The Sidebar

Via Superlawyer Stanley Chesley Disbarred Over Fen-Phen Scam by Daniel Fischer, Forbes, March 21, 2013: 

The Kentucky Supreme Court today permanently disbarred lawyer Stanley Chesley, the prominent tort lawyer and Democratic Party kingmaker who got entangled in a scandal over fen-phen litigation that sent two other lawyers to jail and ended the legal career of the judge who approved the settlement.

The disbarment is a professional fiasco for Chesley, who rose to prominence as a mass-tort litigator and is married to U.S. District Judge Susan Diott. Under a reciprocal agreement with Kentucky, he might also lose his license to practice law in Ohio.

In the early days of the whistleblowing efforts by my wife and me that exposed my father, Henry J. Heimlich MD as a remarkable and dangerous quack, based on the advice of a Cincinnati attorney we phoned Chesley who offered to represent us pro bono. (He also shared some astonishingly intimate information about other members of my family including my brother Phil Heimlich, then a powerful Republican official.)

Some weeks later, Chesley stopped answering our phone messages. When I finally got him on the line, he lied and claimed he'd never agreed to represent us.

Screen capture from Bing.com News search showing now-scrubbed article

Via Dr. Henry Heimlich's reputation hangs in the balance by staff reporter James Ritchie, a March 14 item published on the website of the Cincinnati Business Courier, one of the papers owned by American City Business Journals:

The name of Dr. Henry Heimlich, for whom the choking first-aid maneuver is named, is known worldwide.

But recent news coverage questions what his legacy will be. 

The Atlantic notes that the world "may not remember him at all, as 'abdominal thrust' is now the term of choice of the Red Cross and the American Heart Association for the life-saving response to choking victims."

...As the Atlantic reported, Heimlich "wasn't content just to be a household name" after he introduced the Heimlich Maneuver in 1974. He began promoting it for asthma attacks and drowning victims. Then he began running experiments in developing countries to see if inducing malaria in AIDS patients could cure them.

Radiolab's Pat Walters recently devoted a podcast to Heimlich, whose move once saved his life.

Though he was once a big fan of Heimlich, he didn't like what he found.

"When I think about my kids...when they learn this thing, it won't be called the Heimlich maneuver," he said. "And based on what I know now, I really don't think that I would tell them to call it that."

Sometime over the next few days, the story was completely scrubbed from the site without any published explanation.

And the paper's long-time editor -- and part-time journalism teacher at Ohio's Miami University -- Rob Daumeyer, is refusing to answer questions.


Here's what the original article looked like -- click here to download a full-size version:


Via the original URL, http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/blog/2013/03/dr-henry-heimlichs-reputation-hangs.html, here's what replaced it:


At the time of publication, reporter James Ritchie, the paper's managing editor, Lisa Benson, and the Business Courier thought the story was worth chirping about:

source

source

So why did Ritchie's story get censored and who gave the order?

Having some previous experience with how Daumeyer runs the paper -- more about that in a future item -- I had a pretty good guess, so yesterday I sent these questions to the paper:

1) I'd like a yes or no answer re: whether anyone from Deaconess* or the Heimlich Institute or anyone representing my father contacted the paper about your item.

2) If yes, may I please be provided with the name(s)?

3) I'd like to know the precise time your item was taken offline, which Business Courier employee was responsible for the decision to take it offline, and why it was taken down.

I'd welcome any additional information the Business Courier wishes to provide.

The response?

From: "Robert Daumeyer" <rdaumeyer@bizjournals.com>
Date: 3/18/2013 2:49 PM
To: <peter.heimlich@gmail.com>
CC: "Lisa Benson" <lisabenson@bizjournals.com>, "James Ritchie" <jritchie@bizjournals.com>

Peter ... This is Rob Daumeyer, I'm editor at the Business Courier ... I don't have any additional information to add for you.

Thanks

Rob

Sent from my iPhone

* In June 1998, The Heimlich Institute became a member of Deaconess Associations Inc., to help advance and promote the mission and vision of The Heimlich Institute in perpetuity. (source)

More to come....

Update: via On Second Thought by Ben Kaufman, Cincinnati CityBeat, March 19, 2012

Why did Cincinnati Business Courier take down its online story about Henry Heimlich’s attempts to save his reputation and that of his Heimlich Maneuver? Granted, it wasn’t flattering, but it didn’t go beyond what Curmudgeon has reported. Reporter James Ritchie forwarded my request for an explanation and editor Rob Daumeyer responded, “Thanks for asking, but we don't have anything to add for you.”

Hat tip to Bwannah Bob. This item has been slightly revised and updated.

I reported about this last year, but a new radio report about my father's career gives me an excuse for a re-visit.

The Man Behind the Maneuver, produced and reported by Pat Walters, aired last week on a program called Radiolab.

Via their website:


You want boundary-blurring? Read on....

From An Illustrated History of Heimlich, a graphic timeline that accompanied the Radiolab story:

Graphic by Larry Buchanan

Here's an audio snip from the show describing how my father "laid the dog down on the operating table and then he jams this piece of meat down the dog's throat":

Four beagles, weighing 17 kg (38 lb) each, were anesthetized with thiamylal (Surital) sodium given intravenously. A cuffed, No. 32 endotracheal tube, the lumen plugged by a rubber stopper, was inserted under direct vision through the mouth into the larynx. The cuff was distended with 3 to 4 ml of air, causing total obstruction of the trachea, simulating a bolus of food caught in the human larynx. The animal immediately went into respiratory distress, as evidenced by spasmodic paradoxical respiratory movements of the chest and diaphragm.

...Subsequently, I pressed the palm of my hand deeply and firmly upward into the abdomen of the animal a short distance below the rib cage, thereby pushing against the diaphragm. The endotracheal tube (bolus) popped out of the trachea. After several labored respirations, the dog resumed breathing. The experiment was repeated more than 20 times on each animal with the same result. The clinical situation was then simulated by inserting a bolus of raw hamburger into the dog's larynx until the respiratory passage was totally occluded. The abdominal pressure maneuver was repeated and, in each instance, after one or two compressions, the bolus was ejected from the larynx and normal respiratory exchange was established.

Incidentally, there's no mention of string being tied to the meat and it's unclear how a piece of string could be tied to "a bolus of raw hamburger."

What makes this more interesting is that, according to the LA Weekly, since 1986 my father's been on the medical advisory board of the Washington, DC-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and every couple of years PCRM presents the Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine.

Via an article last year in the Wayne State University student newspaper:

Dr. John Pippin, director of academic affairs for PCRM, said the group’s interest is scientifically and medically based.

 ...PCRM is opposed to and seeks to ban the use of animals in medical research in all forms, Pippin said, because such research is “a fraud.”

Since his 1974 research using the beagles, my father has claimed to have seen the errors of his ways and has represented himself as an advocate against the use of animals in medical research.

For example, from a May 1990 speech he gave at the Animal Experimentation Alternatives Conference in Tel Aviv:

This useless sacrificial research can be stopped if we take time, and use the press, which is very friendly.

However, only a couple of years ago, my father's Heimlich Institute donated $615,000 to the University of Cincinnati for cancer research using mice. As I reported, PCRM then quietly scrubbed the Heimlich Institute from their list of approved charities.

Here's a good question that animal activists may wish to ask Dr. Pippin and PCRM founder/president Neal Barnard MD.

Why is my father still on their organization's board?

Source (screenshot from today)

A request to Sidebar readers: Over the years, I've sent a number of courteous inquiries to Drs. Pippin and Barnard and PCRM's media representatives, but I've never received a single reply. If anyone wishes to ask PCRM for an explanation why my father is still on their board, I'd welcome copies of any correspondence.

Click here for PCRM's contact information. Click here for mine.


This item has been slightly revised.

As I reported last week, a recent Heimlich Institute press release opened the door to one of the nastiest skeletons in my father's closet, his relationships with a string of doctors who lost their licenses for extreme over-prescribing of narcotics, two of whom did jail stretches.

Melinda Zemper (source)

Now Melinda Zemper of Oak Tree Communications (who does PR for the Heimlich Institute), my father, and Patrick Ward of Deaconess Associations (the parent company of the Heimlich Institute), have again handed me an opportunity to report about another of my father's most closely-held secrets.

A couple year ago, my father and Ward donated my father's archives to the University of Cincinnati Medical School library:


A couple weeks ago, Ms. Zemper issued another Heimlich Institute press release, this one promoting "Heimlich Heroes," a first aid training program being conducted in Ohio schools by the Heimlich Institute.

What interested me was the accompanying photo:


It's the white lab coat.

It's been over 35 years since my father had a reason to wear one in a professional capacity.

Via Radar magazine:

(In the mid-1970s, Dr.) Heimlich's career as a surgeon was drawing to an ignominious close. There had been at least one incident when he passed out at the operating table, leaving another surgeon to finish the job. Heimlich was having trouble obtaining malpractice insurance, Peter (Heimlich) claims, and his personality hadn't endeared him to the rest of the Jewish Hospital staff. In 1976 he left the hospital.

Two corrections, courtesy of documents from the Heimlich Archives.

First, the year my father left Jewish Hospital was 1977.

Second, he didn't just leave. He got canned.




57 years old at the time, my father quit practicing surgery, never again maintained a medical practice, and spent the rest of his career as a celebrity doctor.




Updated 3/12/13: The Cincinnati Post got it wrong:

A press release issued last month by the Heimlich Institute unintentionally introduced one of the darkest and best-kept secrets of my father's career and personal life -- his relationships with doctors who lost their medical licenses for extreme over-prescribing of prescription narcotics. 

Two of them did prison time after being convicted on drug charges.

One of the two, Gerson Carr, was employed for a decade as the Heimlich Institute's "Research Director" after my father helped parole him from a New Mexico state pen.

The other ex-con, Ryan Krebs, is a close friend of my brother Phil Heimlich, the longtime vice president of the Heimlich Institute.

Via the January 21, 2013 Heimlich Institute press release, here's another charmer:


The late Dr. Uhley, a notorious Beverly Hills "Dr. Feelgood," managed to avoid the slammer, perhaps because he had plenty of rich and famous patients in high places.

And he kept 'em high.

For instance:

Source

A couple months later....

Source

Ever see the Blake Edwards film S.O.B. in which actor Robert Preston plays a famboyant Hollywood doc who always had a hypo ready to jab into anyone who needed a boost? Rumor has it the character may have been based on my father's colleague.


In the mid-1990s, Dr. Uhley finally had to put away his prescription pad.

Faced with charges of "gross negligence," "excessive prescribing," "prescribing to addicts," "prescribing without a good faith prior examination," "repeated negligent acts," "incompetence" and more, my father's colleague surrendered his license to the Medical Board of California in 1996.

Here are some home highlights from the July 21, 1995 Accusation. (See below for the entire document.)



Dr. Uhley's year 2000 obit in Variety neglected to mention any of that, but is it my imagination or is this there a nod and a wink between the lines?


Back to last month's Heimlich Institute press release:

(Drs. Heimlich and Uhley) collaborated on a pair of articles about the Heimlich maneuver, describing the historical and technical aspects of the maneuver, which appeared in a 1979 issue of Clinical Symposia.

Not precisely a peer-reviewed journal, Clinical Symposia was a pamphlet published by a corporation with which my father's "collaborator" may very well have had a working relationship:

UPDATE: As a result of a recent general election, John Boyce MP replaced Donville Innis as Barbados Minister of Health.

Click here for my March 24, 2013 letter to Mr. Boyce requesting information about "the Heimlich maneuver for asthma" experiment reportedly conducted on dozens of children.

Per my December 20 item, according to the Sunday Sun (the leading daily newspaper in Barbados, West Indies), as a result of my recent media inquiries, the Ministry of Health was "carrying out an investigation" into a medical experiment conducted there about a decade ago.

According to the University of Cincinnati News Record, the unpublished study used 67 children, age six to 16, to test the effectiveness of the Heimlich maneuver to treat asthma attacks.

Records held by the University of Cincinnati's medical library show that the project was funded by the Rotary Foundation of Cincinnati and the Heimlich Institute, my father's nonprofit.

Unrelated to the Barbados study, as reported by numerous media outlets, the Heimlich Institute has a long history of conducting violative offshore medical experiments in China and Africa. For example, via the Cincinnati Enquirer:

(Dr. Heimlich's "malariotherapy") experiments - which seek to destroy HIV, the AIDS-causing virus, by inducing high malarial fevers- have been criticized by the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration and condemned by other health professionals and human rights advocates as a medical "atrocity.''

Barbados Chief Medical Officer Joy St. John MD and Minister of Health Donville Inniss (source)

Back to the Barbados asthma study, in response to my media inquiries -- I was trying to get information to report here -- I received a January 5 e-mail from Minister of Health Donville Inniss.

He suggested that I submit a formal inquiry, so today I did -- click here to download a copy:




Here's the accompanying 156-page file referenced in my letter -- click here to download a copy:



Click here (and bookmark) my web page tracking the developing "Heimlich maneuver for asthma" experiment conducted on children in Barbados.

UPDATE: Via The Grand Vision of Dr. Heimlich, After the Maneuver Limelight by Lindsay Abrams, The Atlantic, March 11, 2013: 

On his blog, (Peter Heimlich) urges journalists to investigate potentially fraudulent stories about the maneuver being successfully used -- was country star Luke Bryan telling People Country magazine the truth about an errant piece of flatbread pizza?

Is there an ambitious reporter out there who wants to help move this story forward?

Possible headline: 

"Top country music star may have pulled a mini Manti T'eo."

It starts with this interview in People Country magazine's October 2012 issue:


The dramatic lifesaving event got picked up reporter Alison Bonaguro for Country Music Television and dozens of other web sites that report about the country music scene.

But, as I've reported, when I asked Team Bryan to supply the who/what/were/when details, they all gave me the silent treatment.

The singer, his publicist, his managers -- even Luke's mother -- wouldn't cough up any facts to substantiate his claim.

Why so shy? Why isn't Luke praising his friend who may have saved his life, and posing with him in Billboard or the Nashville Tennessean?

Could it be that -- say it ain't so, Luke -- the story's baloney?

Flyer that accompanied a credit card bill I received this week

Bryan recently started his first major tour as a headline act and, according to his website, he's booked all over the country through most of this year. So I've been casually pitching the story to reporters in towns and cities where he's slated to perform.

A few weeks ago I got a bite from a game young reporter.

She sent my who/what/where/questions to Zach Peters, assistant to Coran Capshaw, founder/president of Red Light Management, "the largest independent management firm in the world, with roughly 60 managers representing close to 200 acts, including Dave Matthews Band, Phish, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Alecia Keys, Miley Cyrus, Luke Bryan, Kool & the Gang, R. Kelley, Steve Angelo, and many others," according to Billboard.

Per my previous item, Zach promised to answer my questions, but then disappeared.

As you can see, game young reporter managed to get a reply from Zach. But, minus an explanation, he informed her the barn door had closed on questions about Luke's "Heimlich rescue."



Game young reporter then wrote me that her editor decided to drop the story. (Unlike her editor, she deserves an A for effort, so as a courtesy, I redacted her name and the name of the paper.)

Her loss, another scribbler's gain?

That depends on whether anyone else considers it newsworthy -- and is willing to report -- that a popular rising star may have fabricated a choking rescue story.

Cynthia Sanz (source)

Here's another peg for media hounds.

Per a previous item, when I asked People Country editor Cynthia Sanz to fact-check the story and to provide me with the name of the reporter who conducted the interview, she refused.

People Country may not be the New Yorker, but it's a Time Inc. property and according to Time's website (my emphasis):

Finally, above all else, Time Inc. stands for journalistic integrity. Time Inc.'s founder Henry Luce wrote that Time Inc. is "principally a journalistic enterprise and, as such, an enterprise to be operated in the public interest as well as in the interest of its stockholders." This commitment is still carried throughout all of Time Inc.'s journalism today, providing unbiased reporting and trusted editing in each of our approximately 125 titles.

Click here to download a copy of Time's most recent editorial guidelines.

Sports Illustrated, another Time-owned publication, had to wipe major egg off its face because of the Manti T'eo hoax. 

Will Ms. Sanz's refusal to fact-check Bryan's dubious story turn out to be another embarrassment for the parent company?

If anyone wants to ask contact her or other Time executives, click here and go to page 7. 


This item has been revised.