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

The unexpected result led (MIT Professor Edward) Lorenz to a powerful insight about the way nature works: small changes can have large consequences. The idea came to be known as the “butterfly effect” after Lorenz suggested that the flap of a butterfly’s wings might ultimately cause a tornado. (source)

For my wife Karen and me, the butterfly was an almost-buried year 2000 article by Long Beach, California freelance writer Pamela Mills-Senn.

When we started investigating my father's career in 2002, we stumbled upon the article via the online library of the United States Lifesaving Association, "America's nonprofit association of beach lifeguards and open water rescuers."

Little did we realize that her article -- about the bizarre campaign by my father and a lifeguard training company called Ellis & Associates to promote the Heimlich maneuver to respond to drowning victims -- would be the Rosetta Stone for our research and whistleblowing efforts that resulted in a hurricane of hundreds of tough print and broadcast media reports over the next decade.

Stories that exposed my father as a remarkable -- and dangerous -- medical charlatan and con man.

Stories that exposed his 30-year colleague, Dr. Edward A. Patrick, for having obtained seven state medical licenses based on a non-existent medical residency that my father helped fabricate. That "phantom credential" allowed Patrick to illegally practice medicine for decades in scores of hospital ERs.

Stories that exposed the Save-A-Life Foundation, a now-defunct Chicago nonprofit reportedly under investigation for "the possible misappropriation of $9 million" in tax dollars.

Stories that exposed the National Aquatic Safety Company's unethical, reckless protocol that trained lifeguards at major waterparks around the country to perform the Heimlich maneuver on drowning victims.

Her article was the road map that steered us in all of these directions. Without it, I seriously doubt if Karen and I could have succeeded in our efforts to bring these major messes to public attention.

And I think Prof. Lorenz would be impressed.


Eleven years ago today, the Cincinnati Beacon blog -- which went dark in 2011 -- published Drowning in Funworld, a remarkable four-part series by Mills-Senn about the dramatic odyssey behind the reporting and publication of her article. (I helped arrange the series and I wrote the editor's note.)

Over the next four days, I'm proud to re-publish Drowning in Funworld. And fittingly, May is National Water Safety Month.

If you value courageous journalism and want to learn how one butterfly started a hurricane, don't miss this.

Before proceeding, I recommend that you read her article, Water Rescue Sequence: The Controversial Role of the Heimlich Maneuver.




It started with a dream. Actually it was closer to a nightmare. I was running through a swamp, across a rickety wooden pathway barely above water level. And - I swear to God - I was knee-deep in alligators, snapping vicious alligators that were out to get me. As I was running, I kept trying to write, only the pad was really tiny and the pencil was like one of those they give you when you play miniature golf. And all I was thinking was, I can't write this.

source

Tennyson Springer (source)

[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.

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.

Never heard of Zengerle? Via the Swarthmore Phoenix, his alma mater's school paper:


So why would a private eye trying to dig up dirt on him reach out to me?

That's easy.

The shamus must have seen this page that's been on my website for years, The Smear Artist - Jason Zengerle's Heimlich article. It details how in 2005, when he was under contract to the New Yorker to write an article about my father, Zengerle got caught trying to pull a fast one.  

After Zengerle spent a year flying around the country doing interviews on the New Yorker's dime, Radar magazine beat him to the punch with a scorching two-part expose by reporter Tom Francis, brimming with explosive revelations about my father's bizarre career and my efforts to make people aware of his crackpot medical claims that were putting lives at risk.

At the time, Zengerle wrote me that when the November 2005 Radar article appeared, his editor at the New Yorker - Amy Davidson - was not pleased.

One reason may have been that for at least five months, Zengerle had been aware that Francis's article was in the pipeline. Per this e-mail, he even attempted to crib from Francis:



According to a January 2006 e-mail Zengerle sent me, the New Yorker then refused to publish his article.

Over two years later, after it was rejected by a string of other magazines - Zengerle told me so - the New Republic published it.

That's when I realized why the New Yorker kicked it to the curb.

In The Choke Artist: Who are the mysterious critics hunting Henry Heimlich?, Zengerle portrayed my father as a beleaguered visionary in his December years, a medical lion in winter being hounded by an ungrateful son - that would be me - making wild, unsubstantiated accusations. (Click here for a selection of mainstream media reports based on same.)

Via a 2008 Cincinnati CityBeat column by veteran reporter turned journalism professor Ben Kaufman, Zengerle's attempt to discredit me may have more to do with his family issues:

Peter Heimlich's campaign to challenge his father's eponymous "maneuver" for choking and "malariotherapy" for AIDS now includes a 2007 article by Jason Zengerle in The New Republic magazine. Among Peter Heimlich's complaints are TNR's use of outdated information and interviews, abuse of confidentiality, inaccuracies and a concealed conflict of interest in which he says Zengerle's physician wife had professional links to the elder Heimlich.

After editor Franklin Foer rejected Peter Heimlich's complaint and questions, Cincinnati lawyer H. Louis Sirkin pressed the issue with TNR. A TNR lawyer summarily dismissed both queries.

Per my "Smear Artist" page, I brought in my attorney because I caught Zengerle using fabricated documents in his attempt to dirty me up in what TNR editor Franklin Foer called "a masterful piece of writing and reporting."

It wasn't the first time Zengerle relied on bogus paper for a hit piece.

A year before, Zengerle got caught in an attempted smear job on the late Steve Gilliard, an influential political blogger, using a bogus e-mail.

That turned into an exploding cigar and got Zengerle hoisted high by Glenn Greenwald:


Presumably Greenwald missed the Swarthmore article from two months earlier or he would have used this:


But enough old news.

Remember the private eye who was peeking into Zengerle's "darker light"?

At the time I assumed he'd been hired by an attorney for a civil case. The prospect of Zengerle being served a steaming pile of legal comeuppance caused me no distress, but I didn't want to get involved, so I didn't respond.


Then last week, GQ magazine, where Zengerle is a contributing editor, published Wanna Be Veep? Okay, but This Is Going to Hurt.

From the intro:

It's veep-vetting season, and it's the most invasive process in politics. Just how squeamish does it get? We sent Jason Zengerle to one of Washington's top vetters (attorney Ted Frank) to find out if he's got what it takes to be the next (God help us all) Sarah Palin.

From Zengerle's first-person article:

But then Frank's questions take a sudden turn. We are no longer talking about my junior-year Gothic-art-and-architecture seminar. Now it's my sex life. And my drug history. And the lowest moments of my journalism career.

Hey, I know about some of those low moments. Years ago I wrote about 'em on my website. Anyone could find my "Smear Artist" page via Google, a private investigator, for instance.

Ding, ding, ding.

So last week I phoned private investigator Steve Polak who confirmed my guess.  He also verified that he'd forwarded my web page to vetter Ted Frank.

Did Frank grill Zengerle about it?

I hope so, but that's not my point.

In the ink-on-newsprint days, when a journalist chose to kick somebody, there wasn't much recourse available to the target. A letter to the editor? A rebuttal op-ed?  

Thanks to this wide open prairie of free speech called the Internet, the targets now have an opportunity to properly tell their side of the story.

Not surprisingly, some journalists don't appreciate rabble like Steve Gilliard and me kicking back.

Back to the Swarthmore Phoenix:


Consider the source, my fellow rabble. Consider the source.

Along with the following description, this two-minute public relations video appeared yesterday on the websites of a bunch of Gannett newspapers: 

Young students soon to become "Heimlich Heroes" as part of a multidisciplinary curriculum with posters, lesson plans and T-shirts emblazoned with an triangular crest surrounding an “H” that resembles Superman’s “S.”

Based on the video, Patrick Ward, Executive Director at Deaconess Associations (the Cincinnati health services corporation that has wholly owned the Heimlich Institute since 1997) appears to have dreamed up the program. The video includes interviews with him and with my father, both board members of the Heimlich Institute.

Here's Ward wearing a "Heimlich Heroes" polo shirt and my father wearing - yes - a "Heimlich Heroes" lab coat.


As I understand the program, EMTs visit local schools and teach students how to perform the Heimlich maneuver and hand out "Heimlich Hero" t-shirts.


According to the video, the curriculum was developed by Michelle Mellea, a science teacher at Cincinnati's Bethany School, "an Episcopal day school, serving girls and boys from kindergarten through the eighth grade."


If Ward's program is an attempt to revive the "Heimlich brand" to counter the scores of critical media reports that have appeared since 2003 about my father and the Institute, he's probably got his work cut out for him.

First, in 2006 the American Red Cross "downgraded" the Heimlich maneuver to a secondary treatment response for choking. The Red Cross now recommends first performing a series of back blows. If that fails to remove the obstruction, rescuers are instructed to proceed with "abdominal thrusts." They don't even call the procedure "the Heimlich maneuver" anymore.

Second, the Heimlich Institute's website continues to promote my father's long-discredited claims that the Heimlich maneuver is effective for reviving drowning victims, for stopping asthma attacks, and for curing cystic fibrosis.

Third, as recently as 2005, reportedly the Heimlich Institute was conducting illegal, unsupervised medical experiments on prostitutes in Ethiopia and Gabon, alleged "research" based on a treatment my father calls "malariotherapy." Over the decades, he's claimed that cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS can be cured by infecting patients with malaria and his organization has engaged in a series of notorious, violative human experiments on both US and foreign nationals.

This 2007 ABC 20/20 report by Brian Ross covered that and my father's other crackpot medical claims:



Fourth, per this 2006 ABC Chicago I-Team report, for years the Heimlich Institute has been an organization in name only - no office, no employees, just a website.



Fifth - and this may be the kicker - the shirts make you look like a major dork.

UPDATE, 4/22/12, 10:30AM: I just came across this Cincinnati Enquirer story on the program, Young students soon to become Heimlich Heroes by reporter Cliff Radel. It's dated 4/20/12, but didn't show up on my Google News search until this morning. It includes some interesting information that I plan to report in a follow-up Sidebar item.

Did you know that Henry Heimlich, the physician credited with the creation of the Heimlich maneuver, was born in Wilmington?

The piece had a handful of factual errors that I brought to the attention of Editor in Chief Marina Koren who promptly and capably published a corrected version.

Here's a screenshot from the original (which has since been disappeared from the paper's website):


When her story first appeared, I wrote Review reporter Anne Ulizio and asked where she located this information. I wasn't surprised when she wrote back that she'd found it on the website of the Heimlich Institute.

F'rinstance:


But according to a December 21, 2004 New York Times article by the preeminent science writer Lawrence K. Altman MD:

The first successful organ transplant recipient was a 23-year-old man from Northboro, Mass., named Richard Herrick, who had just been discharged from the Coast Guard.

On Dec. 23, 1954, he received a kidney from his healthy identical twin brother, Ronald, in an operation performed by Dr. Joseph E. Murray at what is now Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

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

Then there's this Sunday front-pager by reporter Robert Anglen from the March 16, 2003 Cincinnati Enquirer:

For more than 40 years, Cincinnati icon Dr. Henry Heimlich has been taking credit for a world-famous operation that was actually developed first by a Romanian surgeon behind the Iron Curtain.

In interviews, biographies and promotional materials, Heimlich has told anyone who would listen that he performed the world's first total organ replacement.

But even before Heimlich wrote his first article about the "Heimlich Operation" on dogs in 1955, the procedure had been performed dozens of times on humans by Romanian surgeon Dr. Dan Gavriliu, an Enquirer investigation has found.

Gavriliu now calls Heimlich a "liar and a thief." He says Heimlich not only took credit for the operation, but also lied when he said they co-authored a paper for an international surgery conference.

Heimlich denies any deception and says he has no idea why Gavriliu would be upset.

More from the Institute:

Author Rick Sowash and my father at WCET-TV, Cincinnati

Another version of the story appeared in the 1998 book Heroes of Ohio: 23 True Tales of Courage and Character by Rick Sowash, this one with prayers and tears:

But from Thomas Francis's 2005 Radar Magazine story (the best soup to nuts article about how my wife and I exposed a variety of medical frauds perpetrated by my father):

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.

If my father's story were true, there's also this little matter from the Uniform Code of Military Justice:

Any person who--

(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or

(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly;

shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.

Jack Atherton

Two years after the Radar article, my father spun this even more preposterous version in an interview with Cincinnati FOX-TV News reporter Jack Atherton, who swallowed it whole.

"In Vietnam, every soldier carried a Heimlich chest drain valve attached to a sterile tube in an envelope in his pocket. If you were shot in the chest you didn't need a doctor or nurse. Your buddy could just take this apparatus, put the chest tube into the chest through the bullet hole, the valve was there, lung would come up and stay up, and they could fly them off later."

After the story aired, blogger Jason Haap e-mailed Atherton and his superiors, explained the errors in the story, and asked if the station intended to run a correction.



To my knowledge, the inquiry was ignored. (Atherton has since moved to WLWT, the Queen City's NBC affiliate.)

Readers of the University of Delaware student newspaper can be grateful that their paper holds itself to a higher standard!

From Life Saving Skills: A New Way to do the Heimlich Maneuver by Maddie Garrett, KATC-TV News, Lafayette, Louisiana, February 8, 2011:

(The) rules on what to do if someone is choking have changed, and there's a new way to do the Heimlich Maneuver...(If) the person choking becomes unconscious, the rules have changed. Instead of pushing up in the abdomen, (Registered Nurse Ella Beth) Goetschius said it's better to perform more like CPR, minus the breaths of air. She said to lay the person on the floor, do 30 chest compressions, then open the mouth and check to for the object.

First, contrary to the report, this information ain't new.

From the 2005 Adult Basic Life Support guidelines published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association (AHA):

Treatment Recommendation

Chest thrusts, back blows/slaps, or abdominal thrusts are effective for relieving FBAO (Foreign Body Airway Obstruction) in conscious adults and children >1 year of age, although injuries have been reported with the abdominal thrust. There is insufficient evidence to determine which should be used first. These techniques should be applied in rapid sequence until the obstruction is relieved; more than one technique may be needed. Unconscious victims should receive CPR. The finger sweep should be used in the unconscious patient with an obstructed airway only if solid material is visible in the airway. There is insufficient evidence for a treatment recommendation for an obese or pregnant patient with FBAO.

Five years later in 2010, the most recent AHA guidelines were near-identical:

Although chest thrusts, back slaps, and abdominal thrusts are feasible and effective for relieving severe FBAO in conscious (responsive) adults and children ≥1 year of age, for simplicity in training it is recommended that abdominal thrusts be applied in rapid sequence until the obstruction is relieved.  If abdominal thrusts are not effective, the rescuer may consider chest thrusts. It is important to note that abdominal thrusts are not recommended for infants <1 year of age because thrusts may cause injuries. 

Second, the guidelines say chest thrusts are recommended as effective for conscious choking victims. For some reason, the TV story only reported that the treatment should be done on unconscious victims.

Confused? Yeah, me too.

But there's one thing I'm reasonably sure of.

Over six years after the AHA began recommending chest trusts as an alternative choking rescue treatment, to my knowledge this is the first TV news story to report the information. 

On the bright side, in Cajun country, KATC viewers have been informed about this potentially lifesaving skill.

At this rate, it's only a matter of decades before the rest of the country gets the news!

Charles W. Guildner MD, July 2011; click here for contact info

Incidentally, the idea that chest thrusts could be effective for choking rescue was introduced in a 1976 published study by Charles W. Guildner MD of Everett, Washington.

Per this 2007 Seattle Public Radio report by Patricia Murphy, Dr. Guildner explained how my father tried to derail his work:

By the time the chest thrust study was published in 1976, Dr. Heimlich had filed complaints against Dr. Guildner with 6 different medical groups. Eventually Guildner was cleared of all charges, but by then the Heimlich maneuver had become firmly entrenched as the primary method for choking response in the US....

GUILDNER: "It's so repugnant to me the way Dr. Heimlich has bullied. He's a bully and he has bullied people into submission."

In his quest for what reporter Thomas Francis called the "choking rescue crown," my father also called in some medical muscle in the form of US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop who used his federal government pulpit to stomp the competition and put the debate on ice.

From Koop's Declaration regarding the Heimlich Maneuver, Public Health Report, US Department of Health and Human Services, September 30, 1985:

(Dr. Koop) urged the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association to teach only the Heimlich Manuever (sic) in their first aid classes. Dr. Koop urged both organizations to withdraw from circulation manuals, posters and other materials that recommend treating choking victims with back slaps and blows to the chest...these methods are hazardous, even lethal."

The result? From a 2007 Creators Syndicate column by Lenore Skenazy:

After that, only the Heimlich Maneuver was considered kosher.

The fix?

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