The Sidebar

My father (seated) inspects lymphocytes involved in developing new cellular therapy for transplant patients. Deaconess Assns. Foundation and the Heimlich Institute donated $115,000 to the Hoxworth Blood Center to complete a $615,000 award for the study. From left are Hoxworth researchers Jose Cancelas, MD, Ph.D.; Tom Leemhuis, Ph.D.; and Naseem Almezel.

Last month I reported that Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute had awarded $343,000* to the University of Cincinnati's Hoxworth Blood Center for a research study using animals. (1/20/11 update: Per the responses to FOIAs I submitted to the university, mice were used in the research.)

* 5/14/12 update: According to the Heimlich Institute, the total awarded to UC was $615,000.

What made this interesting is that a high-profile Washington, DC-based animal rights advocacy group called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) had long included the Heimlich Institute on their list of approved charities that "(do) not fund or conduct animal experiments."

Not any more.

The Heimlich Institute is now MIA from PCRM's list.

Here's a screen shot I grabbed last month. At this writing, the same information is still visible in Google's cached version of the page.


Now here's a screen shot taken tonight from the same web page:


Over the past few weeks I sent multiple e-mails to PCRM founder/president Dr. Neal Barnard and to two of his organization's media representatives, but never received a reply.

As of tonight, my father is still listed as a member of PCRM's medical advisory board.

I have no information whether or not PCRM intends to continue to present its Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine which the organization established in 2005.

Heimlich personally decided to help fund the research being done at Hoxworth. When Heimlich decided to make such a donation in the name of research at Hoxworth, Deaconess decided to contribute to Heimlich's donation.

"Doctor Heimlich personally saw the potential in the research of Dr. Leemhuis and Dr. Cancelas," said Patrick Ward, executive director of Deaconess Associations Foundation said.

UPDATE, 1/20/11
Response to my FOIA re: use of animals in Heimlich Insitute-funded research at Hoxworth Blood Center, Unive...
This photo at the beginning of this item has been updated.

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to an international first aid throwdown.

The prize? Determining the most effective method to rescue a choking victim.

In this corner, courtesy of the September 5, 2011 Sydney Morning Herald, Australia's largest first aid organization, St John Ambulance:



In the opposing corner, from the website of Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute, my father and the late Edward A Patrick:

Drs. Edward A. Patrick & Henry J. Heimlich

All that's missing is a referee. How about the medical profession? 

Or how about the media? Presumably the press wants to provide the public with the best available first aid information. Also, controversy sells newspapers and this one's got that base covered, plus two world-famous doctors are in the mix.

If anyone wants to ask the various players what they have to say to support their positions, click the names for their contact information: St John Ambulance Australia, the Heimlich Institute, and the Koop Institute at Dartmouth College.

* 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." (source)

9/20/11 FOLLOW-UP: Animal rights group (PCRM) scrubs Heimlich Institute from approved "humane" charities list after my report disclosed $343,000 had been awarded for animal research at University of Cincinnati

My father and Dr. Neal Barnard at a PCRM 25th Anniversary gala, West Hollywood, CA, April 11, 2010; click here for video in which my father appears at timestamp 1:45

For decades, animal rights advocates have counted my father among their most prominent supporters.

For example, in her book, One Can Make a Difference, PETA founder/president Ingrid Newkirk wrote, "(Dr. Heimlich) is staunchly opposed to animal experiments." 

According to this website, the president of an anti-vivisection group called Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine told the Jerusalem Post, "(Dr. Heimlich is) vehemently opposed to animal experiments."

So what happens when like-minded members of the animal rights community find out that last year my father awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund medical research using animals?

How about the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)? According to the LA Weekly, my father's been on the medical advisory board of this animal rights advocacy group since 1986. PCRM even established the "Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine."


One of PCRM's principal objectives is to eliminate the use of animals in medical research. According to their website, my father has been an important part of those efforts:

Our video, Advances in Medical Education with Henry Heimlich M.D., which shows Harvard Medical School's outstanding alternative to old-fashioned medical school dog labs, won the Silver Plaque at the 1997 International Film and Video Competition. Produced by Steven Ragland and directed by Mark Schimmel, it was released to all medical schools and medical libraries in the U.S. and Canada.

Our second video, Innovations in Trauma Training with Henry Heimlich, M.D., along with Human Anatomy-Based Trauma Training: An Implementation Guide, shows instructors exactly how to teach trauma care without using animals. Currently, trauma courses kill an estimated 5,000 dogs every year. PCRM's video was distributed to every Advanced Trauma Life Support instructor in North America.

According to this 1996 article, PCRM founder/president Neal Barnard MD recommends donating money to my father's nonprofit because "(the Heimlich Institute) never sponsor(s) any animal experiments."

Five years later, from PCRM featured Launches Humane Charity Seal of Approval:

Charities that qualify are licensed to use the Humane Seal graphic on their educational and fundraising materials; the Seal's simple design quickly conveys the message: This charity is cruelty-free. PCRM administers the program on behalf of the Council on Humane Giving, a coalition of physicians and animal protection organizations. Charities wishing to apply for certification must sign a statement of assurance that they do not fund or conduct animal experiments.

...Thirty-some charities, including the Heimlich Institute...have received certification to date.

So how does the Heimlich Institute spend the money it receives from donors?

Last year, per this press release and media reports, the Heimlich Institute gave $500,000 to the University of Cincinnati's Hoxworth Blood Center.

Here's a photo from a January 28, 2010 press conference at which my father and E. Anthony Woods (chairman of the Heimlich Institute) presented the half-million dollar check to Hoxworth's director, Ronald Sacher MD (left):


From an article in the UC News Record, the school paper:

"As [Heimlich] starts to slow down, he wanted to make sure the money was used for purposes of saving lives," Sacher said.

From a press release issued by the school (emphasis added):

Jose Cancelas, MD, PhD, and Thomas Leemhuis, PhD, researchers at the blood center, will use the $500,000 gift to fund two projects: one looking at ways to eliminate cell damage in chemotherapy patients and the other aimed at creating cell therapies for immune-compromised pediatric patients.

Last week I obtained some interesting related documents.

Here's an October 16, 2009 e-mail submitted by Hoxworth to the Heimlich Institute's longtime vice president, my brother Phil Heimlich. Per the e-mail, grant applications for the two projects were attached. (Page down for the complete paperwork.):


Two weeks later, on behalf of the board, Phil wrote back that $343,000 was approved for the chemotherapy project.


These are screenshots from the grant application for the chemotherapy study. 





Among other questions, will PCRM remove the Heimlich Institute from their list of approved charities?

I'll ask them and will report the results.


grant application & funding approval from Hoxworth Blood Center to the Heimlich Institute

(Based on some quick Googling, I think this a scoop. But if you know of a previous media report, e-mail it to me and I'll give credit where it's due.) 

After years of lagging behind the rest of the world, the Canadian Red Cross (CRC) is finally updating their choking rescue guidelines.

Hey, I didn't say it - they did:

In many countries, the combination of back blows and abdominal thrusts has been used since the 2005 guidelines. In North America, using only abdominal thrusts was decided upon as it was easier for the lay rescuer to remember, not due to supporting evidence. Evidence now supports the combination of techniques as more successful than using only one method.

More from a CRC statement published last October:

Airway obstruction – for adults and children (one year or older), if the person shows signs of mild airway obstruction, encourage continued coughing but do nothing else. If he or she shows signs of severe airway obstruction and is conscious, apply up to five back blows. If this fails, give up to five abdominal thrusts. If the obstruction is still not relieved, continue alternating five back blows with five abdominal thrusts.

So why is Canada late to the dance? I don't know, but for decades, most of the world's first aid organizations have recommended backblows as the first treatment response.

Here's another question. Why did the CRC decide to continue to teach abdominal thrusts (a/k/a the Heimlich maneuver) rather than chest thrusts, the preferred treatment in Australia and New Zealand?

The Aussies have a straightforward explanation for their position:

Stephen Dean, Assistant CEO, St John Ambulance Australia's Queensland branch: "In the US, they still advocate the Heimlich Manoeuvre for choking but in Australia, we believe the evidence shows it is dangerous and so our guidelines don't promote it."

That argument certainly seems to be backed up this information: 

For conscious (choking) victims, case reports have shown success in relieving FBAO (Foreign Body Airway Obstruction) with any one of several techniques, including back blows/slaps, abdominal thrusts and chest thrusts. Frequently, more than one technique is needed to relieve the obstruction. However, there have been reported life-threatening complications associated with the use of abdominal thrusts.

...Severe complications from the use of this technique have been cited in the medical literature. Desaiet al. reported a case of traumatic dissection and rupture of the abdominal aorta after a forceful Heimlich maneuver. In addition to this complication, these authors cite reports of other complications occurring with the use of the Heimlich maneuver. These injuries include retinal detachment, rib fractures, and ruptures of abdominal organs. Additional injuries included rupture of the diaphragm, jejunum, liver, esophagus and stomach. Other reported injuries of vascular structures consisted of aortic stent graft displacement, rupture of the aortic valve, acute aortic regurgitation, laceration of a mesenteric vessel, and acute aortic thrombosis in both an aneurysmal and non-aneurysmal aorta.

The above is from the 2011 international first aid and resuscitation guidelines of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Now take another look at this sentence from the CRC statement posted at the top of this item:

In North America, using only abdominal thrusts was decided upon as it was easier for the lay rescuer to remember, not due to supporting evidence.

Am I missing something or is this a rationale for continuing to teach a potentially life-threatening procedure simply because they don't want to take on the job of re-training the population? 

An enterprising reporter could certainly ask the CRC to provide the supporting evidence that persuaded them to continue recommending abdominal thrusts rather than switching to chest thrusts.

So far so good. But then this...

...In Tampa, which has one of the highest drowning rates in the country, Dr. James Orlowski (at University Community Hospital) said he has documented nearly 40 cases where rescuers performing the Heimlich maneuver have caused complications for the victim.

From the website of the local CBS/NBC affiliate, Hawaii News Now:

1) Does the City and County of Honolulu EMS recommend that abdominal thrusts be performed on near-drowning victims? No, it is not part of our protocol

2) Would you please provide me with a copy of the letter and certificate Chief Dukes sent to Mr. Reed? E-mail or fax would be best. The City and County of Honolulu recognized Mr. Reed for responding to an emergency at Hanauma Bay and providing rescue breathing prior to the arrival of lifeguards. It was never reported to us that Mr. Reed had performed abdominal thrusts at the scene.

3) Would you please provide me with the date of the near-drowning, the victim's name, and the victim's present condition? On April 18, 2011, a woman was transported from Hanauma Bay to Straub Hospital in critical condition. The media reports that stated she died at the hospital soon after arrival were incorrect. We do not have information on her current condition.

Louise Kim McCoy
Press Secretary
City and County of Honolulu

I asked Ms. McCoy who provided her with this information. She answered that it came from the Emergency Services Department.

To recap, based on the above information:

On April 18 at Hanauma Bay, the Norwood fireman/paramedic and his wife happened upon a woman who was drowning. They pulled her onto a reef and, along with rescue breaths, he repeatedly applied abdominal thrusts. The woman, a 35 year-old tourist from Korea, was transported to Straub Hospital in critical condition. Later that day, two area news outlets incorrectly reported that she died.

About two months later, Honolulu EMS chief Patty Dukes sent the award to the fireman, someone told WKRC about it and Dan Spehler reported the story, characterizing the fireman as a hero. Though they all knew she had been in critical condition at the time of the accident, apparently none of these parties made any effort to verify the patient's current condition.

It's unclear what Dukes knew and when. Was she aware of the patient's condition when she presented the award? Dave Platte, News Director at Hawaii News Now, says the information his station reported originated from Honolulu EMS.

Before my inquiry to Ms. McCoy, if Honolulu EMS knew that the patient was alive, it's dead certain they made no effort to notify the media. If they had, the two news stories would have been updated. (More about that below.) 

O Ka Mea Ma'i Ka Mua. The patient is our priority. Sounds nice anyway.

I wanted to know what happened to the Korean woman, so I started making calls. Eventually I located a source who was close to the situation and who was willing to talk.

The source informed me that the woman had remained in a coma for an entire month at Straub Hospital.

Then, at considerable personal expense - $100,000 according to my source - the patient's husband arranged to have his wife airlifted to Seoul to be cared for at Yonsei University Health System.

Yonsei University Health System (YUHS) was founded in 1885 as the first modern medical institution in Korea by the American medical missionary, Dr. Horace N. Allen...As the hospital expanded over the years to include various colleges and research centers, the Yonsei University Health System was born. YUHS has been the leader of medicine and is respected as the protector of Korean health. Furthermore, the roots of Christianity, modern medical education and medical care in Korea can all be linked to YUHS.

What's her present condition?

On Monday, I spoke with Jiman Kim, Vice Consul at the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Honolulu.

I told him that I was writing about the case and he informed me that he has remained in contact with the patient's husband since the accident.

He explained that due to privacy issues, he could not share or confirm any of the details I obtained from my source.

However, he said he didn't have a problem forwarding information to the patient's husband.


Finally, last week I submitted corrections requests to the two Hawaiian news outlets that misreported the story.

Ed Lynch, Managing Editor at the Star-Advertiser, arranged a rewrite that acknowledged the error and replaced the incorrect story at the same link:


Honolulu News Now News Director Mark Platte chose the Orwellian route and simply disappeared the mistake.

Date: 7/30/2011 12:10 AM

From: Mark Platte 
To: Peter M. Heimlich

Subject: RE: corrections request re: Hanauma Bay near-drowning

Mr. Heimlich,

When we realized the Korean visitor had not died, as EMS officials told us, we removed our story from our Web site.

Thanks for letting us know the sequence of events for a future story. We will call you if we need more information.

Aloha, Mark

In a follow-up, I asked Mr. Platte, a former newspaper editor:

Based on your e-mail, my understanding is that Hawaii News Now policy is that when your station is informed that a story posted on your website includes false or incorrect information, the original story is deleted.

If my understanding is incorrect, please explain before Tuesday, August 2. Also, if you station has a corrections policy, please provide me with a copy before that date.

I haven't received a reply, but maybe that disappeared, too.

Mark Platte

UPDATE: On August 7, I received an e-mail from Deputy White House Press Secretary Jamie Smith informing me that she was checking on my inquiry (copied below) and would get back to me ASAP.

Last month, the Huffington Post published Save A Life Foundation Connection Delays (Gery Chico's) Appointment To State Board Of Ed by staff reporter Will Guzzardi that included:

(Chico) wasn't the only one to support SALF: politicians as formidable as Barack Obama and Arne Duncan were close to the group.

Arne Duncan & Carol Spizzirri, 9/2/06 (source)

Per my web page, for years Duncan was indeed close to SALF.

Reportedly he even called SALF founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri "one of my heroes."

Based on the information published last November in the San Diego Reader, you'd think Duncan, now US Secretary of Education, might have set the bar higher.

Spizzirri was a darling of politicians and bureaucrats, although it was a matter of record that she had been convicted twice for shoplifting.

...(It) wasn’t until November of 2006 that ABC 7 News in Chicago, in the first of several broadcasts, exposed more of Spizzirri’s untruthful statements. She had told the station that she was a registered nurse. But the station reported that the institution from which she had claimed to receive her nursing degree had never given her one. A hospital in which she had claimed to be a transplant nurse said she had been a patient care assistant, which is akin to a candy striper.

After the announcer challenged her on the assertion that the accident was a hit-and-run, she walked out of the interview.

Here's that exit scene - take note of the man who leads her off camera.



What about Barack Obama? Was he "close" to SALF, which is reportedly under investigation by the Illinois Attorney General and apparently also by at least one federal agency?

To my knowledge, such a claim is unsupported by the record.

In the HuffPo article, clicking the link attached to his name takes you to this web page from SALF's now-defunct site.



Not much here except some hype about a phone call between Spizzirri and US Senator Obama, and this:

While in the Illinois legislature together, Obama and current Illinois Senate President Emil Jones were always supportive of SALF’s efforts to train Illinois schoolchildren in life-sustaining skills for free.

That's true about Sen. Jones (now retired), who's been called Obama's political "godfather."

For example, on its 2004 & 2005 IRS filings, SALF identified Jones as being on their board.

 
But that's Senator Jones, not his pupil.

Without question, the most intriguing (and potentially damning) allegation originates from Annabel Melongo, a former SALF employee who since April 2010 has been imprisoned in Cook County Jail on a $300,000 bond.

Annabel Melongo

The charge? Two counts of eavesdropping.

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez - who, as reported by the NY Times, has a history of abusive prosecutions using the same dubious law - alleges Melongo committed the heinous act of uploading recordings of two mundane phone calls she had with a court clerk to her now-defunct website.


Tax watchdogs and political opponents may also start adding up the megabucks the spendthrift Alvarez and her co-operative judges are costing county taxpayers in pursuit of such pointless prosecutions.

To the discredit of Chicago media, Melongo's story has gone unreported except by a few bloggers, one of whom received a July 6, 2010 letter in which she wrote:

In my subpoenas, there was no direct email between Obama and Carol Spizzirri. However there’s a manager, Vince Davis, who told employees, through an email, about Obama sponsoring a bill to fuel $10 million or so, I don’t recall the exact amount, to the organization. That was the only and first time I ever saw Obama’s name mentioned in the SALF saga. The email in question was sent in response to employees panicking in the wake of the November 16, 2006 ABC investigative report.

If that turns to be true, then it’s a big story in itself.

Indeed. But I've twice asked Melongo to provide me with a copy of the alleged e-mail and twice she's refused.

In an attempt to separate fact from rumor, this week I tried to obtain some answers.

Kori Schulman

On Monday I phoned the White House switchboard, identified myself as a blogger and was steered to a woman named Kori Schulman. We had a pleasant chat during which she explained that my inquiry didn't fall into her job responsibility, but she courteously offered to forward my e-mail to an appropriate staffer in the White House press office.

My e-mail's copied below. In a future post, I'll let you know what happens.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants to ask Vince Davis for a copy of the alleged $10 million e-mail, here's his LinkedIn page.

Vince Davis

If Davis looks familiar, it may be because he's the guy who interrupted the ABC7 interview with Carol Spizzirri and escorted her off camera.

 
my 7/25/11 inquiry to the White House re: Barack Obama's relationship to the Save-A-Life Foundation

7/6/10 letter to blogger from inmate Annabel Melongo re: Save-A-Life Foundation, IL politicians, etc.

"When (Save-A-Life Foundation founder/president Carol Spizzirri) came in and sat down with me and told this story to me face to face, I was with her and decided I would do everything I could to help her" - Dick Durbin in a 1995 CNN interview (video posted below)

More recently, Senator Durbin's office seems to be doing everything it can to avoid telling the truth about his relationship with Spizzirri and her Chicago-area nonprofit that's now under investigation by the Illinois Attorney General and apparently by at least one federal agency.

In the interests of obtaining more information, I have an idea for an interesting, perhaps even fun, experiment.

It requires the participation of one or more registered Illinois voters. Here's the deal....

Earlier this month I reported that the senator's press secretary, Christina Mulka, provided a variety of false information to a Texas blogger about her boss's relationship with the Save-A-Life Foundation, a Chicago-area nonprofit now under investigation by the Illinois Attorney General.
After running that item, I e-mailed Ms. Mulka and asked her to confirm or deny two claims made by SALF, this one for a fundraiser....


...and this from a list of members of SALF's corporate board that was part of a year 2000 grant application for $50,000 that was submitted by SALF to an Illinois state agency (which approved the request):


I didn't receive a reply so a week later, I sent Ms. Mulka a follow-up that included:

According to this February 17, 2011 Huffington Post article by Will Guzzardi, SALF claimed former president of the Chicago Board of Education Gery Chico was on the board of their organization, but Mr. Chico denied the claim. Two days later I provided the information in Mr. Guzzardi's article to the CTB (the Illinois Attorney General's Charitaible Trust Bureau) in this letter.

Similarly, I'm trying to determine if the two claims published by SALF about Senator Durbin that I brought to your attention - that in year 2000 he was a member of SALF's Advisory Council and/or was Honorary Chairman of SALF's Annual Dinner Dance fund raising event - are accurate or not. Your answers could assist the CTB in their efforts to determine whether any irregularities have occurred.

No response to that either.

From Guzzardi's HuffPo article:

According to Maura Possley, the deputy press secretary for the Illinois Attorney General's Office, a nonprofit misrepresenting the makeup of its board of directors in an annual report would be perjury, a Class 3 felony.

Color me naive, but shouldn't a US senator want to assist an investigation by his home state?

But it's more than a lack of co-operation in this case.

Based on numerous inquiries I and others have sent to his office, Sen. Durbin doesn't seem interested in finding out if the nearly nine million in Illinois and federal tax dollars awarded to SALF did, in fact, provide in-class first aid training to "2 million children...many of them from the Chicago Public Schools" which is what SALF founder/president Carol Spizzirri told the Tribune a couple years ago.

Color me skeptical, but since the Chicago Schools apparently have no training records, isn't that claim iffy? A generation of students supposedly participated in the program, but there are no records?

As for Sen. Durbin's ten-year relationship with SALF, his press secretary may not be intentionally engaging in misdirection, but she's doing a boffo job of creating that impression.

For example, in an e-mail last year Ms. Mulka repeatedly indicated that Durbin's only contact with SALF was in 1995 and that: 

(He) never worked to appropriated (sic) funding for the organization.

Oops.



A year later most of the loot he requested came through:


If you're the type who prefers to let sleeping dogs lie or doesn't care what happened to the millions of tax dollars awarded to SALF, no need read any further.

However, if you're not that type and may be up for a little experiment in participatory journalism, here's what I've got in mind.

Since Sen. Durbin won't answer me, maybe he'll answer a constituent.

If you're a registered voter in Illinois, just send this or a similar inquiry to him:

The Honorable Dick Durbin
United States Senate
711 Hart Senate Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Durbin:

I'm a constituent who'd appreciate your answers to the following questions:

1) Were you ever a member of the Save-A-Life Foundation's Advisory Council? If so, during what years?

2) Did you serve as the Honorary Chairman of the Save-A-Life Foundation's Annual Dinner Dance in year 2000?

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

Click here to e-mail him via Ms. Mulka or send it via the Senator's website.

Feel free to courtesy-copy me on your inquiry and let me know the response. I'll publish the results (or non-results) in a future item. Click here for my e-mail address.

Am I asking readers to do my work for me? You betcha. But only because I hit the stonewall.

I'm also interested in learning what happens with this message in a bottle I'm sending into cyberspace. I've never done anything like this and I don't know if any other blogger or reporter has.

Will it generate newsworthy results or bupkis? Dunno, but that uncertainty is one reason why I think it's fun and worth a try.

Also, don't all good citizens share the belief that our elected officials should be accountable? Here's a painless opportunity to see what happens when you try with one of the our nation's most prominent public servants.

Okay, that's enough from me.

Illinois, the ball's in your court.