Outmaneuvered: How we busted the Heimlich
medical frauds
by Peter M. Heimlich (bio)
Please do not
understand me too quickly - Andre Gide
Perhaps the
most challenging question raised by my story
is one that confronts most people in one form
or another: When we become aware of wrongdoing
commited by a family member, how do we choose
to respond? - Peter
Better not to
begin. Once you begin, better to finish it.
(source)
In Spring 2002, my wife Karen and I began
researching the career of my father, Dr. Henry
J. Heimlich of Cincinnati, famous for the
"Heimlich maneuver" choking rescue method. To
our astonishment, we inadvertently uncovered a
wide-ranging, unseen 50-year history of fraud.
Our research revealed my father to be a
spectacular con man and serial liar, arguably
one of history's most successful - and
destructive - medical humbugs. Armed with
considerable charm, an instinct for public
relations, and fueled by a ravenous need for
attention and adulation, my father used the
media to pass himself off as a medical
genius/inventor and humanitarian, eventually
being crowned "America's most famous doctor" (The New Republic).
Contrary to his public image, my father
was an incompetent surgeon - fired for
misconduct from his last medical job in 1976 -
who appropriated
ideas
from other doctors and attached his
name to them. Facts indicate that he probably didn't
even invent what came to be known as "the
Heimlich maneuver." In my opinion, the only
thing my father ever invented was his own
mythology.
Nevertheless, because he
was a medical "brand name," for decades the media
- especially in Cincinnati where he was a local
celebrity - gave him endless opportunities to
relentlessly circulate a string of crackpot
medical treatments.
Perhaps
the most bizarre is "malariotherapy," a quack cure
for AIDS, cancer, and Lyme Disease that consists
of infecting patients with malaria. For decades
his nonprofit Heimlich Institute funded and
oversaw a series of illicit offshore experiments
on American and foreign nationals. This "research"
has denounced by medical experts and organizations
including the World Health Organization, the CDC,
and the FDA. Per the
CIRCARE bioethics organization, since 1997
the experiments have been conducted under the
aegis of Deaconess Associations, a Cincinnati
healthcare corporation that wholly owns the
Heimlich Institute.
Per this ABC Chicago I-Team report, since 2005,
the Heimlich Institute has been nothing but a
website, but still continues promotes the
Heimlich maneuver as a cure-all for drowning,
asthma, cystic fibrosis, even heart attacks. All
of these treatments have been thoroughly
discredited by medical experts as useless and
potentially lethal - even delusional.
For example, the use of the Heimlich maneuver to
resuscitate drowning victims has been warned against
as useless and potentially lethal by the National
Academy of Sciences, the American Heart Association,
the American Red Cross, the US Coast Guard and other
organizations. Nevertheless, Deaconess Associations'
Heimlich Institute continues to put the public at
risk by
promoting this and my father's other dangerous
medical recommendations.
As we came to understand, my father simply
dreamed up these claims, then promoted them in
journals and the popular media using evidence
that ranged from shabby to fraudulent. For
example, we researched a string of case reports
in which he claimed drowning victims had been
miraculously revived by the Heimlich maneuver.
They're all phony. The results?
Dozens of serious injuries and deaths,
including children.
We
also learned that my father had long been
considered an outcast within the medical
profession. Nevertheless, for decades the
popular press continued to portray him as a
medical icon and provided him with a media
platform to promote his unfounded, dangerous
claims.
I'd
never paid any attention to my father's work.
Then at age 48, as a result of our research I
came to realize something was deeply wrong with
his thinking, a condition that made him a danger
to others and to himself. Karen and I decided to
bring the facts to public attention in order to
expose the "poison ideas" circulated by my
father and his cronies, a
motley crew of hacks, quacks, and narco
doctors.
Beginning in 2002, we filed complaints with
medical oversight organizations. We quickly
learned that the medical profession doesn't
adequately police itself so we began contacting
reporters. Since 2003 our work has been the
basis for hundreds
of news stories.
Along
the way we encountered our share of challenges.
For
one thing, my family turned against me. As
critical news reports began appearing, my father
hid, refusing to defend his work to the medical
profession or to reporters. Instead, my brother
Phil and my sister Janet made personal attacks
against me in the press (which, per
this Cincinnati newspaper article,
resulted in me taking legal action). My father's
attorney employed a private detective to snoop
on me and a Cincinnati PR flak was hired to
trash me in news stories.
There were also some dodgy reporters. For
example, a political writer named Jason Zengerle
set out to write a smear article about me for
the New
Yorker magazine, but editor Amy
Davidson smelled a rat and spiked the story.
Later I learned why Zengerle, an editor at The New Republic,
targeted me. Click
here for the details.
Despite the bumps and bruises, Karen and I
persevered and accomplished much of what we set
out to do. We also ended up uncovering a number
of other jaw-dropping scams and scammers.
For
example there's my father's protege,
the late Dr. Edward A. Patrick, who
claimed to be the uncredited co-developer of the
Heimlich maneuver - except he called it "the
Patrick maneuver." An outlandish character who
sported an unkempt Elvis-style wig, for 30 years
Patrick worked in over 100 hospitals on seven
state medical licenses he obtained using bogus
credentials supplied by my father.
Then there's the
Save-A-Life Foundation, a high-profile,
politically-connected Chicago nonprofit that's
been the subject of dozens
of media exposes and
is now under investigation by the Illinois Attorney
General and the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC).
When we
started out, we knew what we'd uncovered was
important, but we never anticipated that our work
would be the subject of this ABC 20/20 expose
by Brian Ross, a documentary by the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (below), and would be reported by
scores of other media outlets.
Another surprise came in 2006. After we uncovered
that in
1985 my father had defrauded US first aid
organizations in order to convince
them to promote the Heimlich maneuver over other
choking rescue methods, the American Red Cross
"downgraded" the Heimlich maneuver, making it the
secondary treatment for choking. Click
here for a compilation of related media
reports.
There are still ongoing mysteries we intend to
solve, including an alleged $9 million payment to
the Heimlich Institute by gold mining companies to
fund the Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy"
experiments in Africa.
There's also this biggie:
Who really
invented the Heimlich maneuver?
As we continue to investigate this history, we
hope our experiences provide encouragement to
other rebels, whistleblowers, citizen journalists,
and - perhaps most importantly - anyone faced with
confronting misconduct committed by family
members.
Inquiries
are always welcome as is information re: the
subjects listed below. Click here
for our contact information. Anonymous e-mails may
be sent via Anonymouse.
Henry J. Heimlich MD
& family; Jane Heimlich & the Murrays;
Edward A. Patrick MD PhD & family; Heimlich
Institute at Xavier University & Deaconess
Hospital; "malariotherapy"; Carolyn Pence Siemers;
Michele Ashby; Victoria Wulsin MD, PhD; $9 million
from the African gold mining companies; Rotary
International; Ronald Sacher MD; Charles Pierce MD;
Victor Esch MD; Ron Watson, Terry Watkins, Denise
Schmidt RN, Billy Lindner, Natasha Stuckey, etc;
Jewish Hospital; Heimlich Valve & other
inventions named after my father; Gerson Carr MD;
Milton Uhley MD, Paul Winchell, Joanne Carson, other
California associates; Ryan Krebs; Kathy Mansoor:
Dan Gavriliu, Reversed Gastric Tube (RGT); James M.
Fattu MD, Harry Gibbons MD, Glen Griffin MD, Rustum
Roy PhD, other associates; Isaac Piha, Irene
Bogachus; Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF), Carol J.
Spizzirri, Rita Mullins; Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine (PCRM), Neal Barnard MD, John
J. Pippin MD; the Heimlich Group (NY); 1986
University of FL drowning study; 1982 Richard Day
study (Yale); Jason Zengerle, Claire Farel MD;
Robert Kraft, Phil Heimlich, Joe Dehner, Stan
Chesley, Jon Goodwin, other Cincinnati players;
narcotics, sexual misconduct, etc.