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? - PMH
Please do not understand
me too quickly - Andre
Gide
Better not to begin.
Once you begin, better to finish it. (source)
Outmaneuvered: How we busted the Heimlich
medical frauds
by Peter M. Heimlich (bio)
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, undoubtedly one of history's most prolific - and destructive
- medical humbugs.
For decades, he relentlessly
promoted a string of crackpot medical treatments that resulted
in serious injuries and deaths. Most bizarre is "malariotherapy"
- a quack cure that consists of infecting for AIDS, cancer, and
Lyme Disease patients with malaria. My father also promotes the
Heimlich maneuver as a cure-all for drowning, asthma, cystic
fibrosis, even heart attacks.
All these treatments have
been thoroughly discredited by medical experts and my father
has no legitimate evidence to support his ideas. He just made
them up.
Nevertheless, 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). Facts prove that, contrary to his
self-cultivated public image, he was an incompetent surgeon who
appropriated ideas from other doctors and attached his name to
them. The procedure known as "the Heimlich maneuver"
is probably no exception. It's likely that the only thing my
father ever invented was his own reputation.
At age 48 I came to realize
that my father was a danger to others and to himself. Since then
I've done what I could 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.
Family ties aside, how Henry
Heimlich maneuvered his way into medical history and made himself
a household word is a fascinating and disturbing tale that inevitably
leads to this puzzlebox question: Why do we believe what we believe?
(continued)