For over 25 years, my father, Dr. Henry Heimlich - who
has no training in immunology and who was fired from his last
hospital job in 1976, in part due to repeatedly fainting while
performing surgeries - has promoted a quack theory called "malariotherapy."
Over the years, he has claimed that AIDS, cancer, and Lyme disease
may be cured by deliberately infecting patients with malaria.
He
bases his claims
on a long-discredited theory advocated by an early 20th century
psychiatrist, Julius Wagner-Jauregg, who believed malaria cured
syphilis. (Awarded the Nobel Prize in 1927, Wagner-Jauregg later
became a Nazi eugenecist "who advocated the forced sterilization
for people regarded as genetically impure." The
Scotsman, January 25, 2004.)
Since at least
1988, my father and the nonprofit Heimlich Institute (HI) have
been organizing and funding unsupervised, clandestine "malariotherapy"
experiments on US citizens and foreign nationals in Mexico, Panama,
China, and, according to recent reports, Ethiopia and Gabon.
Here's how
two Lyme disease patients from New Jersey described the treatment:
Monahan recently recalled
the experiments as "exciting (and) very clandestine, like
a drug deal. We flew down there and went to this hotel. This
doctor came to our room and opened a black valise with these
little vials of blood. He had (me) lie down on the bed and he
injected (me) with the blood. And (I) went back to the States
like on the next flight and pretty soon (I) broke out with malaria."
(Heimlich's
Audacious Maneuver, Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1994)
"Within two days I started
to get fevers as high as 106 degrees"...After Monahan's
return from Mexico City, life consisted of hours of fever followed
by chills - and intense pain. "My lower back felt like a
truck slammed into it and I found that a malaria headache is
the most excruciating pain you can imagine." Her New Jersey
doctor allowed the malaria to persist untreated for five weeks.
During that time she logged 130 "fever hours," when
her temperature exceeded 101 degrees. She vomited constantly,
lost 40 lb. and required intravenous fluids to compensate for
dehydration. "We went until my body couldn't take it anymore,"
she recalled, "and then I took the antimalarial drug..."I'm going back
for another treatment," she says. "Dr. Heimlich told
me I may have to do it again. He's made all the arrangements
with the doctors in Panama." - Cyndi Monahan (Heimlich's
Maneuver? American Health, June 1991)
(Nanci) Modiano went to Mexico
City with her husband last November. She then endured 35 days
of spiking fevers that reached 108 degrees, kept alive by 24-hour
nursing by family members in New Jersey. "I was scared I
would go into a coma, the fevers were so high," she says.
But she couldn't go to a hospital to have her malaria treated,
because that would lower the fevers she thought would help her.
(Some
Lyme Patients Turn to Risky "Remedies," Boston
Globe, August 12, 1991)
Experts have compared the Heimlich Institute's
"research"
to Nazi concentration camp atrocity experiments and to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis
trials. The work has been criticized or denounced by the Centers
for Disease Control, the Food & Drug Administration, the
World Health Organization, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National
Institutes of Health, Dr. Peter Lurie of Public Citizen, the
National Council Against Health Fraud, and many others. (For
thorough documentation, see the CIRCARE
bioethics website.)
Such concern
is enhanced by the Heimlich
Institute's history of ignoring requests for information and
data. When asked to respond to criticism, my father simply denies
everything and makes absurd claims:
Heimlich, contacted yesterday
at his home in Cincinnati, said that describing his work as south-of-the-border
research…is despicable." He said cancer research regulations
in Mexico were more stringent than those in the United States.
(Heimlich
Uses Malaria to Treat Cancer, Philadelphia Daily News February
29, 1988)
In Spring
2003, the HI's "malariotherapy"
experiments in China were widely exposed in the media, including separate bylined
reports in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, and
a front page expose in the Cincinnati Enquirer. Meanwhile, the
HI has proceeded with similar clandestine experiments in Africa.
Thomas Francis's November
2005 Radar Magazine article
describes that project:
Mekbib Wondewossen
is an Ethiopian immigrant who makes his living renting out cars
in the San Francisco area, but in his spare time he works for
Dr. Heimlich, doing everything from "recruiting the patients
to working with the doctors here and there and everywhere,"
Wondewossen says. The two countries he names are Ethiopia and
the small equatorial nation of Gabon, on Africa's west coast.
"The
Heimlich Institute is part of the work there - the main people,
actually, in the research," Wondewossen says. "They're
the ones who consult with us on everything. They tell us what
to do."
Wondewossen
says that the project does not involve syringes full of malaria
parasites. "We never induce the malaria," he says. "We go to an epidemic area where there is
a lot of malaria, and then we look for patients that have HIV
too. We find commercial sex workers or people who play around
in that area." Such people are high-risk for HIV, and numerous
studies show the virus makes its victims more vulnerable to malaria.
A key to containing
malaria is speedy treatment. In the most resource-poor areas,
clinicians who lack the equipment necessary for diagnosing malaria
will engage in presumptive treatment at the first signs of fever.
This, says Wondewossen, runs contrary to Heimlich's interests.
What physicians in Africa usually do "is terminate the malaria
quickly when someone gets sick," he says. "But now
we ask them to prolong it, and when we ask them to do that, the
difference is very, very big."...Wondewossen say that the researchers
involved in the study are not doctors. He refuses to name members
of the research team, because he says it would get them into
trouble with the local authorities. "The government over
there is a bad government," he says. "They can make
you disappear."
Wondewossen
won't reveal the source of funding for this malariotherapy research.
"There are private funders," he says. But as to their
identity?"I can't tell you that, because that's the deal
we make with them, you know?" He scoffs at the question
of whether his team got approval to conduct this research from
a local ethics review board. Bribery on that scale, he says,
is much too expensive: "If you want the government to get
involved there, you have to give them a few million - and then
they don't care what you do."
These unusual
research methods are conducted under the auspices of a $250 million/year
Cincinnati hospital and health services corporation, Deaconess
Associations. As proudly announced in the organization's newsletter, the Heimlich Institute
corporation is wholly
owned
by Deaconess:
In June (1998),
The Heimlich Institute became a member of Deaconess Associations
Inc. Deaconess will assume responsibility for advancing and promoting
the mission and vision of The Heimlich Institute in perpetuity.
From Deaconess's
home page:
The world
reknowned (sic)
Heimlich Institute is an important research arm of DAI, whose
efforts educate the public about effective lifesaving techniques.
Back to Table of Contents
Wulsin Phil
Heimlich
2. The Ohio
2nd "malariotherapy" congressional race
Is the Heimlich
Institute's Africa study "only" withholding treatment
from patients already suffering from malaria, as claimed by research
superviser/car rental agent Mekbib Wondewossen? A December 2004
report says otherwise:
|
2003 |
An American sponsor
commences infection with malaria among 12-13 HIV-positive East
African patients. |
The report
was written by Dr. Victoria Wells Wulsin, now running as a congressional
candidate in the Ohio 2nd District. That race is something of
a rematch. In 2006, Dr. Wulsin finished a close second behind
incumbent Rep. Jean Schmidt (R).
By a curious
twist of political fate, before dropping
out six
weeks before the March 4, 2008 primary, my brother Phil Heimlich
was a Republican challenger in the same race. For 12
years Phil
was a Cincinnati-area elected official until being voted out of office in November 2006. My brother made his
name as an ultra-conservative authoritarian, aligning himself
with the "pro-life movement" and public figures like
Dr. John Willke, founder of the Right to Life Committee. From
Phil
on the Sanctity of Life, posted
on his campaign website:
I believe
that every life is precious from conception to the grave....
Phil apparently
makes exceptions to this rule because for 20 years, he has been
vice president of the Heimlich Institute. Throughout that period,
the organization has arranged the various "malariotherapy"
atrocity experiments and fund raised on absurd claims of curing
AIDS, cancer, and Lyme Disease.
As for Dr.
Wulsin, she worked for my father in 2004, helping to develop
the Africa "malariotherapy" project. What's more, she
had hopes of running the organization. From Radar:
Wulsin had
been lured to the Heimlich Institute with the understanding that
she'd be groomed to take over its presidency from Heimlich himself.
The previous
year, the HI's experiments in China had been exposed in separate
bylined articles in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times,
Reuters, and in this
February 16, 2003 Cincinnati Enquirer front page:
(Heimlich's)
experiments - which seek to destroy HIV, the AIDS-causing virus,
by inducing high malarial fevers - have been criticized by the
Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration
and condemned by other health professionals and human rights
advocates as a medical "atrocity.''
The story appeared in hundreds
of news outlets all over the world. When asked why she went
to work on the "malariotherapy" project a year after
that media storm, Dr. Wulsin told one reporter she didn't see
them.
So why was Dr. Wulsin hired
by my father? Her
2003 CV lists impressive credentials in public health and
epidemiology, including dozens of international AIDS projects
and had spent considerable time in Africa. Here's a small selection
from her resume:
1989-95 Director of Epidemiology,
Cincinnati Health Department, Cincinnati, Ohio.
US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
1992-93 Supervisor, Preventive
Medicine Training Program.
1986-88 Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) Officer.
1992-95 Consultant in Epidemiology for the Applied Statistics
Training Institute.
1992-2001 Director and Instructor "Epidemiology for the
Non-Epidemiologist" Applied Statistics Training Inst.
1992-93 Supervisor, Preventive Medicine Training Program, Centers
for Disease Control & Prevention.
1995-1997 Technical Advisor
in AIDS and Child Survival, American Red Cross, seconded to USAID,
Nairobi, Kenya.
1995-1997 Regional HIV-AIDS
Advisor for East and Southern Africa, USAID.
1997-2001 Technical Advisor
in HIV/AIDS for Africa, United States Agency for International
Development.
But in 2004, apparently she
wasn't holding down a full-time job. From The
Heimlich Maneuvers, Cincinnati Magazine, December 2005:
In 2004, (Dr. Wulsin) was
approached by (Dr. Henry) Heimlich and the board about becoming
the director of the institute. Wulsin felt it would be a good
fit for her. "I was very interested in AIDS in Africa, and
that was one of the areas that the Heimlich Institute is interested
in," she says. But the salary she was offered ($75,000)
was low, even for someone accustomed to working in public health.
Moreover she felt the salary suggested that she wouldn't really
be given the reins. "I'm interested in being a decision-maker,
not just an adjunct to Hank," she says. "So I declined
the offer."
Instead, the board hired her
as a consultant. She says that she was asked to do two things:
First, to review the literature on malariotherapy as a treatment
for AIDS; second, to suggest alternatives to malariotherapy in
terms of how the institute could address the AIDS epidemic.
...At the end of three months,
Wulsin submitted her report, concluding that "the preponderance
of evidence indicates that neither malaria nor Immunotherapy
(i.e. malariotherapy) will cure HIV/AIDS."
"I wanted to present
(the report) to the board; I thought it was important that they
know," she says. She didn't get the chance. Wulsin says
that the day after she turned in her report, "Hank left
me a phone message and said 'We won't be needing your services.'
I called back and asked if we could at least talk. He said, 'You
can come in and clear out your things.'"
...During her work, Wulsin
was given data from a recent research project in East Africa.
While Heimlich and (Heimlich Institute Research Director Eric)
Spletzer received data from the project, Wulsin does not believe
that money from the Heimlich Institute was used to fund it. She
isn't comfortable discussing who sponsored the project, but according
to her report, "an American sponsor" initiated a discussion
with the institute about malariotherapy for East Africans, and
in 2003 began working with "12-13 HIV-positive patients."
Wulsin was shown follow-up
data on eight of these patients, and the report notes that "clinically,
the patients continue to do well." But, Wulsin says, she
was never shown written research protocols for the project. Without
seeing the protocols, she says, she "couldn't be impressed"
with the data that Spletzer and Heimlich showed her. "And
I said that in my report."
She's still frustrated with
the way that data was handled. "I have been a PhD level
scientist for 20 years, and I've never experienced that level
of difficulty in getting information," she says.
There are a variety of problems
with this version of events.
First, Dr. Wulsin was not
hired by The Heimlich Institute, a corporate subsidiary of Deaconess
Associations. (This
is easily verified by obtaining a release for her employment
records at Deaconess.) In
fact, she was paid $10,000/month from my father's personal account
at Johnson
Investment Counsel, Cincinnati. Her story of being fired
is also false. What really happened is that word leaked out that
Dr. Wulsin was working on the "malariotherapy" project
and she started getting calls from reporters. At first she gushed enthusiastically
about the benefits of "malariotherapy" and her plans
to run the Africa project. In short order, she realized the gravity
of her position, quickly packed her bags, and pulled together
a cover story.
Second, there's virtually
no serious literature about "malariotherapy," which
long ago was tossed on the scrap heap of medical quackery.
Third, there's no reason why
Dr. Wulsin's report would have displeased my father. Her confidential
report, dated December 2004 and optimistically titled Immunotherapy
and Beyond,
portrays "malariotherapy"
as viable and worthy of ongoing study.
Fourth, the Heimlich Institute
is a dubious organization with a history of outlandish misconduct
centering around an
astounding variety of frauds perpetrated by my father. As
mentioned, Dr. Wulsin was paid $10,000/month and she worked for
my father for three or four months, according to published reports.
For what purpose would my father, a medical flim-flam man with
a long history of ignoring medical experts), blow $30,000-40,000
on a "literature review" by an impressively-credentialed
public health expert like Dr. Wulsin?
Fifth, why is her alleged
"literature review" marked "confidential"?
Why, in 2006,
when Dr. Wulsin made her first run for Congress, did she refuse
to release a copy until she was publicly
pressured for months by the Cincinnati Beacon? Why did she then release
the report with an undated, appended "Executive
Summary" which falsely created the impression that it
was part of the original report and falsely suggested that her
original report was highly critical of the Heimlich experiments?
After reading Dr. Wulsin's
report and reviewing the facts, there's only one reasonable explanation
for these glaring inconsistencies: the December 2004 report Dr.
Wulsin wrote for my father is a marketing prospectus for "malariotherapy,"
intended for private fund raising. From the introduction, page
2:
Three months
ago I began a consultancy with the Heimlich Institute [HI] for
two reasons. First, I was to evaluate the viability of Malariotherapy
Therapy as a focus for HI and to recommend to HI’s Board
of Directors the requisite next steps in developing it as a life-enhancing
&/or life-prolonging intervention for persons living with
HIV/AIDS. Second, I would identify the comparative advantage
(“market niche”) of the Heimlich Institute in developing
Immunotherapy or any aspect of life-enhancing &/or life-prolonging
interventions.
One of Dr. Wulsin's "market niche"
strategies was to abandon the name "malariotherapy"
- which perhaps conjures up images of Caligari-like mad science
- and call it Immunotherapy. That change certainly does
seem to convey a more sanitized, clinical image for experiments
which a World
Health Organization report called "atrocities." But that WHO paper,
along with the vast body of published criticism of "malariotherapy"
and the Heimlich Institute's decades of illicit human experiments
is absent from Dr. Wulsin's report.
From page 2: "I reviewed
over two hundred articles, dating from 1984 to 2004." But
the bibliography
fails to includes any of the considerable bad news. Here's how
Dr. Wulsin covers the subject in the body of her report:
Not surprisingly, Immunotherapy
has received sporadic, but not inconsequential, criticism from
the medical establishment as well as others.
In the entire report, that
single sentence is the only nod to 20 years of widespread criticism
by federal agencies, internationally-recognized medical experts,
and hundreds of news reports. For comparison, see the CIRCARE
bioethics website, an exhaustive
compendium of thousands of pages which chronicle the Heimlich
Institute's "sporadic, but not inconsequential" decades
of human subjects abuses.
In a review of "over
two hundred articles," Dr. Wulsin certainly wouldn't have
overlooked The
History of Malariotherapy for Neurosyphilis: Modern Parallels,
published in 1992 by the prestigious Journal of the American
Medical Association. It's a review of the questionable treatment
protocols followed by Julius Wagner-Jauregg, whose early 20th
century "malariotherapy" experiments on syphilis patients
served as my father's inspiration. The JAMA article also cautions
modern AIDS researchers to avoid engaging in such questionable
methods. If Dr. Wulsin located this crucial article, it didn't
make its way into her bibliography.
Incidentally, Dr. Wulsin's
wasn't the Heimlich Institute's first confidential "malariotherapy"
fund raising prospectus. Here's
one from 1993. Contact names include "metabolic
therapist" Joanne Carson PhD (Johnny Carson's ex-wife)
and actors Bruce
Davison and Lisa Pelikan.
For more information, see this revealing October
30, 1994 Los Angeles Times front page article, Heimlich's
Audacious Maneuver by Pamela Warrick which includes:
"He is risking people's
lives and he is trading on the life-saving aura of his name to
get people to help him," said Dr. John Renner of the National
Council Against Health Fraud, which has been tracking the Heimlich
project. "After this, he won't go down in history for the
Heimlich maneuver. He'll go down in history as a bizarre, mad
scientist."
Finally, if Dr. Wulsin was fired because she concluded
that the AIDS experiments are a bad idea, why didn't she report
my father and his associates to oversight authorities in order
to protect at-risk African patients as required by various ethical
guidelines, including those
of the American Medical Association, of which she is a member? Reporter
Linda Vaccariello appears to have wondered about that, too, in
her article, The Heimlich Maneuvers:
In her report, Wulsin outlines
the ethical standards for studies of immunology: patients must
he informed and understand the risks and benefits; protocols
must be approved by local and donor instructional review boards;
the public should have access to the information; research protocols
should be designed in advance. "'Fishing expeditions' for
possible benefits are no longer warranted," the report chides.
It would seem to be a rebuke of the East Africa project - Third
World research on human subjects wrapped in a cloak of secrecy.
Robert S. Baratz MD PhD DDS
of the National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) had the
same reaction. NCAHF filed this
November 3, 2006 complaint against Dr. Wulsin's Ohio medical
license.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the
case is active and under investigation.
As for Dr.
Wulsin, according to The
Cincinnati Beacon,
she's now refusing to answer questions.
Back to Table of Contents
3. Who is
the "American sponsor"?
From Dr.
Wulsin's report:
(In year 2000)
an American sponsor initiate(d) discussions with the Heimlich
Institute regarding Immunotherapy ("malariotherapy")
for East Africans....
2003 - An
American sponsor commences infection with malaria among 12-13
HIV-positive East African patients.
From Cincinnati
Magazine, December 2005:
During her work, Wulsin was
given data from a recent research project in East Africa. While
(Henry) Heimlich and (the Heimlich Institute's Research Director
Eric) Spletzer received data from the project, Wulsin does not
believe that money from the Heimlich Institute was used to fund
it. She isn't comfortable discussing who sponsored the project,
but according to her report, "an American sponsor"
initiated a discussion with the institute about malariotherapy
for East Africans, and in 2003 began working with "12-13
HIV-positive patients." Wulsin was shown follow-up data
on eight of these patients, and the report notes that "clinically,
the patients continue to do well." But, Wulsin says, she
was never shown written research protocols for the project.
From Radar
Magazine, November 10-11, 2005
Wulsin's report, based on
information gathered from inside the Heimlich Institute, offers
the best glimpse into the size and scope of Heimlich's malaria
endeavors. It refers obliquely to "an American sponsor"
(Wulsin says she was never told the sponsor's identity) who in
2000 collaborated with the Heimlich Institute in conducting a
malariotherapy study in East Africa. In 2003, says the report,
this unnamed sponsor "commenc[ed] infection with malaria
among 12-13 HIV-positive East African patients."
As political analyst Stuart
Rothenberg points out, Dr. Wulsin is an accomplished medical
professional:
Wulsin, a physician with a specialty
in epidemiology, has an impressive resume including an M.D. from
Case Western and a doctorate in public health from Harvard. (Ohio
2: A Nightmare of a Congressional Race, The Rothenberg
Report, February 7, 2008)
It's questionable that someone
with Dr. Wulsin's considerable public health and research expertise
in both government and private sector work (see her 2003
CV) would spend 3+ months on such a controversial project
and not be aware of basic funding information. Considering that
Dr. Wulsin was being groomed to take over the Heimlich Institute,
her knowledge gap adds to the implausibility of her story. In
any event, Dr. Wulsin's story puts her in a bind. She has admitted
evaluating patient records, but has given no indication that
she ever saw (or asked to see) informed consent disclosures provided
by patients. If that's the case, she violated the most basic
guidelines of human subjects research, designed to protect vulnerable
patients from disreputable medical professionals.
Given Dr. Wulsin's information
gap and apparent inability to call , who else might be able to
supply the identity of the mysterious "American Sponsor"?
Dr.
Wulsin's report provides some suggestions:
My approach to resolving the
issues was approved by my two supervisors Dr. Henry J. Heimlich
and Mr. Thomas Powell.
2002 - Michele Ashby of The Denver Gold Group,
an international trade association of gold mining companies,
introduces Heimlich to twelve CEOs that operate in Africa and
other locations, during the Mining Investment Forum 2002 in Denver.
Back to Table of Contents
4. Tom Powell & the Rotary
connection
Why was Rotary
International executive Tom
Powell of Mason, OH - who until recently was a board member of both
Rotary
International's Africa AIDS Project and the Heimlich Institute - supervising Dr. Wulsin's
Africa "malariotherapy" report? Does he know the identity
of the American sponsor? Interested parties may certainly
ask him.
Other Rotarians
- and University of Cincinnati medical school faculty - are also
involved in the Heimlich experiments. Contact
me for
more information.
Back to Table of Contents
Michele Ashby
(now president of MINE
LLC, Denver)
5. A cheap
AIDS cure; worth its weight in gold?
The African
mining industry has been devastated by the AIDS pandemic. About
1/3 of mine workers suffer from HIV/AIDS. The promise of an inexpensive, drug-free
cure for the disease would certainly appear seductive to mining
corporations. Coincidentally that's exactly what the Heimlich
Institute was selling. From Nashville's CityPaper, October
21, 2004:
New forms
of low-cost cures will be discussed at this year's PanAfrica
Conference 2002, which is scheduled from Oct. 31-Nov. 2 at the
Millennium Maxwell House Hotel off MetroCenter Boulevard. One
of the keynote speakers is Dr. Henry Heimlich, inventor of the
Heimlich maneuver, who will talk about the progress of Malariotherapy,
which, if successful, would offer a cheap treatment for people
infected with the AIDS virus. The therapy involves infecting
patients with an easily curable string of malaria parasites,
which prime patients' immune system into battling other infections.
Ater three weeks the patient will be treated with an inexpensive
cure for the malaria parasite, and his immune system will continue
to battle HIV, according to Heimlich.
From Caring
World, Heimlich Institute newsletter, Spring
1999:
In May, Koos
Oosthuizen, M.D., primary and occupational health advisor to
Randfontein Estates Gold Mine, wrote to the (Heimlich) Institute
to suggest clinical trials in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dr.
Oosthuizen estimates more than 35 percent of the mine’s
workers are HIV-positive. With the participation of Dr. Oosthuizen
and N.F. Alberts, M.D., these trials could involve as many as
300 HIV/AIDS patients.
From Dr. Wulsin's
report:
Are the Africa
"malariotherapy" experiments ongoing? Yes, according
to The Choke Artist: Who
are the Mysterious Critics Hunting Henry Heimlich?, published in the April 23, 2007 issue of The New Republic.
Written by TNR senior editor Jason Zengerle, the 7000 word feature
includes this interview Zengerle conducted with my father:
(Dr. Heimlich)
opened his last binder, which was marked "confidential",
and pulled out two sheets of paper. "Now I will tell you
about the malariatherapy, or immunotherapy as we now call it,
in Africa." He began to read from one of the sheets. "The
Heimlich Institute has been collecting CD4 and viral load data
on patients who are HIV-positive and have become infected with
malaria. This data will provide support for the concept of using
malariatherapy for treating HIV infection." The study involved
the questionable practice of initially withholding treatment for malaria, so Heimlich would not tell
me where in Africa this new malariatherapy trial was being done.
"You never know how the politicians will react in these
countries," he explained...Still reading from the papers,
Heimlich boasted about the study's early results. Six of the
first seven HIV patients treated with malariatherapy, he claimed,
had experienced decreases in their viral loads. Now he was eagerly
anticipating results from the 42 other patients in the study.
That certainly
creates the impression that the experiments are in progress.
Unfortunately, the interview was conducted two years before TNR
published it. In fact, save for one paragraph, Zengerle's entire
article, is two years old, a fact which he and his editor, Franklin
Foer failed to divulge to readers.
That's only
one concern in a shopping list of what appear to be serious journalism
ethics violations in Zengerle's article including:
These issues
are raised here because Jason Zengerle lied and withheld information
in what may be an attempt to obscure issues related to the Heimlich
Institute's Africa "malariotherapy" experiments. It's
a three-year, somewhat circuitous history, so here I'll restrict
myself to key points, however I've shared the details with several
journalism ethics professors and several veteran reporters. All
agreed that the allegations are serious and that if proven to
be bona fide, would result in disciplinary action at any legitimate
publication.
As it happens,
I have thorough documentation supporting these and other allegations,
some of which is provided below. Additional information is available
to reporters and established bloggers by request.
Zengerle's
7000 word feature is no
longer available
on TNR's website, but may be found here. Here's how I'd summarize his version
of events. The first paragraph is my paraphrasing; the rest come
directly from his article:
In what should
have been his golden years, aging medical genius/inventor Dr.
Henry Heimlich finds himself the target of a mysterious internet
campaign. A series of pseudoanonymous online letters had been
sent to various organizations filled with "questionable,
even wild, assertions" about "America's most famous
doctor." The public letters were signed by "Bob Smith,"
"Holly Martins" and "David Ionescu."
Zengerle: "The octogenarian
Heimlich seemed an unlikely target of so many people's ire. He
had entered into the pantheon of medical history not for inventing
a disease-eradicating vaccine or for isolating the DNA of a killer
virus but, rather, for developing an anti-choking maneuver that
even a child could perform. And, yet, it is the very simplicity
of Heimlich's lifesaving technique that makes it so ingenious;
because anyone can perform the maneuver, anyone can save a life."
"...(Dr.)
Heimlich and his family were traumatized. 'It's an incredibly
painful and difficult thing for someone to go through in the
twilight of his life," Phil Heimlich, the eldest of the
doctor's four children, told me. (Dr.) Heimlich eventually decided
that he could no longer do nothing. He hired a lawyer and an
investigator to determine who was behind the allegations - or,
as Heimlich called them, 'the hate campaign.' It was an investigation
that would take months and frequently run into dead ends. For
a reason that Heimlich did not yet understand - a reason so shocking
that, when he did discover it, it would shake him to his core
- his mysterious critics had gone to great lengths to conceal
their identities, wielding their anonymity as a potent weapon
against his fame.
"In one
last desperate attempt, Heimlich's investigator conducted a massive
Internet search on the phone numbers, hoping to come up with
a match. It was a digital fishing expedition, but the investigator
got a bite. One of the phone numbers used by Heimlich's nemesis
had also been used in an Internet classified ad for a 27-inch
television and VCR. The seller was located in Portland, Oregon,
and the company he owned was called Global Fabric. The seller
identified himself as "Pete." The culprit, it turned
out, was not one of Heimlich's old medical opponents. Rather,
the person responsible for the "hate campaign" was
his onetime greatest fan: his son, Peter."
...(Peter)
has meticulously documented a number of instances of his father's
less than honorable behavior, including his promotion of the
Heimlich maneuver for drowning and his malariatherapy work. But
some of the most damning accusations Peter has leveled against
his father appear to be based on a combination of conjecture,
leaps of logic, and assumptions of almost epic bad faith....Portraying
himself as a real-life David doing battle with a Goliath-like
"celebrity doctor," Peter has developed a small but
loyal following among reporters, leading to a steady stream of
news stories about his father's various (real and alleged) misdeeds...."
If Zengerle's
melodramatic tale sounds like malarkey, it is. Further, it's
easily proved that Zengerle knew he was using a fabricated story
as the central premise of his article. So why did he publish
an article he knew to be false?
Before proceeding,
readers may wish to review the three internet letters characterized
as "the hate campaign." In fact, those letters are
thoroughly-documented requests sent to leaders of medical oversight
organizations to request that they investigate medical frauds
perpetrated by my father and his associates, frauds involving
their organizations. Note the dates:
10/2/02 "Bob
Smith" letter to UCLA Human Subjects Protection Office
4/03/03 "David
Ionescu" letter to International Society of Surgery et al
9/08/03 "Holly
Martins" letter to Institute of Medicine et al
As for Jason
Zengerle, my history with him began in Spring 2005. At that time,
a handful of hard-hitting exposes about my father's medical frauds
had made their way into print. I'd been quoted in a few, beginning
with the August 11, 2004 Cleveland Scene cover story, Heimlich's
Maneuver
by Thomas Francis.
Zengerle first
contacted me by e-mail about six months later. In a March 2, 2005 e-mail, he wrote that he'd been contracted
to write a profile of my father for The New Yorker and
wanted to speak with me. I replied the next day. As I explained
in my first e-mail to him, dated March
3, 2005,
our goal was to bring out information about my father's medical
frauds because he and others were promoting dangerous, discredited
medical theories that were putting people's lives at risk. In
his next e-mail, Zengerle wrote that his article was going to
be about my father's career since 1974, when the maneuver was
introduced. Here
are those e-mails.
In a phone
call shortly after our initial e-mail exchange and in several
subsequent conversations, Zengerle assured us he had no interest
or intention of focusing his story on us. He stated that we'd
be a minor part of his article and that I'd be mentioned only
in passing as my "father's biggest critic." That was fine with us. As we explained to him (and
to other reporters), we didn't want to be a part of the story.
Based on that understanding, we invited Zengerle to visit us
at our home near New Orleans from
April 19-21, 2005.
As has been widely reported,
my wife Karen and I began researching my father's career in Spring
2003. By the time Zengerle visited us, we'd already acquired
hundreds of documents from libraries, public records requests,
the internet, etc. During the three eight-hour days he spent
at our home, Zengerle spent most of the time poring through our
files and cherry-picking documents he wanted to copy. At the
end of each day, the three of us would drive to the Causeway
Office Dept and fire up the copy machines. In total, Zengerle
copied about 1000 pages of our work, mostly public documents,
but also some personal materials, including recent letters from
my father.
We spent those three days
talking, telling our story, going through our files and discussing
the documents he wanted to copy, having lunch together, and so
forth. Zengerle agreed that everything we said would be off the
record. On the third day, Karen and I did a 30 minute on-the-record,
taped interview. Zengerle said that was all he needed from us.
All of this reinforced his assurance that we'd be minor characters
in his article.
During 2005, Zengerle flew
around the country doing interviews and research. He told us
he went to Cincinnati at least three times and did a string of
lengthy interviews with my father. (By the way, over the past
four years, dozens of reporters have tried to interview my father,
but he agreed to speak to only one - Jason Zengerle - who was
granted carte blanche access.) Zengerle also told us that before
coming to Louisiana, he'd interviewed my brother, my father's
press agent Robert Kraft, and two of my father's attorneys, Chris
Finney and Joe Dehner. During that
year, we stayed in touch by phone and exchanged a few dozen e-mails.
If I turned up something newsworthy, I'd send it to him. Meanwhile,
he continued to solicit information from me.
In late 2005, Zengerle submitted
his article to the New Yorker. Then,m on November 10-11, Radar
published Thomas Francis's Outmaneuvered.
Shortly after that, The New Yorker refused to publish
Zengerle's article.
It's instructive to compare
Francis's Radar story
and Zengerle's TNR article.
They were prepared during the exact same time period and both
reporters had access to much of the same information. (Except
that my father refused to talk to Francis. In fact, as reported
in his article, when Francis approached him at a conference,
my father ran away!) Nevertheless, the two articles couldn't
be more different. After reading the Radar story and comparing
it to what Zengerle handed them, perhaps New Yorker editors Amy
Davidson and David Remnick had a similar reaction.
Over the next two years, I
stayed in casual contact with Zengerle, mostly to forward the dozens of print
and TV reports about the Heimlich medical frauds and related
matters which began appearing. Zengerle stayed in casual contact
as well after The New Yorker spiked his article. For example,
after that happened, Zengerle would write to tell me he how he
was shopping the article to other publications. Although he submitted
it to a string of other magazines, they all rejected it. Finally
TNR agreed to publish his Heimlich article in April 2007.
When I read it, I was astonished
to discover that, contrary to what he'd led Karen and me to believe,
half of it was about me and was filled with a variety of nonsense
which Zengerle knew to be false. In fact, it was essentially
a rewrite of a January 21, 2005 Cincinnati Business Courier
article, Family
Ties Unraveling, which peddled the same "mystery
stalker" line. In other words, after spending what must
have been thousands of dollars flying around the country doing
interviews, Zengerle's TNR article was a regurgitation of a 2-1/2
year old article published by a Cincinnati business weekly.
But the Business Courier
article did include this paragraph which is crucial to the issues
at hand:
Peter Heimlich said he hasn't
heard from Phil Heimlich since October 2001 and that he received
only a few letters from friends or family, including an "off-the-wall"
letter from his father that "said that my speaking out"
against the use of the maneuver for drowning "would result
in the death of children." Another letter, postmarked November
10, 2003, reads: "Dear Pete, I want you to know I am aware
you are the one writing letters and disseminating them and other
material. Others you have mentioned are also aware of this. All
my love, Dad."
Obviously, if I was telling
the truth and my father had indeed sent me those two letters,
that means he and my brother and their pals knew all along that
I was responsible for the internet complaint letters. In other
words, the identity of the "mystery stalker" was not
be such a mystery. It also means that if Zengerle was aware of
those letters, he would have known the entire spin of his article
was false.
Here's the November 10, 2003 letter. Here's
the "off the wall" letter, dated August 13, 2004. My
father sent me that one via FedEx two days after the August 11,
2004 publication of Heimlich's
Maneuver in Cleveland Scene, the first time I
spoke out in print about my father's medical frauds.
When Zengerle visited us in
April 2005, we allowed him to copy the 2003 letter and we let
him read the 2004 letter. He can certainly claim that's not true
untrue, but he can't pretend he was unaware of the letters. He
was in Cincinnati when the Business Courier article appeared
and cites it in his TNR article:
On a cold winter night in
Cincinnati in 2005, several hundred people gathered in a hotel
ballroom for the Cincinnati Business Courier's annual Health
Care Heroes awards banquet. Among the many honorees, the weekly
business publication had selected Henry Heimlich as its "Lifetime
Hero."