Since his dirty work on
the Heimlich story, Zengerle's articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, New
York Magazine, National Public Radio's website, and he
continues to hold his own at The New Republic.
To my knowledge, he has
never been published by The
New Yorker - PMH
1) The New
Yorker assigns - then spikes - Zengerle's Heimlich article
In Spring
2005, my wife Karen and I were gaining traction in our efforts to bring
the various Heimlich medical
frauds to
public attention via the media. A handful of articles had appeared,
among them the widely-reported story of how UCLA immunologists had been
involved in the notorious Heimlich Institute experiments in which
Chinese AIDS patients were deliberately infected with malaria. That
story started with a
front page expose in the Cincinnati Enquirer and resulted in separate
bylined stories in the New
York Times, the
Los
Angles Times, Reuters, and elsewhere.
At that time
we were approached by Jason Zengerle, a senior editor at The New
Republic magazine. He told us he'd heard about Heimlich
"malariotherapy" AIDS experiments going on in Africa from "a friend" of
his doing HIV research there and that he'd landed a freelance contract
with The New Yorker to write a 7000 feature about my father's
career, focusing on the AIDS experiments. He assured us that he had no
interest in writing about us, but wanted to fly in to visit us in order
to look at our research.
We were
nervous but thrilled that a quality magazine like The New Yorker
was going to report about "malariotherapy" and my father's other
dangerous quackery, so we agreed and invited him to our home from April
19-21, 2005. We spent three eight-hour days poring through our files
and answering his questions. At the end of each day, the three of us
drove to the local Office Depot and copied hundreds of pages. The last
day, we agreed to do a taped half-hour interview with him based on his
assurance that we'd only be mentioned in passing in the article as my
father's "most persistent critics."
During those
three days, Zengerle's behavior was confusing. One moment he'd express
utter disdain for my father; minutes later he seemed to take the
opposite position.
For example,
he told us my father reminded him of Stephen
Glass, The
New Republic's infamous fabulist. Zengerle said he thought my
father was a serial fabricator like Glass. (Incidentally, Zengerle told
us he used to be Glass's fact-checker at the magazine, a claim he repeated in this article from the Swarthmore
College Phoenix, New
Republic Editor Decries State of Media. Zengerle and his wife
are Swarthmore alumni.) Zengerle said he didn't believe my father invented
the Heimlich maneuver and said he thought my father suffered from
Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
But when
discussing the specifics of my father's frauds, such as this March 16,
2003 Cincinnati Enquirer article, Heimlich
Falsely Claims He Invented Surgical Procedure - Romanian Replaced
Esophagus Years Before. Zengerle would then come up with all sort of excuses
for my father, claiming the reporter got something wrong, etc. This
bothered us enough that the second day of Zengerle's visit, we sat down
with him and expressed our concern that he seemed to be giving my
father far too much benefit of the doubt. Karen and I both remember
that moment because Zengerle's hands started to shake.
It wasn't
until two years later that we realized why he was acting so strange. At
the time, we just chalked it up to him being the nervous type, crossed
our fingers, and hoped for the best. (As we learned by experience, when
you're working with any reporter, good or bad, that's all you
can do. For the most part, they're in control and they'll report the
story their way, right or wrong.)
Zengerle
then spent the next year flying around the country doing interviews and
preparing his article on The New Yorker's dime.
Interestingly, my father, who for years has refused to talk to any
reporters doing serious stories, granted Zengerle complete access and
multiple interviews.
He handed in
his Heimlich article to The New Yorker around October 2005.
What happened next was dramatic. According to Zengerle, New Yorker
editor Amy Davidson blew a fuse after this
November 2005 two-part Radar Magazine article by Thomas Francis beat them to
the punch. The Radar story was tough and revealing, all about
my father's history of medical fraud and our efforts to bring the
information to public attention.
It's not
known if Zengerle informed New Yorker editor Davidson that a
parallel article was in the works, but shortly after the Radar
story appeared, she spiked Zengerle's article.
(By the way,
Zengerle knew all along that Francis's story was in the works. When
Zengerle first approached us we asked him if it was a problem if we
worked with Francis or any other reporters. We also informed Francis
that Zengerle was working on a New Yorker story because we
didn't want to mislead either of them. Zengerle said the New Yorker
didn't care. In July 2005 Zengerle even asked Tom Francis for help with
his New Yorker story.)
2) Stephen
Glass's fact-checker
Zengerle
told us he spent the next year unsuccessfully trying to place his
article with other publications including The New York Times
Sunday Magazine, the Atlantic, and others. On April 23, 2007, The
New Republic (TNR) eventually published it:
Click here for text
version on TNR's website
Reading it
for the first time was a shock. Per the title, The Choke Artist:
Who are the Mysterious Critics Hunting Henry Heimlich?, the article
was all about me. As opposed to the fact-filled, quote-laden Radar
expose, Zengerle had produced a rambling mess that trivialized my
father's dangerous medical frauds and belittled me for trying to bring
the issues to public attention. Short on facts and attributed quotes
but long on melodrama, not only was the article's entire premise false
- that my father was being stalked by "mysterious critics" who, gasp,
turned out to be his own son - Zengerle had lifted it verbatim from a January
21, 2005 Cincinnati Business Courier article which floated the same
overheated - and provably false - premise more than two years earlier.
In his
effort to portray me in a negative light, Zengerle also published a
variety of information which he knew to be false, created
characterizations of both me and my father which he knew were absurd,
and trumpeted bogus conclusions based on non-existent documents.
Zengerle and his editor Franklin Foer have since refused to provide the documents to me or to my
attorney, First Amendment expert H. Louis Sirkin.
Here's Sirkin's January 9,
2008 letter to Foer asking him to provide the documents which,
according to Zengerle's article, were publicly available on the
internet, and the January 14 reply from TNR's lawyer, refusing to
provide the documents:
This isn't
the first time Zengerle used non-existent documents to fabricate a hit
piece. See Glenn Greenwald's Does
The New Republic Have a New Stephen Glass in Jason Zengerle? and Lessons
Drawn from the Zengerle/TNR Debacle which describe how he got
caught using bogus e-mails in an attempt to smear the late Steve Gilliard
and other liberal bloggers.
Except for a
few added sentences, Zengerle's TNR Heimlich article is apparently
identical to the version killed two years earlier by The New Yorker, a
fact which TNR failed to divulge to its readers. In other words, TNR
not only published information its author knew was false, the magazine
passed off his shopworn article as news.
My only
voice in the article came from that 30-minute interview Zengerle did
with Karen and me on April 21, 2005 in our home. At the time and
repeatedly thereafter, he assured us we'd only be mentioned in passing
in his article. Instead he made me into the protagonist, portraying me
as the "mysterious critics hunting Henry
Heimlich."
In my experience,
intelligent observers perceive me as a son who inadvertently uncovered
an unprecedented and wide-ranging series of medical frauds centering
around his famous father; that I was faced with challenging ethical
decisions regarding the choice to expose the frauds; and that by doing
so I might be exposing myself to considerable scrutiny and potential
criticism.
As it turned out, the brunt
of most criticism was fueled by Robert Kraft, my father's Cincinnati
press agent. While my father hid from reporters, Kraft provided them
with this dramatic storyline: my father was being harassed by a
mysterious internet "stalker," intent on tearing down Dr. Heimlich's
reputation.
That's the identical theme
of Zengerle's TNR article. Incidentally, shortly before his three days
with Karen and me, Zengerle said he'd just come from a meeting with
Kraft in Cincinnati. (When he was with us, Zengerle mocked Kraft,
portraying him as a local Cincinnati press hustler who promoted car
shows.)
As for
Zengerle's "mystery stalker" theme, there's one problem. He knew it was
false when he wrote it. When Zengerle visited Karen and me in 2005, we
gave him a copy of this bizarre November 10, 2003 letter from my father
in which he admitted he knew who the "mysterious critics" were:
The letter
was also mentioned quoted in the
January 21, 2005 Cincinnati Business Courier article:
Another
letter (from Dr. Heimlich), 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."
Zengerle's New
Republic article references the Business Courier article,
so he can't claim he was unaware of the letter. In other words,
Zengerle knowingly misled TNR readers with his bogus "mystery stalker"
theme.
This and
other problems with Zengerle's article could have been avoided if it
was independently fact-checked by TNR. That never happened. Apparently
the total fact-checking of his article was this April 4, 2007 e-mail to
me from Zengerle, two years after he visited our home and a few weeks
before publication:
When I
received this e-mail, considering that so much had happened with the
Heimlich story since his half-hour interview with me and Karen two
years earlier, I offered to provide Zengerle with fresh quotes. His
reply? No, that wouldn't be necessary; he had what he needed.
Like any
writer, Zengerle is entitled to disagree with me and to characterize me
as he chooses. But writing a critical article about someone, meanwhile
denying them the opportunity to speak or defend themselves, is
fundamentally dirty journalism. What national newsmagazine would
accomodate that?
When these
and other concerns were brought to New Republic editor in chief
Franklin Foer, here's how he responded in an October 2, 2007 e-mail:
The article was
factchecked by a member of our editorial staff (writers are not
permitted to factcheck their own work)...I was also aware that Jason's
article had been rejected by several other publications--and was in
fact grateful that it had been since I was excited for TNR to run it.
It is a masterful piece of writing and reporting.
But Zengerle's April 4, 2007
e-mail was the only
fact-checking communication I ever received and others mentioned in the
article have told me they were never contacted for fact-checking, so
Foer was either lying, incompetent, or both. In any event, the
situation raises at least two questions:
1) According
to Foer, Zengerle violated TNR policy by fact-checking his own article
- "writers are not permitted to
factcheck their own work" - so shouldn't Zengerle be disciplined?
2) If I had
been contacted for a legitimate fact-check, I could have fixed the
numerous factual errors in the article. Better yet, I could have
alerted the magazine that Zengerle was intentionally duping its
readers. Here's one indisputable example:
(Dr.)
Heimlich started off, in the mid-'50s, by introducing a surgery that
made it possible for people with severe esophageal damage to swallow
food. He called it the "Heimlich operation."
Zengerle was
aware of this
2003 Cincinnati Enquirer front page article that exposed my
father's false claims about the esophosgus operation, but ignored it. Why would he give undeserved
credit to my father and mislead TNR readers about this straightfoward
fact?
And why, after expressing
such antipathy to my father, did Zengerle portray him in such an
uncritical (and false) light, meanwhile going to great lengths to set
up and then sucker-punch me? If he wanted to write a story that was
critical of me and my response to my father's work, why not just write
it? Why all the deception?
As we came
to discover, Zengerle's agenda had nothing to do with my
family. On the contrary, our efforts to expose the Africa
"malariotherapy" experiments - and to identify the participants - might
lead to problems in Zengerle's family.
3) "None of my
business" - Zengerle's wife and the Heimlich AIDS experiments
After the
TNR article appeared in April 2007, we realized that Zengerle had
punk'd us, but we didn't know why. So Karen and I started digging. We
started with old e-mails and immediately realized Zengerle had lied to
us from day one in order to gain access to us and to our files. When he
first contacted me, I asked how he got interested in writing a story
about my father. Here's his answer from a
March 3, 2005 e-mail (my underlining):
As for how
the story of your father came to my attention, a friend of mine
doing HIV research in Africa told me about his malariotherapy ideas
several years ago and since then I've been following his story and
waiting for the right moment to write about it.
But two years later, in the first few minutes of this April
27, 2007 in-house audio interview he gave to New Republic managing
editor Katherine Marsh, Zengerle told the same story, but with a
significant change:
Marsh: We're talking about
Jason Zengerle's fantastic story called "The Choke Artist" about Henry
Heimlich. Jason, one of the things I'm sort of interested in finding
out is what attracted you to Heimlich's story and how you became
interested in it in the first place?
Zengerle: Well, a few years ago my
wife who at the time was in med school was doing some HIV work in
Africa and she heard from some colleagues over there about Henry
Heimlich and how he had this idea about malariotherapy which was treating HIV by intentionally
infecting people with malaria and she came back to the states and told
me about that and I just thought, first of all, I didn't even realize
that there was such a person as Henry Heimlich.
So the
"friend" was, in fact, Zengerle's wife? Why did he lie to us about
that? I smelled a rat, so I wrote a polite note to Zengerle and asked
for more information. Here's the Q&A:
PH: What's your wife's
name? What she was doing in Africa, where was she working, when was she
there, and who was her employer? Who were the "colleagues" who told her
about the Heimlich Institute's African experiments?
JZ: None
of your business.
Zengerle
lied to my wife and me to gain access to our work which he appropriated
without crediting us, misled us and others for two years, and then
trashed me in a national magazine? Under the circumstances, I disagreed
that is was none of my business, so I started poking around.
Zengerle
lives in Jamaica Plain, near Boston, so I checked Suffolk County,
Massachusetts property records. It turns out that he co-owns a condo with his wife.
Her name is Claire Farel.
I then
Googled her name and what do you know? Dr.
Farel is an AIDS and malaria immunology researcher, affiliated with Harvard and
the National Institutes of Health, who has authored articles in
prominent medical journals.
photo
source
Claire Farel MD
To my
inexpert eye, Dr. Farel's work appears remarkably similar to the
Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy" work. For example, she was lead
author on an AIDS research study in which three of her co-authors had
written an earlier AIDS research study. My father has repeatedly cited
that earlier study as key evidence to support his "malariotherapy"
theories.
She's also a
colleague of NIH Director Dr. Anthony Fauci. From Infection
Induction and Maintenance Therapy with Intermittent Interleukin-2 in
HIV-1 by Claire
E. Farel et al:
Acknowledgment: The
participation of the patient volunteers, the numerous contributions of
the Clinic 8 nursing staff, and the ongoing scientific guidance of Dr.
Anthony S. Fauci, Director NIAID, throughout the performance of these
trials are acknowledged with gratitude.
And here's Dr. Paul Farmer participating
in Dr. Farel's graduation
from a special medical residency program at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital.
From left, Paul Farmer, Claire Farel, Howard Hiatt, Amy Sievers and Jim Yong Kim at the second graduation ceremony for the
Global Health Equity Residency.
As it
happens, Dr. Fauci and Dr. Farmer are both outspoken critics of my
father's "malariotherapy" quackery. Dr. Fauci was interviewed by Brian
Ross in the
ABC 20/20 report
about my father. Strong critical quotes from Dr. Farmer were included
in this
2003 Lancet article about the China experiments.
Given that
her residency specialized in global health equality/access to treatment
for underprivileged populations and since her husband says she had
learned of the "malariotherapy" experiments in Africa, you might think
Dr. Farel would take the initiative to report the Heimlich experiments
to her eminent colleagues or to medical oversight authorities. If she
did, it's news to me.
At that
point, everything about Dr. Farel was news to me. Zengerle not only failed to disclose anything
about his wife to Karen and me, his TNR story failed to inform readers
of her significant professional connections to a primary focus of his
article.
Also, you
might also think that given such ready access via his wife to such
top-flight AIDS experts like Drs. Fauci and Farmer, Jason Zengerle
would have interviewed them for his Heimlich article. If he did,
there's no sign of it. (Zengerle's story does include a quote from Dr.
Fauci, however he lifted it without attribution from Pamela Warrick's
landmark 1994 Los Angles Times front-pager, Heimlich's
Audacious Maneuver. On the other hand, in 2005 Zengerle interviewed at
length a whole string of medical experts who have been vocal critics of
my father, but he left all of them out of his article.)
More questions:
- How did Dr. Farel come to
learn about the Heimlich "malariotherapy" experiments in Africa, which
are utterly clandestine? What HIV research was she doing in Africa, who
was she working for, and what are the names of the colleagues who told
her about the Heimlich experiments going on there? Why did Zengerle
fail to share any of these details with us or in his article? Why did Zengerle
lie to us and transform his wife into his "friend"?
- Why did Zengerle copy
1000+ pages of our work, lead us on, then go on to publish fabricated
and knowingly-false information in an apparent attempt to publicly
undermine my credibility?
- In recent years, dozens of
reporters have written serious articles about my father. He has refused
to speak to all of them except one: Jason Zengerle, who was granted
full access and interviewed my father on repeated trips to Cincinnati,
presumably on The New Yorker's dime. How did Zengerle happen to get
carte blanche and then write an article that glosses over the
outrageous medical frauds committed by my father and which resulted in
the significant loss of life, including many kids?
And why would any reporter
bury the most crucial information in his article, these unreported
details about the Africa experiments, information that could have made
an enormous media splash, like the
2003 stories about the Heimlich AIDS experiments in China?
"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. But,
according to a public health physician who has worked on AIDS in East
Africa and has knowledge of Heimlich's latest project, the study site
is in Ethiopia. An official with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health told
me that the ministry is unaware of any malariatherapy work being
conducted in the country and that, if it is, it is being done without
proper notification and permission.
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.
Did Zengerle ask my father
for more details, for example the names of those running the
experiments? Who is the unnamed "public health physician" and why is
she/he unnamed?
- How is it that Zengerle,
who writes almost exclusively about politics, got interested in writing
an obscure medical story exactly when Karen and I were starting to make
headway in the press to expose the Africa "malariotherapy" experiments
which - if the details and participants were tagged - might result in a
media blow-up similar to what happened in 2003 when UCLA
researchers got nailed for participating in the Heimlich
"malariotherapy" experiments in China? Zengerle conducted hours of
interviews with my father, but didn't get around to asking him for the
names of the doctors who ran the Africa experiments, which could have
resulted in a similar monster story for him in The New Yorker? After
reading Thomas Francis's
hard-hitting, fact-laden Radar expose, did New Yorker editor Amy
Davidson realize that Zengerle had punk'd her, too, and that's why she
spiked his article?
- How was it that Zengerle's 2007 TNR article
failed to mention US congressional candidate Dr.
Victoria Wells Wulsin, who worked on the Heimlich Africa project
and was a key focus of Thomas
Francis's 2005 Radar expose? Zengerle wrote me this June 7, 2005
e-mail saying he had left a message for her, but then he left her out
of his article. Why would Zengerle, a political writer, avoid such a
newsworthy political hook? (Since then, Dr. Wulsin has been dogged by
her affiliation with the experiments, which became a central issue in
the 2008 Ohio 2nd congressional race, probably the first time abusive
human subjects research was used in a political campaign. Click here
for more information, including video ads produced by her political
opponents regarding Dr. Wulsin's involvement with the Heimlich
Institute.)
4) "Conjecture,
leaps of logic, and assumptions of almost epic bad faith"
So what did Dr. Farel know
and why did her husband go to such lengths to conceal her connections?
Rather than jump to conclusions, I took to heart this assessment of my
work from Zengerle's
article:
(Some) of the most damning
accusations Peter has leveled...appear to be based on a combination of
conjecture, leaps of logic, and assumptions of almost epic bad faith.
So I decided to try and get
answers from the horse's mouth:
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008
12:12:04 -0500
From: "Peter M. Heimlich" <pmh@medfraud.info>
To: Claire Farel MD <cfarel@partners.org>
Subject: research inquiry
Dear Dr. Farel,
I'm trying to get in touch
with you regarding the Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy"
experiments. Please confirm receipt and I'll follow-up with my inquiry.
Thanks and looking forward
to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Peter M. Heimlich
Address redacted
vm/FAX: (208)474-7283
e-mail: pmh@medfraud.info
http://medfraud.info
I didn't receive a reply to
the above e-mail or to a January 2, 2009 follow-up. Six months later I
sent this to her and copied her husband:
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2009
08:01:55 -0400
From: "Peter M. Heimlich" <pmh@medfraud.info>
To: Claire Farel MD <cfarel@partners.org>
CC: Jason Zengerle <jzengerle@tnr.com>
Dear Dr. Farel:
I attempted to contact you
via a December 15, 2008 e-mail to your husband. I didn't receive a
reply, so I sent you an e-mail & fax on December 20, 2008. I didn't
receive a reply so I made a second attempt on January 2, 2009. I didn't
receive a reply to that either.
I'm attempting to learn
more about your knowledge of the Heimlich "malariotherapy" experiments
in Africa, which your husband says you learned about from colleagues
when you were doing HIV work in Africa. For publication, I'd appreciate
your answers to the following questions.
1) Approximately when did
your colleagues tell you about the experiments? Who were the colleagues
and what did they tell you?
2) At the time, who was
your employer and what sort of HIV work were you doing? Was your work
publicly-funded?
3) Did you or anyone else
you know report the Heimlich experiments to any oversight organization?
4) Have you ever
communicated with any employees or representatives of the Heimlich
Institute?
Thank you for your
consideration and I look forward to receiving your answers. I may have
follow-ups.
Sincerely,
Peter Heimlich
Address redacted
ph/FAX: (208)474-7283
cc: Jason Zengerle
Again, no reply. Here's my
fourth and final e-mail to Dr. Farel. To date I've never received any
communications from her.
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009
10:10:55 -0400
From: "Peter M. Heimlich" <pmh@medfraud.info>
To: Claire Farel MD <cfarel@partners.org>
CC: Jason Zengerle <jzengerle@tnr.com>
Dear Dr. Farel:
I have not received a
reply to my July 1, 2009 e-mail to you that was courtesy-copied to your
husband, Jason Zengerle. For publication, I would appreciate your
answers to the following questions.
1) Have you ever had a
financial relationship with any employees or representatives of the
Heimlich Institute?
2) Were you in any way
involved with the Heimlich Institute's "malariotherapy" research in
Africa or elsewhere?
Thank you for your
consideration and I look forward to receiving your answers. I may have
follow-ups.
Sincerely,
Peter Heimlich
Address redacted
ph/FAX: (208)474-7283
cc: Jason Zengerle
5)
Conclusions
Was or is
Dr. Farel involved with the "malariotherapy" experiments? I did my best
to find out and came up empty. Obviously she's under no obligation to
answer me or anyone else, but where's the downside in denying that you
had anything to do with medical atrocities?
As for her
husband, if you're an editor, fact-check everything Jason Zengerle
submits. If you're a source, don't trust the bastard.
Addendum -
more Zengerle family values
Joseph
Zengerle, Esq.
Lynda Zengerle, Esq.
Jason Zengerle is not
without his supporters. Here's a
letter from his parents, both big shot lawyers in Washington DC
(click their names for identification):
We just saw the 20/20
segment tonight on Dr. Heimlich, which tracks almost exactly the long
piece called "The Choke Artist" in the April 23, 2007 issue of The New
Republic by our son, Jason Zengerle. That story represents an
extraordinary research and writing effort on his part, not to mention
his original thinking in conceiving the story, and it looks like you
cribbed it without so much as an attribution. Shame on 20/20 and ABC
for not having more integrity about where you get your ideas, indeed
the structure of the entire script.
Joseph
and Lynda Zengerle, June 2007
Such parental concern is
touching. After all, how often do the parents of a national
newsmagazine editor speak up to defend their child?
However, the Zengerles
apparently failed to realize was that, in his enthusiasm to smear me,
their son cribbed his April 2007 article's bogus theme from the
Cincinnati Business Courier's bogus January 2005 article. Toss
in his serial lying, fabrications, and ongoing questions about their
daughter-in-law's connection to the Heimlich "malariotherapy"
experiments, Ma & Pa Zengerle's concerns regarding integrity appear
to be misplaced.
Copyright
@ Peter M. Heimlich, all rights reserved. Click here to report broken links or to
contact the author.