Through the 1980s, Dr. Gerson
C. Carr was the so-called "Research
Director" at the Heimlich Institute, then located on
the campus of Cincinnati's Xavier University. In the early 1970s,
Carr had been a surgical resident under my father at Jewish Hospital
in Cincinnati. Upon completion of his training, Carr practiced
medicine in the state of New Mexico.
Carr's career as a physician
came to an abrupt end in 1979, when he was convicted of 42 counts
of illegally obtaining and supplying narcotics to patients. Several
of his patients died of overdoses.
The case was covered
extensively in the Albuquerque press. According to press
reports, two years prior to his conviction, Carr had been investigated
by the New Mexico Board of Medical Examiners when one of his
patients, a 20-year-old female and known heroin addict, died
of an overdose of Dilaudid while in his care. Carr had previously
been warned by the Board not to prescribe for this patient. According
to an article in the Albuquerque Journal, a search warrant affidavit
stated that two more of Carr's patients died of overdoses while
in his care.
A lengthy article in July
12, 1979 Albuquerque Observer, Verdict Finds Carr Guilty,
describes the testimony of the boyfriend of Mary Gennari, an
addict patient of the future Heimlich Institute "Research
Director":
He said the second time he
saw Dr. Carr leading Mary, who looked very dazed, to the bed
and then commencing sexual relations with her.
According to a 1978 published
statement, Carr was unrepentant and portrayed himself
as a victim of the Drug Enforcement Agency and "Big Brother
bureaucracy." According to another news report, Carr's attorney
claimed that Carr was "acting from a sickness" and
should receive psychiatric care. In 1979, Carr was tried, convicted,
and sentenced to a one-to-five year sentence and his medical
license was revoked.
None of this deterred my father
from hiring Carr. On the contrary, the New Mexico Department
of Corrections stated that Carr served nine months at the Las
Lunas Correctional Facility from October 13, 1981-June 18, 1982,
at which time he was paroled to Cincinnati. My father assisted
with Carr's legal representation and hired him to run the Heimlich
Institute, then located at Xavier. At the time, my brother Phil
Heimlich told me he helped with Carr's parole.
Xavier's human resources department
has no record of Carr's employment, therefore he was probably
hired and paid in-house by the Heimlich Institute. Facts suggest
Xavier administration was never made aware of the facts in Carr's
criminal background. (Neither was I. At the time, my father told
me that Carr had been in jail because of "financial problems."
Thirty years later, my research into my father's career turned
up the information here.)
Carr held the job for almost
a decade, during which time he functioned as my father's right-hand
man and co-authored
several journal articles with him. Carr also worked on other
Heimlich projects, such as the Heimlich Micro-Trach, an oxygen-delivery
device. Carr also researched "malariotherapy," the
claim my father has been promoting since the early 1980s, that
people can be cured of cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS by
infecting them with malaria.
Now in Cleveland, Dr. Carr
and his tenure at the Heimlich Institute was featured in the
August 11, 2004 cover story in Cleveland Scene, Heimlich's
Maneuver:
It wasn't a strenuous job,
he confesses. "We had a lot of very long conversations,
and the bottom line is, we never really did anything scientific
together."
...Heimlich was impressed
by Carr's rhetorical flair. "He comes up with some things
that are so off the wall, like 'Let's cure people of cancer by
giving them malaria,'" says Carr. "You research it
a little bit, but [Heimlich] liked me because I could make it
sound logical."
In 1990, after 10 years at
the Heimlich Institute, Carr was fired, a fate he accepted obediently.
"There were some personal and family and sexual problems,"
says Carr, "and I was involved with that. I was guilty."
Carr still lives in Cleveland.
Contact information on request.
Ryan
Krebs MD, JD
Carr wasn't the only doctor
who trafficked in narcotics who was offered a top position at
the Heimlich Institute at Xavier. In 1983, a year after Carr
was installed there, my father testified as a character and alibi
witness for a close friend of my brother Phil, Ryan A. Krebs
MD, who was being tried in Federal Court in a high-profile, multi-state,
narcotics conspiracy trial. The scheme involved setting up inner-city
clinics engaging in mass prescription-writing for addicts. Click here
for some selected Detroit Free Press articles which describe
the incredibly sordid operation, Krebs's role, and a couple articles
about my father's courtroom testimony.
From an October
29, 1982 report:
A famous chest surgeon testified
Wednesday that Dr. Ryan Krebs, charged with conspiring with Nellie
Bell Kassim to operate a multimillion-dollar drug ring, was a
"marvelous young man" who he would still welcome to
accept a prestigious research post. Dr.
Henry Heimlich, inventor of the Heimlich maneuver credited with
saving the lives of many choking victims, testified in federal
court Thursday that Krebs, 29, is "like my son - he's absolutely
honest, and I can't conceive of him straying...I can't accept
any of the things that I've heard charged against him."
...Heimlich, 62, said he first met Krebs
10 years ago through Heimlich's son (Phil), who was a classmate
of Krebs' at Stanford University. Heimlich said he'd followed
Krebs' education and "was impressed with his intelligence
and decency." Heimlich said Krebs visited the Heimlich family
in Cincinnati between Dec. 11 and 13, 1981. Kassim had testified
earlier that she had seen Krebs writing prescriptions for her
in Detroit that weekend.
Heimlich said during that
weekend he offered Krebs a job as associate director of the Heimlich
Institute at Xavier University, "where he would have directed
research and medical work."
According to my
father's testimony, Krebs had a standing job offer:
I spoke to my son (Phil) or
asked him to get in touch with Ryan and asked Dr. Krebs to come
and head the direction of the - to act as Associate Director,
and head the direction and running of the research and medical
work at the Heimlick (sic) Institute...I would say that he would
be welcome to work at the Heimlick Institute at any time he should
so desire.
According to a Novermber 23,
1982 Free Press report, drug ring organizer Nellie Bell Kassim
did not share my father's opinion:
(She) depicted Krebs as an
initially naive young intern who, once he learned the scope of
the drug operation, wanted to be part of it and "make a
million dollars" as fast as possible.
Interestingly, in almost
100 pages of testimony, my father neglected to mention that
at the time, a convicted ex-physician narcotics trafficker, Gerson
Carr, was "Research Director" at the Heimlich Institute.
Presumably that fact would have interested the court.
Krebs was convicted
and sentenced to a five-year prison term and his
medical license was revoked by the Michigan state medical
board.
Since 1994, Krebs
has been a practicing attorney in Texas and advertises
himself as a medical doctor. He was a guest
at my brother Phil's 2001 wedding.
Why would my father provide
such ardent testimony on behalf of my brother's best friend?
And what was Phil doing in the early 1980s while Krebs was dealing
drugs? For some reason, those years are missing from the
resume posted on his campaign website:
Phil graduated with distinction
from Stanford University in 1975 and received his law degree
from the University of Virginia Law School in 1979. Phil served
as Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor from 1984-1993.
According to this
November 15, 2003 article in the Topeka (KS) Courier-Journal
about my brother's appearance at a local "Mayor's Prayer
Luncheon":
Heimlich's search culminated
in 1981 at a Bob's Big Boy restaurant in Michigan, where he said
he asked God to forgive him for his mistakes and accepted Christ
as his savior.
Click here for an audio in which Phil describes in detail
his religious epiphany in a hamburger restaurant. He says this
was in the Detroit suburb of Grosse Point. He says he was in
Michigan for a court case, one that supposedly involved a woman
he was living with. Phil doesn't say if he took the opportunity
to check in with Dr. Krebs who at the time was either working
at the drug mill or under arrest.
Milton H. Uhley MD
The late Milton H. Uhley MD
of Beverly Hills was a longtime colleague and personal friend
of my father. Dr. Uhley co-authored two papers on the Heimlich
maneuver, one with my father (The Heimlich Maneuver, Clinical
Symposia, 1979), the other with my father and Dr. Edward A. Patrick
(The
Heimlich Maneuver: Best technique for saving any choking victim's
life, Postgraduate Medicine, May 1990).
Dr. Uhley was also a well-known
Hollywood doctor to the stars, prescribing for the likes of Marilyn
Monroe, at whose home Uhley made after-midnight housecalls to
"sedate her," according
to this book.
A July
21, 1995 complaint by the California Medical Board against
Dr. Uhley describes allegations including gross negligence for
excessive narcotics prescribing (including 1890 Percocets for
one patient), prescribing to addicts, repeated negligent acts,
incompetence, and other charges. He surrendered
his California medical license on September 26th, 1996.
Uhley's April
5, 2000 obituary in Variety fails to include those facts,
but diplomatically states:
Uhley's patients from 1948
through 1995 included many people in the entertainment, art,
architecture and business communities.
It's not known if my father
ever offered Dr. Uhley a job at the Heimlich Institute.