I. PCRM: "We oppose unethical human
experiments" (with exceptions)
II. PCRM promotes the Heimlich maneuver
for drowning rescue
III. "Malariotherapy for Dummies: A Brief Timeline
of the Heimlich Institute’s Horror Show" (Cincinnati
Beacon)
Addenda
1. My father
calls in PETA to shut down 1986 University of Florida Heimlich
maneuver experiments; researchers were subjected to bomb threats
and death threats.
Addenda
2. Heimlich
"malariotherapy" theories originated with a Nazi eugenicist.
Addenda
3. December
2008 letter from PCRM Director of Research Policy Dr. Hope Ferdowsian
protesting the use of primates for AIDS experiments.
Addenda
4. Previous
winners of PCRM's "HJ Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine":
Chris Toly (2005) & Randal Charlton (2007)
I. PCRM: "We oppose
unethical human experiments" (with exceptions)
Henry J. Heimlich MD: I
have a terrific responsibility not to come out with something
that will harm people.
Salt Lake City Weekly: (Dr. Henry) Heimlich
has postulated for decades that malaria-infected blood can arouse
the immuno-defenses of cancer, Lyme disease and HIV/AIDS sufferers.
The Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control
and World Health Organization have rejected the science outright.
Ethicists have called the testing a medical atrocity. Dr. Robert
Baratz, an internal medicine specialist and president of the
National Council Against Health Fraud, has likened malariotherapy
to Nazi-era medicine. He told the UCLA Bruin in 2003 that it
“has no basis in scientific fact,” and is "better
referred to as lunacy."
Cyndi Monahan of Rockaway NJ, who underwent
"malariotherapy": "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."
Chinese Medical Journal: Methods: Therapeutic acute vivax malaria
was induced and terminated after 10 fever episodes in 12 HIV-1-infected
subjects...Case 12 was a full-blown AIDS patient with complicated
ulcer of external genitalia, pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP,
clinical diagnosis) with dyspnea and needed oxygen inhalation.
ABC 20/20: In a study commissioned by Dr. Heimlich, eight
human subjects have already been injected with a form of malaria
in China in the 1990s, and he is now involved with a research
project involving AIDS patients in Ethiopia who are initially
left untreated for malaria with available medicines...But leading
AIDS researchers and medical ethicists say they are appalled.
"It is scientifically unsound, and I think it would be ethically
questionable," said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes
of Health, who has been seeking a cure for AIDS since it was
first identified in the 1980s. Dr. Fauci says there is no evidence,
even in countries where malaria is prevalent, that the "malariotherapy"
has any effect on AIDS. "And it does have the fundamental
potential of actually killing you," Dr. Fauci says. "It
can cause organ system damage; it can elevate your temperatures
to the point that it can do tissue damage to you."
Radar
Magazine:
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 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."
Neal D. Barnard
MD, President & Founder, Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine (PCRM), Washington DC, and self-described "rigorous opponent
of unethical research practices":
“Dr. Henry Heimlich’s
vision and incredible creativity are responsible for medical
advances that have saved tens of thousands of lives. He is the
embodiment of innovation, compassion, and getting the job done.
His work has inspired researchers and medical students to break
convention, think creatively, and focus on what counts: saving
lives.” (source)
Dr. Heimlich is certainly
one of the leading medical pioneers of our time....Dr. Heimlich
demonstrates that innovative thinking remains the best tool we
have in research and in healthcare generally, and I always encourage
medical students and young physicians to follow his example.
(source)
Every couple
of years, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)
presents the "Henry
J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine." A founding board member
of this high-profile Washington DC nonprofit, my father is arguably
the group's most famous medical name and PCRM frequently uses
him to promote their organization. For numerous examples, type
"Heimlich" into the search box on PCRM's
website.
The photo
above shows my father at a 2007
PCRM fundraising gala, presenting the Heimlich award with actor Lisa
Edelstein, who plays the part of a physician on the popular FOX-TV
hospital drama, "House" (source).
Other PCRM-affiliated celebrities and politicians
include Bill
Maher, Marilu Henner, Moby, Rep. Jim McDermott, Rep. Pete Stark,
Sen. Ron Wyden, and
dozens more.
Back row: Persia White, Moby,
Shanni Rigsbee, Marilu Henner and her husband Michael Brown,
Lisa Edelstein; Front row, Alec Baldwin, Neal Barnard MD from
"The Art of Compassion," PCRM fundraising gala,
April 14, 2007 (source)
The opening sequence in this
ABC 20/20 segment features actor Alec Baldwin introducing at
the 2007 PCRM "Heimlich Award" fundraising gala.
From a 2005 PCRM press release,
National
Medical Group Creates Award In Honor of Henry Heimlich:
“Dr. Henry Heimlich’s
vision and incredible creativity are responsible for medical
advances that have saved tens of thousands of lives,” said
PCRM president and founder Neal Barnard, M.D. “He is the
embodiment of innovation, compassion, and getting the job done.
His work has inspired researchers and medical students to break
convention, think creatively, and focus on what counts: saving
lives.”
Neal D. Barnard
MD
Here's the problem. Dr. Barnard's
glowing description is contradicted by the published guidelines
of his own organization. From the organization's statement of
principles, What
is PCRM?:
We oppose unethical human
experiments.
Also from Ethics
in Human Research, posted on PCRM's website:
PCRM advocates higher ethical
standards in conducting human research and providing access to
medical treatment.
From Neal
Barnard Advocates for Ethical Medicine, Research by Rosanne
Skirble, Voice of America News, March 2, 2009:
If humans were being abused
in research or if animals were being used when alternatives could
be used instead, (we) deal with those.
How can an organization claim
to promote ethical human subjects research, meanwhile be closely
affiliated with a notorious medical scoffllaw who for 25 years
has been overseeing and funding experiments in which American
and Third World patients suffering from AIDS, cancer, and Lyme
Disease have been deliberately infected with malaria in so-called
research which a World Health Organization report called "atrocities":
The recent guidelines for
regulation of human experimentation must be seen in the backdrop
of atrocities committed by doctors upon vulnerable subjects within
recent memory. The highly controversial trials of induction of
malaria in HIV patients (Heimlich et al 1997) and the trovafloxacin
trial in Nigeria (Boseley 2001, Stephens 2000 & 2001) are
two recent examples. Few also recognize that Radovan Kradzik,
who stands accused of master minding the worst possible mass
genocide in Europe in the post second world war era, is also
a psychiatrist by training. Thus the regulation of human subjects
research would require more than an appeal to basic human good
and abject faith in the beneficence of the medical profession.
Concerns within the international sponsors of research on standards
of ethical review and conduct of research Since many of the HIV
trials in question involved US funding agencies, these recent
controversies led to a major review of the regulatory process
for ethical review and guidelines for the conduct of biomedical
research in developing countries by the US. (source)
Meanwhile, Dr. Barnard writes
high-minded articles like
Human
Experiments: Redrawing Ethical Boundaries and Human
Experimentation: An Introduction to the Ethical Issues which decry unsupervised experiments
by ambitious, unethical medical professionals who ignore laws
designed to protect vulnerable human subjects, like the Nazi
doctors:
When psychiatrist Robert Jay
Lifton studied the experimenters responsible for the most hideous
Nazi crimes, he found that, while some were clearly sadists,
most were ordinary people in circumstances that permitted the
full unfolding of human curiosity, propelling human aggression
into the machinery of death.
-----
Ethical issues in human research generally arise in relation
to population groups that are vulnerable to abuse. For example,
much of the ethically dubious research conducted in poor countries
would not occur were the level of medical care not so limited....As
we address the ethical issues of human experimentation, we often
find ourselves traversing complex ethical terrain.
When it comes to my father,
the ethical terrain isn't complex. Dr. Barnard and PCRM simply
turn a blind eye to his
notorious history of human subjects abuse and hand out an
award named after him. In exchange, they get whatever status
and fundraising benefits result from their relationship with
this famous "mad scientist," which was what my father
was called in this
1994 front page Los Angeles Times article which caught him
duping an earlier generation of presumably well-meaning, but
uninformed Hollywood celebrities.
Here's another glaring example.
In this
article he wrote about maintaining high standards to protect
the rights of vulnerable human subjects, Dr. Barnard cites the
following New England Journal of Medicine article by Drs. Peter
Lurie and Sidney Wolfe, who direct Public
Citizen's Health Research Group:
Lurie P, Wolfe SM. Unethical
trials of interventions to reduce perinatal transmission of the
human immunnodeficiency virus in developing countries. N Engl
J Med 1997:337:12:853.
Ironically, the Lurie-Wolfe
NEJM article cited by Dr. Barnard highlights the Heimlich "malariotherapy"
experiments as a prime example of abusive research:
Dr. Lurie included Dr. Heimlich's
malariotherapy studies in a September 1997 New England Journal
of Medicine article about "exploitive" medical procedures
in developing countries..."It is charlatanism of the highest
order," Dr. Lurie says of malariotherapy. (Cincinnati
Enquirer, February 16, 2003)
Although the footage didn't
make it into the 20/20 story, in his interview, Brian Ross repeatedly
asked Dr. Barnard if he considered my father's "malariotherapy"
experiments on AIDS patients to be ethical. Dr. Barnard repeatedly
dodged the question. It would be interesting to know Barnard's
on the record answer to that question.
It would also be interesting
to know if the other medical professionals on PCRM's
corporate board agree with Dr. Barnard's assessment that
"Dr. Heimlich is certainly one of the leading medical pioneers
of our time" (source)
and if they support the Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy"
experiments and the use of Heimlich maneuver on drowning victims.
Name links lead to Quackwatch entries
Board of Directors
Neal
D. Barnard, M.D., President
Mark Sklar, M.D., Secretary
Russell Bunai, M.D., Director
Advisory Board
T.
Colin Campbell, Ph.D. Cornell University
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D. The Cleveland Clinic
Suzanne Havala Hobbs, Dr.PH., M.S., R.D. University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
Henry
J. Heimlich, M.D., Sc.D. The Heimlich Institute
Lawrence
Kushi, Sc.D. Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente
Virginia Messina, M.P.H., R.D. Nutrition Matters, Inc.
John
McDougall, M.D. McDougall Program, St. Helena Hospital
Milton Mills, M.D. Gilead Medical Group
Myriam Parham, R.D., L.D., C.D.E. East Pasco Medical Center
William Roberts, M.D. Baylor Cardiovascular Institute
Andrew
Weil, M.D. University of Arizona
It would also be interesting
to know if Dr. Barnard and his colleagues are concerned about
my father's close relationships with this
string of doctors who lost their licenses and went to prison
for excessive prescribing of narcotics, one of whom was Marilyn
Monroe's after-hours physician.
Finally, from one of Dr. Barnard's
ethics
articles:
As governmental bodies review
evidence of past abuses, the airing of buried secrets may improve
vigilance against future abuses.
The Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy"
experiments have already investigated by the US Centers for Disease
Control & Prevention and the US Food & Drug Administration
(source).
According to my father in this 2007 video, blood from the Africa
"malariotherapy" experiments has been analyzed in US
& German labs and further large-number experiments are under
consideration. Transporting HIV+ blood samples obtained in experments
that violate international human subject protection laws may
be of interest to oversight authorities. What are the names of
these labs?
Per this
2008 video by Justin Jeffre published by his blog, the Cincinnati
Beacon, my father says he is making plans to start "malariotherapy"
experiments in a new country. He's not kidding. Contact me for
names and other information.
Justin Jeffre:
I was wondering if you can tell me what the current status of
immunotherapy (malariotherapy) is?
Dr. Henry Heimlich: Uh, we just had an extensive meeting.
And it’s starting in a new country...we’re using it.
Yeah.
The sad truth is that my father
lost his way some time ago. Instead of exploiting him for the
purposes of boosting their organization, PCRM could promote higher
standards of ethical research by publicly demanding that oversight
agencies investigate the Heimlich Institute's parent corporation,
Deaconess Associations of Cincinnati, which has legal responsibility
and has funded the "malariotherapy" experiments. (Click here
for details.)
For exhaustive
documentation of the Heimlich "malariotherapy" atrocity
experiments, visit
the CIRCARE bioethics website.
II. PCRM promotes the Heimlich
maneuver for drowning rescue
For decades, every legitimate
first aid and water safety organization has warned that performing
the Heimlich maneuver on drowning vicitms is useless and potentially
deadly. These organizations include the National Academy of Sciences,
the American Heart Association, American Red Cross, the US Coast
Coard, the International Life Saving Federation, and others (source). When put into
practice, the treatment has been associated
with the deaths of dozens of kids. News reports reveal that
my father
published fabricated case reports and engaged in other wide-ranging
professional misconduct.
Nevertheless, Dr. Neal Barnard
and PCRM have been promoting the treatment since at least 1991
and continue to recommend it in the face of overwhelming opposition.
PCRM press release, November 30, 2000 (my emphasis):
Washington, D.C.—The
Heimlich Maneuver isn't just for choking victims, but will save
a drowning victim's life as well, says the Heimlich Institute.
Many Americans may remember the tragic incidents of two babies,
Jahzion Sebastian, 13 months, of Dayton, Kentucky, and Dezmen
Dean, 9 months, of Clermont County, Ohio, who coincidentally
fell in buckets of water in their homes on the same day in August
1998. Unfortunately, both mothers performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,
as recommended by 911 operators who were following American Heart
Association guidelines. Both children died. If the mothers
had used the Heimlich Maneuver to clear water from the lungs,
statistics show the children would probably have survived....
Here's Dr. Barnard's response
to Deadly
Medicine, a Philadelphia Weekly expose about the dangers
of the Heimlich maneuver on drowning victims and the dubious
evidence my father has used to promote the treatment:
Letters, September 22, 2004
I am not surprised to see
that my good friend and colleague Henry J. Heimlich, M.D., is
involved in medical controversy. Every scientific pioneer has
to weather plenty of adversity in bringing innovations forward,
and Dr. Heimlich is certainly one of the leading medical pioneers
of our time.
But I would like to encourage
those involved in these controversies to take seriously the medical
conditions we are facing. Dr. Heimlich had to push for 11 years
to win endorsement of the Heimlich maneuver for choking victims.
The rest, of course, is lifesaving history, with more than 60,000
people in the United States alone saved from choking to death.
Dr. Heimlich is right to point
out the value of using the Heimlich maneuver to clear water from
the lungs in near-drowning cases. Rather than waste minute after
agonizing minute in mouth-to-mouth resuscitation when the lungs
are filled with water, the maneuver clears the water out. Mouth-to-mouth
can then begin, but often victims begin breathing on their own
without it.
Dr. Heimlich demonstrates
that innovative thinking remains the best tool we have in research
and in healthcare generally, and I always encourage medical students
and young physicians to follow his example.
Neal D. Barnard, M.D.
President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Washington, D.C.
Here's Dr.
Barnard's letter to the editor of Cleveland Scene
in response to a cover story expose about dubious drowning rescue
case reports published by my father and his protege, Dr.
Edward A. Patrick:
I was surprised to see the
recent attack on my good friend Henry Heimlich ["Heimlich's
Maneuver," August 11], a man whose work has saved thousands
upon thousands of lives.
Dr. Heimlich has sought the
most direct and effective solutions to health problems. The elegantly
simple Heimlich maneuver swept aside the more complicated and
largely ineffective first-aid techniques that had gone before
it. And using the maneuver to clear water from the lungs in near-drowning
cases is sensible, quick, and life-saving.
Needless to say, all medical
pioneers have to swim against the current at many points, and
Dr. Heimlich has had the courage to do so. He pushed for 11 years
to win endorsement of the Heimlich maneuver for choking victims,
and because of his insistence, more than 60,000 people in the
United States alone have been saved from choking to death.
At 84, Dr. Heimlich is still
active in research and the practice of responsible medicine.
He shows that innovative thinking remains our best tool in revolutionizing
health care. I salute Dr. Heimlich and encourage young physicians
to follow his example.
Dr. Neal Barnard
President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Washington, D.C.
In the June 8, 2007 ABC 20/20
report by Brian Ross, emergency medicine expert Dr. Peter Rosen
(who chaired the 1993 Institute of Medicine committee that found
no merit to my father's claims) warned the dangers of the Heimlich
maneuver for drowning. In contrast, Dr. Barnard recommended the
treatment: "If I were pulled out of a swimming pool,
and I were pulseless and not breathing, I would be very appreciative
if somebody would take a couple of seconds and do a Heimlich
to get the water out of my lungs." But, as Brian Ross
explains in the segment, drowning victims have little if any
water in their lungs:
This presents another problem
for Dr. Barnard, a psychiatrist
by training on the faculty of George Washington University
who writes
pop books promoting veganism. Recall that in 2004 he sent
letters to the editors in response to critical articles about
the Heimlich maneuver for drowning rescue in the Philadelphia
Weekly and the Cleveland
Scene newspapers. Click the links and you'll see that both
articles clearly explain that drowning victims have little
or no water in the lungs. Therefore, when he was interviewed
by Brian Ross three years later, Dr. Barnard provided medical
information that he knew to be false.
To summarize, since 1991,
Dr. Barnard and his organization have recommended a useless,
potentially deadly medical treatment as a courtesy to my father
so he will lend his famous name to boost their public relations
and fundraising opportunities. What if more kids are brain-damaged
or die as a result? In what universe does this depraved trade-off
qualify as "responsible medicine"?
Also see: The
Physicians Committee's 'Heimlich Problem.'
Addenda 1. My father called
in PETA to shut down 1986 University of Florida Heimlich maneuver
experiments; researchers were subjected to bomb threats and death
threats
From PCRM's Good
Medicine, Summer 2005:
Dr. Heimlich’s work with
PCRM began in the late 1980s when he spoke out against the cruel
dog-drowning experiments some had proposed for testing the Heimlich
maneuver.
From Heimlich's
Maneuver by Thomas Francis, Cleveland Scene, August 27,
2004:
Once every six years, the
American Heart Association convenes leading researchers to consider
how advances in science can serve the many health concerns under
its purview. By 1985, Heimlich had enough influence to land a
seat on the association's Special Situations Committee. The stakes
were high. If Heimlich succeeded in convincing the panel that
his maneuver worked for drownings, lifeguards the world around
would adopt his technique at beaches and pools....What he lacked
in scientific evidence, Heimlich made up for in hubris. Transcripts
from the meetings show Heimlich battling with University of Florida
researcher Dr. Jerome Modell, one of the world's foremost authorities
on drowning. Modell was backed by thorough, objective research...(Upon)
leaving the conference, Modell was determined to resolve the
debate objectively. He and a colleague, Dr. Richard Melker, received
funding to study the maneuver on dogs.
"Dr. Heimlich called
me and volunteered to help me," recalls Modell. But that
collegial attitude didn't last. Before Modell's study began,
Heimlich held a press conference. He held a cocker spaniel for
television cameras, dunking its head into an aquarium to demonstrate
the cruelty of Modell's study. Heimlich condemned the drowning
of dogs to prove what was, to him, self-evident: that the Heimlich
maneuver worked.
He also notified People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals and sent a letter to the University
of Florida newspaper. The effect was a campus seething with protesters,
the most avid of whom called in bomb threats to Modell's lab
and death threats to his home. It remains a chilling memory for
the doctor. " I don't want to get into the details of that,"
he says. " I don't want to start another war." Modell
dropped the study.
In a match between the two
schools of science, Heimlich brought an extra weapon - - politics,
the emotional kind. "The reason that we were willing to
do it in the first place was to pacify Dr. Heimlich," says
Modell. "And then he prevented it from happening."
After the AHA conference,
Dr. Jerome Modell planned to conduct an experiment on animals
to decide once and for all if the Heimlich maneuver worked on
drowning victims. But Henry Heimlich incited protests from animal-rights
activists — which is ironic given that he had conducted
experiments on dogs just a decade earlier — according to
Modell, a professor emeritus at the University of Florida's Department
of Anesthesiology, who scrapped the project after receiving multiple
death threats.
From Fighting
For Air: Drowning and the Heimlich Maneuver by Todd Spivak,
Houston Press, October 11, 2007
Modell says he hired a sheriff's
deputy to stay at his family's farm 24 hours a day for a week
as protection. "They threatened to cut the tails out of
our horses and kill them," he says (while acknowledging
this was a somewhat strange position for ­animal-rights activists
to take).
From Heimlich
Glad Dog Tests Are Cancelled by Tony Pugh, Cincinnati
Enquirer, March 17, 1986:
"The University of Florida
and the American Heart Association were rendered a service by
the animal rights people," Heimlich said....In a letter
to university officials, Heimlich wrote, "Scientists engaged
in research are beholden to prevent unneceasary loss of life,
both human and animal To do otherwise is to jeopardise our right
and privilege to conduct research."
Addenda 2. Heimlich
"malariotherapy" theory originated with Nazi eugenicist
...Dr. Heimlich's
theory to use malaria to cure AIDS, he said, simply builds on
the work of (Julius Wagner-Jauregg) who won the Nobel Prize in
1927 for using malaria to treat syphilis. "There are some Nobel prizes they would like
to take back, and I believe that's one of them," said Dr.
Fauci. (ABC 20/20)
Julius Wagner-Jauregg
MD
The discovery that Julius
Wagner-Jauregg was a member of the Nazi party and backed Hitler’s
ideas about racial purity has shocked Austrians, who have named
schools, roads and hospitals after the respected former physician
and psychiatrist. (Austrians
stunned by Nobel prize-winner's Nazi ideology, Scotland on Sunday, January 24, 2004)