM (Carmichael).

"Responsible medicine" is code for an agenda promoting diets and medical practices not dependent on animals.

Animal rights group complains about use of pigs in class, Associated Press, July 2, 2008:

An animal rights group is calling for a federal investigation of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey's use of pigs.

...(The) Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine says the use of the animals - which are put under anesthetized during the procedures and later killed - violates the Animal Welfare Act.

Animal rights activists target Brookhaven Lab workers by Delthia Ricks, Newsday, September 16, 2010:

Brookhaven National Laboratory employees were targets of a "robo call" campaign Thursday, sponsored by the animal-rights organization Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which is protesting a proposed squirrel monkey experiment at the lab.

Wayne State research triggers accusations of animal cruelty by Dustin Blitchok, The Oakland (MI) Press, December 11, 2017:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a petition for enforcement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in October that accused the university and Donal O'Leary, Ph.D., of Animal Welfare Act violations.

...In the letter to the prosecutor's office, the animal rights group's director of academic affairs, Dr. John Pippin, and its associate general counsel, Mark Kennedy, allege that the university has violated the state law by "cruelly working hundreds of dogs, by forcing them to endure lengthy treadmill tests after multiple major surgeries."

Exploiting Men’s Insecurity About Their Penises Is a Terrible Way to Promote Vegetarianism by L.V. Anderson, Slate, January 29, 2014:

Enter the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine -- a nonprofit whose apolitical-sounding name belies the fact that it’s an animal rights group.

Animal rights group criticizes Vanderbilt’s use of sheep by Tom Wilemon, Nashville Tennessean, November 18, 2014:

An animal rights organization plans to report Vanderbilt University to a federal agency for needlessly using live sheep to train doctors, but a spokesman for its medical center said the complaint is inaccurate.

...The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on Tuesday released a copy of a letter that it planned to send Wednesday to a U.S. Department of Agriculture official responsible for regulating animal welfare.

Animal-rights physicians’ group blasts UTMC; 3 billboards go up over use of pigs by Nolan Rosenkrans, Toledo Blade, January 28, 2015:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington-based physician group that focuses on animal rights, claims the former Medical College of Ohio’s use of pigs is unnecessary because other methods are available that don’t involve animals.

Johns Hopkins medical students will no longer train on live animals by Meredith Cohn, Baltimore Sun, May 18, 2016:

The move leaves the University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Medicine in Chattanooga as the last holdout among medical schools in the United States and Canada, according to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an animal rights group that has waged a decade-long battle to stop the use of animals in training.

Top medical school ends training on live animals, CBS News/AP, May 19, 2016:

Johns Hopkins is one of two accredited medical schools in North America that use animals in medical education, according to animal rights group the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Ad blasts animal medical experiments at Wayne State, The Detroit News, June 16, 2016:

An animal rights group plans to show an advertisement in a Detroit theater this week to highlight the plight of a dog they claim died after medical experiments at Wayne State University.

The 15-second spot is slated to appear before each movie on all 10 screens of the Bel Air Luxury Cinema starting Friday -- the release date for the animated film “Finding Dory,” said officials with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Animal-rights group wants investigation of USC medical school’s use of live pigs by Avery G. Wilks, The State, Columbia SC, August 25, 2016:

An animal-rights group on Thursday called for a federal investigation into the University of South Carolina’s use of live pigs in emergency medicine training.

The Washington, D.C.,-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine says the emergency medicine residency program, run by USC School of Medicine and Palmetto Health, violates the Animal Welfare Act by operating on pigs when alternatives are available.

Just who is the group protesting live animal training in Fargo? by Bradford Arick, Valley News Live, Fargo ND, April 6, 2017:

"How does someone look at I’ll say an event like this demonstration and not say well you're not actually a physician's organization, you're just an animal rights advocacy group?” asked Arick.

Billboards take aim at HCMC's animal testing practices; Animal rights group advocates switching to simulators instead by Tim Harlow, MN Star Tribune, June 8, 2017:

(The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) is using billboards to call out Hennepin County Medical Center for using live animals to teach and train physicians in emergency medical procedural skills.

The animal-rights group says the hospital should instead use simulators.

PCRM's seemingly defunct "Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine," last presented in 2010

According to junk science debunker  Joe "Dr. Joe" Schwarcz PhD, Director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society:

I consider PCRM [The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine] to be a fanatical animal rights group with a clear cut agenda of promoting a vegan lifestyle and eliminating all animal experimentation.

My father joined PCRM in the late 1980s as member of the organization's "medical advisory board."

By then, he'd been exiled from legitimate medicine.

Among other problems, in 1977 dad was fired for misconduct from his last hospital job and subsequently descended into medical quackery.

Nevertheless, he was welcomed with open arms into PCRM by the organization's founding president, celebrity doctor Neal Barnard MD, who's given to wearing a white lab coat in publicity photos.

Here are some of his diet books in which he claims "going vegan" will cure just about anything that ails you.

source

Back in the day, presumably Dr. Barnard thought affiliating with a famous name like Dr. Maneuver would boost the profile and credibility of his operation.

And for the next few decades things seemed to go that way.

But in 2003, as a result of research by my wife Karen and me (and my outreach to reporters), my father was exposed as a dangerous crackpot via scores of mainstream print and broadcast exposes.

Some of that stuff hitting the fan has blown back onto PCRM and Dr. Barnard.

For example, via a hard-hitting 2010 LA Weekly report by Paul Teetor:

Barnard declined repeated requests for comment.

My father died in December but -- per this Fargo, North Dakota TV expose last week by investigative reporter Bradford Arick-- his ghost still haunts Dr. Barnard's organization.

If you were in the area of North University and 12th Avenue, you probably saw about a dozen people holding signs and banners. And you’ve no doubt heard about the Heimlich maneuver to save choking victims. But the group you saw protesting counted the inventor of that life-saving skill as a board member. Our investigation finds Dr. Henry Heimlich passed away last year, but his past is far from clean cut. And the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is promoting what some say is dangerous medical treatment.

...But who is this group?

"How does someone look at I’ll say an event like this demonstration and not say well you're not actually a physician's organization, you're just an animal rights advocacy group?” asked Arick.

...On their board until his recent death, the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver, Dr. Henry Heimlich. PCRM promoted using the maneuver as a way to save a drowning victim, something the American Heart Association calls “unnecessary and potentially dangerous”. How is that responsible medicine?

...Further marring Heimlich’s legacy, his belief in Malariotherapy. It’s deliberately infecting a person with malaria as a cure for things like cancer and HIV, and he carried out human trials in Africa, something the World Health Organization and CDC have both denounced.

...There’s another local connection here too. The President of PCRM is Dr. Neal Barnard, and he says he grew up in Fargo.

Perhaps the ultimate irony, when dad died in December, a tribute to him was published on PCRM's website.

Here's a screenshot:


Here's a screenshot from dad's obituary in the Washington Post, describing how he developed his namesake anti-choking choking treatment in 1973 at Cincinnati's Jewish Hospital:

I don't have any expertise or opinions about the use of animals in medical research, but here are a couple of medical ethics brain teasers.

Would PCRM have attempted to shut down my father's experiments on the four beagles?

Does Dr. Barnard think my father should not have conducted the experiments?

For more about PCRM's 30-year relationship with my father, click here.

Neal Barnard MD

Via And a Thinner New Year: Five New Books About Food and Diets by Judith Newman in today's New York Times:

Via Plant-based diet is solution to ending America’s health care crisis by Dr. Staton Awtrey, Midland (TX) Reporter-Telegram, October 14, 2015

As a result of the emerging awareness that what you eat largely determines your health, the concept of food as medicine is gaining momentum. Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn of the Cleveland Clinic published a study last year in The Journal of Family Practice demonstrating that patients with coronary artery disease eating a whole food plant-based diet had approximately a 30-fold decrease in cardiovascular events (heart attacks, strokes, placement of coronary stents, and heart surgery) when compared to patients treated with conventional strategies.

...A paradigm shift in true health care is on the horizon. Perhaps the single most encouraging recent development, at least in my mind, is that the current president of the American College of Cardiology [now Immediate-Past President], Dr. Kim Williams, embraces fully Esselstyn’s findings and has adopted a whole food plant-based diet himself. In fact, he delivered the keynote address to hundreds of like-minded physicians and researchers from 15 countries attending the International Plant-Based Nutrition Conference in Anaheim, California, earlier this month.

Via Vegan Diet, Healthy Heart? by Kim Williams MD, MedPageToday, July 21, 2014:

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So who arranged Dr. Barnard's American College of Cardiology fellowship presented last week?

Presumably the current president of the organization can explain.

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Unrelated to nutrition science, click here for Dr. Barnard's and his organization's problematic relationship with my father.