My father, Dr. Henry Heimlich,
has been living in Cincinnati since 1969. He introduced the maneuver
there in 1974 and is one of the Queen City's most famous residents.
A November 28, 2006 search of the Cincinnati Public Library news
index found 95 news articles for "Henry Heimlich" and
50 articles for "Heimlich maneuver," such as this
bended-knee 1999 Cincinnati Post profile.
In early 2006, the American
Red Cross replaced the Heimlich maneuver as the first treatment
for choking, the first major change in choking rescue in 20 years.
It will require re-training the public, new posters in restaurants,
etc. It's reasonable to assume Cincinnati media would jump on
the story, not only because of the hometown hero angle, but to
inform the public about the best way to save a choking victim.
After all, the information might save a life.
Is the story newsworthy? Dozens
of print and broadcast outlets around the country who have reported
the story think so, ranging from small local newspapers to
network news. Whenever one of these many stories has appeared,
I make it a point to e-mail a link to these and other Cincinnati
news professionals:
The Cincinnati Enquirer (Gannett)
- Tom Callinan, Editor;
medical reporter: Peggy
O'Farrell
The Cincinnati Post (Scripps) - Mike
Phillips, News Editor
The Cincinnati Business Courier (American City Business Journals)
- Andrea Tortora,
Managing Editor
WCPO-TV (ABC) - Bob Morford,
News Director
WLWT-TV (NBC) - Brennan
Donnellan, News Director
WKRC-TV (CBS) - Elbert Tucker,
News Director
WXIX-TV (FOX) - Steve Ackerman,
News Director
WVXU (PBS) - Maryanne Zeleznik
- News Director
WNKU (PBS) - Forrest Griffen
- Interim News Director
To date, none of these newspapers
or TV stations has reported the Red Cross update story. It's
been ignored by every daily newspaper, TV news station,
and PBS affiliate in the area.
Further, after publishing
two 2003 Sunday front page exposes on February
16 and March
16, the Cincinnati Enquirer shut down what was to be be a
series exposing my father's other frauds. Since then, dozens
of fraud stories about my father have been reported all over
the country and even around the world - Bucharest,
Romania, for example. Whenever one of those stories appears,
it's sent to all of the news professionals listed above. None
of the media outlets listed above has reported any of
those stories.
Meanwhile, Deaconess Associations
of Cincinnati, a $250 million/year hospital corporation, continues
to promote the Heimlich maneuver for drowning, asthma, and cystic
fibrosis, all bogus treatments which medical experts unanimously
agree could kill someone. Doesn't that sound like a newsworthy
local story?
Or how about this one? What
if the two leading
contenders in a US Congressional race participated in illegal
AIDS research in Africa and one of them is my brother Phil
Heimlich? Parts of the story have been reported elsewhere and
since 2003 the Cincinnati Enquirer has had possession of documents
indicating that the Heimlich Institute, wholly owned by Deaconess,
and my brother, longtime vice president of the Heimlich Institute,
received $9 million in funding from African gold mining companies
for the project, income which was never declared to the IRS.
Some might consider that story newsworthy, but all of the above
local news bosses have ignored it.
WCPO, Cincinnati's ABC affiliate,
would seem to be a likely outlet to report these stories. After
all, ABC 20/20 did a June 8, 2007 Heimlich report and
the ABC News Blotter did a July 18 follow-up. In Chicago, ABC
affiliate WLS did a recent multi-part investigative report about
my father and the Heimlich Institute. I-Team reporter Chuck Goudie
flew to Cincinnati and my father hid from him in this
November 17, 2006 broadcast. In smalltown Kirkland, Missouri,
local ABC
affiliate KTVO reported an outstanding two-part expose on
the Heimlich maneuver for drowning, focusing on an 18-year old
girl who died after the maneuver was performed on her.
WCPO won't even send a camera
crew across town. As it happens, several WCPO reporters have
told me they've tried to do Heimlich stories, but have always
been shot down. Coincidentally, my brother Phil
works for WCPO as an on-camera "legal analyst."
(The last job Phil had practicing law was as an assistant Hamilton
County prosecutor, a
job which ended in 1993, 14 years ago.)
So what accounts for the current
"hands off the Heimlichs" policy? Ask the news professionals
listed above.
MISCELLANY
On November 5, 2006, WCPO's
website posted a truncated version of that
day's Columbus Dispatch story about the Red Cross update.
WCPO didn't broadcast the story and their website version didn't
include the Dispatch story's information about my father defrauding
the American Heart Association. The item has since been deleted.
---
On February 23, 2007, Jack
Atherton, news anchor at WXIX Cincinnati reported an interview
with my father about the Heimlich chest valve, a surgical device
named after him. (To view, click
here, then click the link with the camera icon link for Success
Stories: Dr. Henry Heimlich.) Atherton's story failed to
mention the 2006 Red Cross update, however it did include a variety
of tall tales my father told Atherton, who unquestioningly reported
them. Here's one example:
Heimlich: In Vietnam, every
soldier carried a Heimlich chest drain valve attached to a sterile
tube in an envelope his pocket. If you were shot in the chest,
you didn't need a doctor or nurse. Your buddy could just take
this appartus put the chest tube into the chest through the bullet
hole....
After his story aired, Atherton
was informed that the notion that every soldier in Vietnam carried
a Heimlich valve and was trained to use the device to treat bullet
wounds was patently absurd. Atherton, a personal friend of my
brother who has given Phil wedding
and baby gifts, failed to correct this and other obvious
whoppers my father told him.
---
The first publication anywhere
to report the Red Cross update was this
August 3, 2006 politics item in the Cincinnati Beacon, a
popular internet magazine. The next Cincinnati news report was
this
November 2006 column by Ben Kaufman, media critic at Cincinnati's
CityBeat newsweekly - whose column criticized area news
outlets for ignoring the story. On November 25, 2006, the Cincinnati
Beacon again reported about Cincinnati media failing to report
the Red Cross story: News
Still Spreads, But Not in Cincinnati
---
In April 2007,
16 months after the news was announced, the Cincinnati Magazine
monthly reported the Red Cross story in this feature, A
New Maneuver
by Pamela Mills-Senn. Copies of the article were forwarded to
all of the above news contacts, all of whom continued to ignore
the story.
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