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
Victoria
Wulsin MD PhD 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 .
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. Thomas Powell & the
Rotary connection
From page 2 of Dr.
Wulsin's "malariotherapy report:
My approach to resolving the
issues was approved by my two supervisors Dr. Henry J. Heimlich
and Mr. Thomas Powell.
Why was Rotary
International executive Thomas
Powell of Mason, OH - who was simultanously a board member of both
Rotary
International's Africa AIDS Project and the Heimlich Institute - supervising Dr. Wulsin's
Africa "malariotherapy" report? It's also probable
he knows the identity of the American
sponsor of the experiments, information which Dr. Wulsin and my father
have refused to disclose.
Other Rotarians
- and University of Cincinnati medical school faculty - are also
involved in the Heimlich experiments. Contact
Peter
for more information.
Back to Table of Contents
Michele Ashby
(now president of MINE
LLC, Denver)
5. A cheap
AIDS cure would be worth its weight in gold - the Michele Ashby
connection
From a November 5, 2008 press
release, Michele
Ashby Joins Lake Victoria Mining Company's Board:
Lake Victoria Mining Company
(OTCBB:LVCA) is pleased to announce that Michele Ashby is joining
the Company's Board of Directors. Ms. Ashby is the founder, owner
and Chief Executive Officer of MINE, LLC, a Colorado company
organized to promote selected natural resource companies to the
investment community through private conferences. She has occupied
that position since July 2005. In 1988 she founded the Denver
Gold Group Inc., and until 2005, she was the Chief Executive
Officer of that organization, which is dedicated and operated
as a trade association for the mining industry...Lake Victoria
Mining Company, Inc. is working to create another gold mine in
the world famous Lake Victoria Greenstone Belt, Tanzania, East
Africa. Tanzania produced 1.75 million troy ounces of gold during
2007 and is the 3rd largest gold producer in Africa....
UPDATE: On July 27, 2009, the
company received a written letter of resignation from Michele
Ashby, resigning from the Board of Directors, effective July
23, 2009. Her resignation was not as a result of any disagreement
with the Company. (US
Securities & Exchange Commission)
Ashby is also
tied to the illicit "malariotherapy" experiments conducted
on AIDS patients in Ethiopia and Gambia by the Heimlich Institute.
As everyone
knows, the continent of Africa has been devastated by the AIDS
pandemic. This includes the workforce of the African mining industry.
For example, about
1/3 of South African mine workers suffer from HIV/AIDS. Therefore the promise
of an inexpensive, drug-free cure for the disease would certainly
appear seductive to mining companies.
That's exactly
what the Heimlich Institute has been 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 Immunotherapy
and Beyond,
the "malariotherapy" marketing prospectus Dr. Victoria
Wulsin wrote for the Heimlich Institute (p.16):
From Thomas
Francis's November 2005 Radar Magazine
article:
In particular
Heimlich targeted South African gold mines, which employ a large
population of poor, AIDS-ravaged miners who live in prison camp-like
conditions. Wulsin told me that over the last several years Heimlich
has sought to convince South African gold mining companies of
the merits of malariotherapy, in the hope that they would allow
him to conduct clinical trials on the miners, many of whom are
HIV-positive. Wulsin was to have a role in this effort. She says
that in 2002 the gold mines sent doctors to visit Heimlich in
Cincinnati to discuss the prospects for a study, but the talks
eventually broke down over disagreements over who would pay for
what. According to Wulsin, Michele
Ashby - then
the chief executive of Denver Gold Group, an international consortium
of gold mines - was acting as a broker between Heimlich and the
mines. Wulsin's report notes that Heimlich spoke at the Mining
Investment Forum in 2002, in Denver, where Ashby introduced him
to "12 CEOs who operate in South Africa and other locations."
When I called to ask Ashby about her role in malariotherapy,
she hung up on me.
Robert Anglen of the Cincinnati
Enquirer told me Ashby was similarly reluctant to discuss
the subject with him. According to Anglen, he called her while
reporting a story about the Heimlich "malariotherapy"
experiments in Africa as a follow-up to Anglen's February 2003
Sunday front page expose of the Heimlich-UCLA
China "malariotherapy" story. He told me that Ashby
was hostile and refused to talk. Next the Enquirer received
a threat letter from her attorney. The Enquirer never
reported the story.
Ashby and my father remain
close. My father - who does not hold a medical license and who
was fired from his last hospital job in 1976 - was a panelist
on a medical forum hosted by Ashby in July 2008 for Dani's
Foundation, a high-profile Denver-based cancer cure nonprofit
she founded:
Dani’s Foundation, a
national not-for-profit organization based in Denver, hosted
an inaugural Ewing’s Sarcoma Medical Advisory Forum July
18 - 20 in Denver. A panel of nationally recognized medical and
professional strategists gathered together with the goal of assisting
the Foundation...Michele Ashby, Founder and President of Dani’s
Foundation, was instrumental in organizing the inaugural meeting...Other
professionals who joined Ashby and the Dani’s Foundation
Board of Directors included Dr. Henry Heimlich, The Heimlich
Institute, Cincinnati, OH; Dr. Jeffrey Toretsky, Lombardi Comprehensive
Cancer Center, Georgetown, MD; Dr. Lorrie Odom, Rocky Mountain
Pediatric Hematology Oncology, Denver, CO; Dr. Larry Wiese, Therapheresis,
Inc., San Diego, CA: Misty Rowe, PhD, Golden, CO; Dr. Kenna Ducey-Clark,
DC, Denver, CO; and Mr. Jason Greer, 17 year Ewing’s survivor,
Missoula, MT.
Jeffrey Toretsky MD, Lombardi
Cancer Center, Georgetown University
Larry
Wiese, Therapheresis,
Inc., San Diego, CA
Kenna Ducey-Clark, DC,
Falling
Leaves Health, Denver, CO
A subsequent glitzy fundraiser
for Ashby's charity was the lead in the March
20, 2009 Denver Post's society column:
Last summer, when executive
director Martha Simmons and founder Michele Ashby started laying
the foundation for My Big Greek Roast, they could not have imagined
just how big this benefit for Dani's Foundation would turn out
to be. It started out as - and ultimately did become - "a
night of love and laughter" in honor of Denver Broncos trainer
Steve Antonopulos. But for a while there, it was another chapter
in the developing story surrounding quarterback Jay Cutler's
future with the team. An estimated 100 members of the international
media swooped down on Invesco Field last Saturday night, hoping
to grab a photo or a quote from Cutler as he arrived for the
dinner and auction chaired by former Bronco Jim Jensen. Cutler
didn't show, but owner Pat Bowlen did....The big plus: "The
foundation's name gained worldwide exposure," Simmons said...With
300 guests and profits just shy of $50,000, the event was the
largest in Dani's Foundation history...Other guests were Anschutz
Foundation director Jeff Pryor and his wife, Maureen; Janie and
Buck Hutchison; Sue Christiansen; state Sen. Nancy Spence and
her husband, Dr. Pete Spence; Barrel Man" Tim McKernan with
his wife, Becky.
To date only Radar Magazine
has reported Michele Ashby's association with the Heimlich Institute's
illicit, abusive, and possibly illegal AIDS experiments, experiments
which, according
to my father, are ongoing. Given her experience and connections,
did she have anything to do with the alleged $9 million funding
of the experiments by African gold mining companies (discussed
in the next section)?
Of these prearranged private
meetings, Michele Ashby, founder and CEO of MINE LLC says, "MINE
LLC has more than 20 years of success in bringing together company
executives with major investors and analysts...Over these two decades, I have evolved
into a sort of matchmaker.
(source)
Back to Table of Contents
E. Anthony
Woods
6. Where's
the $9 Mil? Ask Phil
My father, because he's a
pioneer, has always been criticized, attacked by the medical
establishment whenever he's come out with one of his major discoveries
- Phil Heimlich, ABC
20/20, June 8, 2007
In 2003, a Cincinnati Enquirer
reporter shared information and documents about a consortium
of African gold mining companies that allegedly donated $9 million
to the Heimlich Institute to fund the Africa experiments. The
money appears to be in an offshore trust. In addition to the
previously-mentioned individuals, who else should be able to
provide more details?
Presumably,
my brother and the other HI board members have access to the
financial and medical records of the Africa (and China) experiments. Click
here for the 1995-2006 HI IRS 990 tax returns. (It's a big file, so
easiest to save it to hard drive, rather than viewing via your
browser.) The most recent 990 lists the following corporate members:
Henry Heimlich MD, Trustee
Philip
M. Heimlich, Vice-President
Barbara Lohr, Secretary (Deaconess's Director of Corporate Marketing)
E.
Anthony Woods, Chairman (Chairman of Deaconess Associations)
Jane Mary Tenhover, Trustee (Executive Director of the Deaconess
Health Associations Fund)
If the Heimlich Institute
is indeed sitting on millions in undeclared funds, that may explain
my brother's conduct towards me. Since I began speaking out under
my own name about my father's medical frauds in a Cleveland Scene
cover story (Heimlich's
Maneuver, August 11, 2004), my brother, my father, a press
agent, and couple of other creeps engaged in a coordinated smear
campaign, telling reporters and others that I "have a history
of mental problems" and making other false and defamatory
statements.
As reported in Cincinnati CityBeat, I eventually had to hire attorney Louis
Sirkin, a well-known First Amendment defender, who went after
Phil for defamation and got a settlement offer. Mr. Sirkin also
sent cease
and desist letters to my father and others.
Phil Heimlich at a Topeka,
Kansas "Prayer Breakfast," describing how he had a
religious epiphany "in 1981 at a Bob's Big Boy restaurant,
where he accepted Christ as his savior" - (Topeka
Capital-Journal, 11/15/03)
Incidentally, Phil's a leader
in the International
Association of Character Cities, a front group for evangelist
Bill Gothard. Here's
a video segment of a speech which Phil presented at that
organization's 2005 national conference, entitled Truthfulness
in Politics.
Speaking of truth, after being
swept out of political office in 2006, this
April 28, 2008 press release announced he was now a Christian
talk show host with a syndicated radio program, "Hard Truths
with Phil Heimlich," distributed by Salem
Radio Network.
Since then, Phil's
show has been axed, but perhaps his commitment to "hard
truths" extends to his 20-year tenure as #2 man at the Heimlich
Institute and will motivate him to produce the financial and
medical records, including details about the Heimlich Institute's
experiments on African prostitutes.
Click logo to visit www.heimlichhardtruths.com
Back to Table of Contents
Dehner
Thompson