Saint Louis University partners with doctor who conducted Heimlich Institute's "atrocity" experiments on Chinese AIDS patients

Updated February 16, 2019

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Funded by the National Institutes of Health, Saint Louis University partners with doctor who conducted Heimlich Institute's "atrocity" experiments on Chinese AIDS patients -- which were partly funded by NIH grants

Documents, media reports, and information compiled by Peter M. Heimlich

I. Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy" experiments in the 1990s, conducted by Dr. Chen Xiao Ping on Chinese AIDS patients, were partly funded by two NIH grants awarded to UCLA

Via Scientists linked to Heimlich investigated - Experiment infects AIDS patients in China with malaria By Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer, February 16, 2003

Two prominent Los Angeles AIDS researchers are being investigated for taking part in a controversial medical experiment with Cincinnati physician Henry Heimlich to infect AIDS patients in China with malaria.
A medical oversight board at the University of California Los Angeles wants to know whether doctors John Fahey and Najib Aziz violated university policies that regulate tests on humans.

The investigation once again raises questions about Dr. Heimlich's work at Cincinnati's nonprofit Heimlich Institute, which is partnered with Deaconess Hospital.

...His 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.''
..."I greatly appreciated all of the data you shared with us on this visit," Dr. Fahey wrote to Chen Xiao Ping, the doctor overseeing the experiments for Dr. Heimlich in China. "I want to assure you that we regard this as confidential information. My colleagues and I will gladly help with the analysis but not share it with others. You should report your result directly to Dr. Heimlich."
Via Heimlich Maneuvers into AIDS Therapy by CNN-Reuters, April 14, 2003

"If Heimlich is really doing this, he should be put in jail," said Mark Harrington, executive director of Treatment Action Group, an AIDS research advocacy organization.

He and other AIDS experts question the ethics of subjecting already ill people to another deadly disease, possibly without the informed consent disclosures required in this country.

From an August 6, 1997 from UCLA's John L. Fahey to my father identifying NIH grants used to fund the "malariotherapy" experiments in China:

We would appreciate an acknowledgment and credit to the support provided by NIH grants TW 00003 and AI 36086.

Click here for more media reports from 2003 (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, etc.)

Click here for an exhaustive collection of related documents and information via CIRCARE bioethics website.

II. Saint Louis University/Chen partnership funded by $566,640 NIH grant and matching funds from Chinese government

Why is Saint Louis University partnering with the doctor who ran the Heimlich Institute's AIDS "atrocity" experiments? Here's the letter I sent today to the school's president by Peter M. Heimlich, The Sidebar (my blog), June 20, 2013

Click here to download a pdf consisting of a 602-page file documenting the "malariotherapy" experiments in China which I provided in my letter to SLU president Lawrence Biondi SJ. My wife Karen and I obtained the documents from the Henry J Heimlich Archival Collection at the University of Cincinnati medical library.

Saint Louis University's medical research veep defends partnership with doctor who conducted medical "atrocity" on Chinese prisoners with AIDS, The Sidebar, August 15, 2013

Saint Louis University defends Chinese malaria research linked to discredited AIDS study by Alan Scher Zagier, Associated Press, August 21, 2013
Saint Louis University is vigorously defending a research partnership with a Chinese scientist whose work on a study that intentionally infected AIDS patients with malaria was roundly condemned by public health experts.

..."These experiments would never be permitted in the U.S. and other countries because they violate laws protecting the rights of humans used in medical research," (Peter Heimlich) said, referring to a 2003 internal inquiry by the University of California-Los Angeles after one of its scientists was linked to Heimlich's work abroad. "When I wrote to Father Biondi, I assumed SLU was unaware of Dr. Chen's malariotherapy history and that the school would be concerned. When I received Dr. Tait's letter, I was surprised to learn that the university had no interest."

University spokeswoman Nancy Solomon declined an Associated Press request to interview Tait and the two university researchers who oversee its global health research center, a pair of former Pfizer Inc. drug discovery scientists. Both Chen and the Chinese research center — the equivalent of the National Science Foundation in this country - did not immediately respond to interview requests Wednesday.
St. Louis University Under Fire for Work with Doctor Who Infected AIDS Patients with Malaria by Sam Levin, Riverfront Times, September 9, 2013

With specific citations, (Peter) Heimlich writes in an e-mail to Daily RFT:
The "malariotherapy" experiments in China, conducted for over a decade by Dr. Chen in conjunction with Cincinnati's Heimlich Institute, have been called "atrocities" by the World Health Organization. Medical experts have condemned the work as "charlatanism of the highest order." Research subjects included prisoners who were controlled by hired guards. In one case, a woman with full-blown AIDS, suffering from pneumonia and hooked up to oxygen, was infected with malaria.
...SLU's school of medicine was awarded a $566,640 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, to "identify novel antimalarial drug targets and compound classes that kill the parasitic microorganism that causes malaria, which afflicts more than one billion people and kills about 1 million annually." A spokeswoman confirms to Daily RFT that this grant is part of the GIBH project (led by Dr. Chen).

"Why are U.S. tax dollars funding research by a doctor responsible for conducting what a World Health Organization report called medical 'atrocities?'" (Peter) Heimlich says in an e-mail to Daily RFT regarding the NIH grant.

SLU Receives $566,000 in NIH Funding for Malaria Research, Saint Louis University press release, September 13, 2013:

Saint Louis University's Center for World Health and Medicine has received a three-year $566,640 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study a new approach to treating malaria...For this NIH-funded research project, Meyers will collaborate with the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health, a Chinese center of expertise in malaria biology, drug discovery and medicinal chemistry, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The National Natural Science Foundation of China is funding the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health and will match the National Institutes of Health's funding for SLU's Center for World Health and Medicine, which means the research project is slated to receive more than $1.1 million in funding over the next three years.

III. NIH grant awarded by NIH division headed by Anthony Fauci MD, an outspoken critic of the "malariotherapy" experiments for over a decade

Per the NIH website, the administering division for the $566,640 grant awarded to SLU for the project led by Dr. Chen is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

November 19, 2013: Today I asked the NIH to review a $566K grant awarded to Saint Louis University because the money's funding a partnership with the Chinese doctor who reportedly conducted medical "atrocities" on AIDS patients by Peter Heimlich, The Sidebar (my blog).

Anthony S. Fauci MD is the director of NIAID.

Via Heimlich's Audacious Maneuver : He proposes curing AIDS by giving patients malaria. Tests draw celebrity money--and researchers' protests by Pamela Warrick, Los Angeles Times (front page), October 30. 1994

At best, warn infectious disease experts, the treatment will cause no harm. At worst, they say, it can kill.

"(Dr.) Heimlich's life-saving maneuver for people who aspirate food doesn't qualify one as an HIV expert," said leading AIDS researcher Dr. Anthony Fauci, who called malaria therapy "quite dangerous and scientifically unsound."
Clip featuring interview with Dr. Fauci by reporter Brian Ross from Is Dr. Heimlich Really A Savior?, ABC 20/20, June 8, 2007:

Via Dr. Heimlich’s New ‘Maneuver’: Cure AIDS With Malaria by Brian Ross And Joseph Rhee, ABC 20/20, June 8, 2007

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.

"It gives off substances that strengthen their immune systems," says Dr. Heimlich.

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."

More to come....

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