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Friday, May 5, 2017

Part II of "Drowning in Funworld" by Pamela Mills-Senn, the dramatic backstory of the landmark article that was our Rosetta Stone

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Yesterday I published Part I of Drowning in Funworld, a dramatic four-part article by Pamela Mills-Senn that first saw the light 11 years ago this week on the now-defunct Cincinnati Beacon blog.

In it she relates how a routine writing assignment for an amusement park trade magazine unexpectedly turned into a white-knuckle ride on a journalistic roller coaster.

The result?

A landmark March 30, 2000 article that exposed a reckless, unethical campaign by my father and the country's largest private lifeguard training company, Ellis & Associates.

Since 1995, Ellis-trained lifeguards at scores of major waterparks around the country were being taught to resuscitate drowning victims using the Heimlich maneuver (abdominal thrusts).

Leading medical organizations including the Institute of Medicine had already declared the treatment to be useless and potentially deadly because it wastes precious rescue time and might cause vomiting leading to aspiration.

In other words, Ellis lifeguards were apparently using swimmers at their client pools as human guinea pigs to test an experimental medical treatment.

(Why company founder/president Jeff Ellis ever thought this was a good idea may be a question he now asks himself.)

The fearless, thorough reporting by Mills-Senn (who lives in Long Beach, CA) and her editor Mike Moran exposed this madness and revealed my father to be a scoundrel and a humbug who didn't even understand the basic physiology of drowning.

And her article was effective.

Soon after it was published, per a May 30, 2000 Los Angeles Times article, Ellis dropped the "Heimlich for drowning" protocol.

A couple of years later when my wife Karen and I found her article posted on the website of the United States Lifesaving Association, little did we know that our lives would never be the same.

It became the Rosetta Stone for our research that resulted in hundreds of mainstream print and broadcast media reports which exposed my father's disgraceful history; his bizarre 30-year colleague, Dr. Edward A. Patrick; the $9 million Save-A-Life Foundation scandal, and more.

And Pamela became a valued friend.

Before proceeding, I recommend that you first read her article that set us on our course, Water Rescue Sequence: The Controversial Role of the Heimlich Maneuver, and then Part I of Drowning in Funworld.

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Part II: The Tides of Research Rising

I didn't receive duplicate research papers from both sides in every case. One such instance involved a study published in a June 1989 issue of Pediatrics that was conducted by Linda Quan, M.D., internationally known for her work in pediatric drowning. Dr. Henry Heimlich had sent me just the first couple of pages of her study; (the American Heart Association's Mary Fran) Hazinski had not included this in her packet of materials.

Quan's research was important to Heimlich because it was from this study (entitled "Ten-Year Study of Pediatric Drownings and Near-Drownings in King County, Washington: Lessons in Injury Prevention") that he derived a shocking figure that the use of CPR to resuscitate children pulled from public pools resulted in a 42% fatality rate. Heimlich further stated in his own materials (in which this figure was used over and over again to demonstrate CPRs ineffectiveness for all populations) that the children in Quan's study had been given CPR by Red Cross-trained guards.

It was Quan's study I held in my hands that early morning and it was this study that contained the red flag that had been flapping - completely overlooked - in my face all this time.

But before going further, here's a little background on me.

I've earned two Bachelor's degrees, one in psychology and one in anthropology. I completed two years of Master's level coursework in anthropology, with a focus on medical anthropology and how culture affects compliance. I opted out of the thesis and instead, wound up at a small magazine publishing company doing research and marketing, an association that lasted about 14 years before I struck out on my own as a freelancer.

Both my majors were heavily research oriented. I spent six years as an undergrad learning the difference between well-constructed research and research that was not up to standard. Throughout the eight years I was at the university I took a variety of classes on research methodology, statistics and the like. I know how to tell good from bad, valid assumptions from invalid and so on, although I'm not an expert - certainly not at the level of say, someone with a PhD or an M.D. behind his or her name.

Looking at the Heimlich-supplied partial copy of Quan's study, and then at his materials where he quotes the 42% death rate associated with the use of CPR, I realized that he had extrapolated from a small, self-contained regional population and translated the data derived from this population as being true across the board for everyone. Nowhere in the papers that he provided to me at that time, nor in the copies of his correspondence that he sent to various folks trying to win support for using the maneuver for drowning resuscitation, did he mention this was a regional study and therefore valid only for that population.

I was stunned that he would commit such a rank error, one that any beginning statistics or research student would be rapped across the knuckles for.

Here's why you can't do what he did. Say for example, you wanted to do a study on the average amount of time that people, unprotected by any sunscreen, could remain in the sun before burning. Now, say you included only redheads in this study, or only African Americans. How valid do you think it would be to extrapolate from these groups to the entire population at large? (Not to mention you would have to take varying levels of pigmentation into account along with a ton of other variables. You get the idea.)

Or, consider the recent revelations around heart attack symptoms. For years, researchers basically studied males and extrapolated from these studies a list of warning signs commonly believed to be true for everyone. But, as it turns out, the warning signs for women are quite different than those for men. If women had been included in these studies, or if researchers had questioned their assumptions that men and women are alike in this respect, a more scientifically accurate picture would have emerged.

What Heimlich did may seem like a small deal, but it wasn't. It was enormous. My first reaction was to question myself; maybe I was wrong about this, maybe this extrapolation was valid. But I knew better. And if I knew better, why didn't Heimlich? Could he have done this in error? Could this have been deliberate? Either way, it didn't look good.

As I tried to wrap my brain around this, I waited for the workday to begin, too unnerved to sleep and for once grateful that my editor was hours ahead of me here in California. Finally, around 7:00 am, I placed the call.

"There seems to be a problem with how Dr. Heimlich is applying his data," the first of countless times I would say this exact phrase.

I explained. He listened in silence. We were both thinking the same thing - oh shit. What could this mean for Ellis & Associates, who also relied on this figure?

The editor agreed we couldn't move forward and gave me a few weeks more to dig around; weeks that turned into months -- six to be exact.

Having only a partial copy of Quan's study, and freaking out about the implications of what I thought I was seeing, I decided to call her. It was easy enough to find the hospitals number where she worked through information. Maybe Quan would tell me that Heimlich's use of her data was correct after all.

The message I left for her was the same as what I told my editor, "There seems to be a problem with how Dr. Heimlich is applying your data."

The message I left for Hazinski was the same: "There seems to be a problem with how Dr. Heimlich is applying his data."

And then I waited. And the phone calls started coming. And papers and documents and research started arriving. And then the bad dream began to take shape.

Part III, The Straw (Man) Argument

Thursday, May 4, 2017

Part I of "Drowning in Funworld" by Pamela Mills-Senn, the dramatic backstory of the landmark article that was our Rosetta Stone

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.

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Editors Note: In 1993, at the request of Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, the Institute of Medicine (a branch of the National Academy of Sciences) convened a special committee to investigate claims by Heimlich and Dr. Edward A. Patrick that the Heimlich maneuver was an effective treatment for reviving drowning victims. Committee members included leading experts in the field of emergency medicine. The committee's report found no medical basis to support using the Heimlich maneuver on drowning victims and that its use could be harmful. As for the claims by Heimlich and Patrick, both of whom presented their evidence to the committee:

(Drowning expert) Dr. Linda Quan, who made a presentation to the same committee, remembers the looks on the faces of neonatologists who heard Heimlich and Patrick describe the impossibility of ventilating through fluid, a feat doctors accomplished with newborn babies every day. Quan chuckles at the memory of Heimlich and Patricks desperate attempts to win over the nations sharpest medical minds by illustrating their theory with cartoons that violated elementary science. (Heimlich's Maneuver by Thomas Francis, Cleveland Scene, August 11, 2004)

Despite those findings, in 1995, Jeff Ellis & Associates, the leading private lifeguard training company, took a radical step. Ellis, which trains lifeguards for Disney, Six Flags, Coney Island, and hundreds of other waterparks and public pools, began teaching their lifeguards to perform the Heimlich maneuver on drowning victims and to do so before initiating CPR. In year 2000, Ellis abruptly reversed course shortly after the appearance of an article by freelance writer Pamela Mills-Senn. The Beacon invited Ms. Mills-Senn to tell the story behind her landmark article.

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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.

I woke up. It was two in the morning. I went into the next room, my office, and I looked at all the material spread out across the floor; research papers, interview notes, documents. I picked up one that was lying closest to where I was standing and then I saw it. I had looked at this particular research paper a million times over the last month. How could I have missed something this big? And then I knew. I would have to call my editor in the morning and tell him that I couldn't write the article. Not yet.

Go back about six weeks or so. My editor at Funworld magazine, the trade pub for the amusement and waterpark industry, had asked me to write an article on the use of the Heimlich maneuver, rather than CPR, as a first response to resuscitating a drowning or near-drowning victim. In 1995, Ellis & Associates, an aquatic safety and training consulting company based in Houston, had adopted this protocol; a huge coup for Dr. Henry J. Heimlich who had met with virtually total and unanimous resistance from the medical and scientific community to using his maneuver for this purpose.

Ellis & Associates were at the time, and still are, industry leaders. They provide lifeguard training to probably most of the waterparks across the country and to the major amusement attractions that have water features. They were, and may still be, very important to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) the powerful trade association for this industry and also the publisher of Funworld.

By that time, around 1999, I had been freelancing for six years. I picked Funworld up as a client about a year or so earlier and had become a fairly regular contributor. I especially liked the editor. He was experienced, had a good sense of humor, was unflappable and fair, and was keen on providing balanced and unbiased content not always easy to do when it comes to trade pubs. Editors for these magazines typically labor under a lot of top-down and sales-generated constraints, the primary one being not to run articles that are going to piss off key industry members and advertisers.

So when the editor made this assignment, to look at the innovative way Ellis & Associates were handling drowning resuscitation, we both figured this would be the typical sort of feel good article along the lines of, "Hey, this is what they're doing and why -- and isn't this cool?"

We had no idea what we had gotten ourselves into.

Most articles have a turnaround time of about a month or so. You find your sources, make your calls, interview (typically for the Funworld word count, which ran about 2,500 words, this meant no more than five-to-eight interviews) and then allow a couple of days to write the thing up, more if you want to build in procrastination time. By the night of that dream, I had run out of time and had to start writing the article the next morning. The only problem was that as I went to organize my materials, I had a very uneasy sense that something was wrong.

My first interview had been Dr. Heimlich, whom I found unexpectedly approachable. He laid out his argument for the maneuver so logically and compellingly that I couldnt see why there was an argument against its use for drowning resuscitation at all. My next call was to Mary Fran Hazinski RN. She was with the American Heart Association and had at the time, over 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse. She was also the immediate past chair of the Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee of the AHA.

The AHA unequivocally does not endorse the maneuver for drowning. It never has and undoubtedly never will. And they have said this over and over again, and explained the reasons to laypeople, the media in particular, countless numbers of times, often to no avail. Hazinski was tired of talking with journalists whom she described as more interested in running sound bites that doing actual research. She was singularly unimpressed by me, especially since I came off as being a little too pro-Heimlich for her taste on the voice mail message I left her. She was even less receptive days later when she and I actually connected.

She was right; I was not entirely objective by the time I reached her. By then, I had spoken with Jeff Ellis, president of Ellis & Associates, about their exciting and life-saving protocol and between him and Heimlich, I had starting feeling pretty positively about what they were doing. In spite of trying to maintain some semblance of journalistic neutrality, Hazinski picked up on my bias.

Still, she agreed to mail me documents and research papers on the mechanisms of drowning and on drowning resuscitation conducted by acknowledged drowning experts. Heimlich and Ellis agreed to do the same. When the materials starting arriving I saw that both sides had sent me the exact same research (Although Heimlich also sent along several of his own studies, correspondence, and his chapter, "Scientific Facts Show Heimlich Maneuver Best Method For Drowning." Additionally, Heimlich sent only partial copies of the research studies highlighting certain sections or sentences whereas Hazinski had sent complete copies minus any highlighting).

How could two such diametrically opposed camps be working from the same stuff?

Part II: The Tides of Research Rising

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Cod Fishing: Did UK's Sun newspaper create a fake reporter? (Guest item by Dean Sterling Jones)

My Belfast buddy Dean Sterling Jones does tough original reporting at his blog, Shooting The Messenger.

Dean invited me to edit his latest item -- posted here today -- and to cross post it here.

I promptly and gratefully accepted both invitations -- PMH

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I recently blogged about a March 8, 2017 article published in the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid newspaper The Sun, “Who is Julian Assange, why does Pamela Anderson visit him in the Ecuadorian embassy and what is Wikileaks?” by Holly Christodoulou.

Her article falsely claimed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had allegedly sexually assaulted two men.

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On my request, The Sun corrected the article and added this note: “A previous version of this story said that Assange had sex with two men who later accused him of rape. In actual fact they were women. The story was corrected on 10th March.”

Shortly after the correction was published, the article was heavily revised and Christodoulou’s name replaced with the name “Eileen Weybridge.”

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It’s unclear why The Sun changed the byline.

It’s also unclear if Eileen Weybridge exists.

Last week I called The Sun’s personnel department and was told they have no records for anyone with that name.

Editors at the paper didn’t reply to my requests for an explanation, but I did get a reply from Dr. Tony Harcup, Journalism Studies lecturer at the University of Sheffield and author of the Oxford Dictionary of Journalism, which includes the following entry:

cod byline The use of a fictitious name for a byline, giving the impression that an item has been written by a member of staff…The use of cod bylines tends to be regarded as unethical because it misleads readers; it can also be awkward if a reader or potential source telephones the newsroom and asks for the fake reporter by name.

Here’s what Dr. Harcup wrote me:

There might sometimes be good reasons for a journalist not wanting their byline on something: they might feel the story will attract threats or abuse, for example, or they might not be happy with how the story has been edited or subbed after they submitted it.

Generally, I’d have thought that in such cases it would be more transparent just to leave out the byline rather than invent a name. However, in some ways, any byline may be only a rough guide to whoever has produced the finished product, and the publication itself is responsible for it whatever individual name is or isn’t attached.

In the hope of getting to the bottom of this mystery, I have an e-mail in to Holly Christodoulou, who, according to her Twitter account, appears to be alive and well and working at The Sun:

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And to Eileen and anyone who knows if she’s real or not, please get in touch!

Friday, April 21, 2017

YouTube sides with me in failed takedown attempt by medical group re: video clip of Dr. Salim Yusuf praising author/journalist Nina Teicholz

Via Top Cardiologist Blasts Nutrition Guidelines by veteran medical journalist Larry Husten PhD on his CardioBrief site, February 27, 2017:

One of the world’s top cardiologists says that many of the major nutrition guidelines have no good basis in science.

“I’m not a nutrition scientist and that may be an advantage because every week in the newspaper we read something is good for you and the same thing the next week is bad for you,” said Salim Yusuf, MD, DPhil,(McMaster University), at Cardiology Update 2017, a symposium presented by the European Society of Cardiology and the Zurich Heart House.

Yusuf presented evidence that many of the most significant and impactful nutrition recommendations regarding dietary fats, salt, carbohydrates, and even vegetables are not supported by evidence.

...Yusuf volunteered a strong endorsement for Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, who has been heavily criticized by the nutrition establishment for her defense of dietary fat. “She shook up the nutrition world but she got it right,” said Yusuf.

Zurich Heart House (ZHH) posted a YouTube video of Dr. Yusuf's 20-minute lecture which triggered a March 2 MedPage Today article by Crystal Phend* about some nutrition professionals throwing snit fits about it.

By then ZHH had taken down the video of the lecture from their YouTube site -- click here for their explanation of what happened -- but copies were popping up on other YouTube accounts.

I've reported about various attempts by credentialed professionals to censor Ms. Teicholz, so I downloaded a copy of Dr. Yusuf's lecture, edited out a clip in which Dr. Yusuf praises her work and posted it to my YouTube account.

Last month Zurich Heart House filed a copyright violation claim against me with YouTube which resulted in the clip being taken down.

I promptly responded with a counter-notification that the 50-second clip was protected under Fair Use laws.

On May 11, I received an e-mail (see below) from ZHH manager Regula Schneider asking me to cooperate with their takedown request and informing me that "We have not initiated legal steps."

Was that a legal saber being rattled? Who knows?

I didn't reply because if ZHH wished to properly contest my counter-notification, they should have done so via YouTube, not by contacting me directly.

In any event, apparently ZHH dropped whatever they were rattling because today YouTube found in my favor and the clip's online again.

* Ms. Phend failed to provide Dr. Yusuf the opportunity to respond to his critics, so I blogged a March 20 item in which journalism ethics experts commented on that aspect of her reporting.

Addendum (4/22/17): This is the second time I've prevailed in a YouTube copyright violation complaint. In 2014, Boise, ID, TV station KTVB tried to take down a 20-second clip I posted that came from a newscast in which a local firefighter stated that he had performed the Heimlich maneuver on a drowning victim. In my counter-claim I insisted the clip was protected under Fair Use laws. YouTube agreed with me.

Saturday, April 15, 2017

From the grave my father haunts "fanatical animal rights group" -- and would PCRM have shut down my father's experiments on beagles that produced the Heimlich maneuver?

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.

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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:

In both its mission statement and its IRS filings, the Washington, D.C.–based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) says it is "strongly opposed to unethical human research."

But the group is throwing a private Hollywood Art of Compassion bash Sunday night to hand out a major award named after Dr. Henry Heimlich, who has been condemned by mainstream medical organizations around the world for his 20-year ("malariotherapy") program of trying to cure cancer and AIDS by injecting people with malaria-infected blood.

...Bill Maher and Alec Baldwin, the two biggest names listed as Honorary Committee Members for this weekend's compassion party, declined through spokespeople to comment to the Weekly.

In 2002 the (World Health Organization) called malariotherapy "an example of clearly unscrupulous and opportune research." Five years later, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said: "It is scientifically unsound, and I think it would be ethically questionable ... and it does have the fundamental potential of killing you."

Now (Peter) Heimlich asks, "How can the PCRM reconcile all that criticism with its position against unethical research? Why won't my father or anyone at PCRM answer that question?"

..."I don't want to discuss the award, or my research," the 90-year-old Heimlich says today. "I don't think I'll be at the party. ... Please contact Dr. Barnard."

Neal Barnard founded PCRM in 1985, and still serves as president of the nonprofit organization, which has a $7.5 million annual budget and 35 paid staff. Barnard frequently appears on TV and radio as an advocate for animal rights in medical research.

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.

Friday, March 31, 2017

My attorney wins another New Jersey public records lawsuit: Judge rules “any person” can use OPRA

As Sidebar readers may recall, I was the plaintiff in a recent successful public records lawsuit in New Jersey filed by my attorney CJ Griffin.

CJ, who works at the Hackensack law firm Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, today won another court victory that provides citizens greater access to public records under New Jersey's Open Public Records Act (OPRA).

In response to my inquiry, below her photo is CJ's description of the case and a copy of the judge's order.

Today the Honorable Bonnie J. Mizdol, assignment judge in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Bergen County, New Jersey, ruled that OPRA does not contain a citizenship requirement. Instead, she ruled that “any person” can use OPRA. The case is Jeff Carter v. the Borough of Paramus. Mr. Carter told Paramus he was a citizen of NJ, but Paramus insisted that he must turn over his home address or else. When he refused to do so for privacy reasons, they denied his request and then completely ignored his additional requests. The judge ruled that OPRA’s statutory framework made it clear that “any person” can use OPRA because it says so about a dozen times. She also was concerned that a citizen-only requirement would lead to absurd results, such as requestors not being able to remain anonymous (as OPRA permits) and both in-state and out-of-state media not being able to use OPRA (since business entities are not “citizens” of New Jersey, but are “persons”.)

Judge Mizdol joins three other judges who have similarly ruled.

Judge Bonnie J. Mizdol (source)

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

UK primary school in Yorkshire will use anti-choking plunger on students -- should parents have been asked to provide consent? [UPDATED}

UPDATED: See my May 29, 2017 Sidebar item, UK crowdfunding effort to install anti-choking devices in Yorkshire schools derailed by government-initiated medical review.

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Should schools implement a medical treatment unapproved by mainstream medical authorities?

According to one school in northeast England, the answer is yes.

Should parents be informed and provided the opportunity to consent?

According to the same school, the answer is no.

This is a tangent to my item a few weeks ago about a crowdfunding campaign that raised "raised £2,218 to install (the LifeVac anti-choking device) into as many schools in the Hull & East Riding area as possible."

One area school has confirmed that they've incorporated the LifeVac into their first aid treatment protocol for choking emergencies.

Per this March 8 tweet:

It was posted by called Time to Train, which describes itself as "a family run business in Hull, East Yorkshire. In addition to providing professional first aid training, we also offer several health and safety courses."

I was interested in learning more, so I filed a FOIA request with Victoria Dock, a primary school in Hull.

I received a prompt reply from the school's business manager, Debbi Truran, who informed me that although there were no written records:

I can confirm that the school has been gifted a LifeVac by the company TimeToTrainHull. Part of the 'gift' was two training sessions to show staff how to use the LifeVac. One training session was for the support staff and the second training session was for the teaching staff. 18 members of support staff and 17 members of teaching staff took part in the training. The trainer used a LifeVac and Torso dummy to train the staff members. No charge was made for the training.

In subsequent Q&A e-mails, she informed me that the project had been arranged by Shaun Sykes of Time To Train who offered the free LifeVac and free training sessions to the school's head teacher, Antonia Saunders.

According to Time To Train's website, they charge charges hundreds of pounds for group first aid training sessions, so presumably the company's donation of the LifeVac to Victoria Dock and the accompanying free training sessions for 35 school employees reflects their dedication to the product.

In response to one of my questions, Ms. Truran stated that parents of Victoria Dock students had not been asked whether or not they consented to the LifeVac being used on their children.

Why should that be of interest?

First, because according to e-mails I received from British Red Cross, St John Ambulance UK, or the Yorkshire Ambulance Service NHS Trust, the LifeVac is not part of their recommended first aid guidelines.

And via the website of the Resuscitation Council UK, arguably the gold standard in first aid practices:

Second, by failing to loop in parents, the school may have violated their own Ethos code:

Third, for the same reason, the school may have violated the National Health Service's Consent To Treatment standards:

When I asked Ms. Truran on what basis Victoria Dock had agreed to include the LifeVac in medical treatments being provided to students, she made it clear the school had relied on the professional expertise of Time to Train.

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Since then I've sent a few e-mails with straightforward questions to Shaun Sykes at Time To Train Hull, the guy who arranged the gift and conducted the free training sessions, and copied Ms. Truran.

I haven't received a reply from him.