March 20, 2019

Gianrico Farrugia MD
President and CEO, Mayo Clinic
200 First St. SW
Rochester, MN 55905

Dear Dr. Farrugia:

I’m the son of the late Henry J. Heimlich MD, known for the Heimlich maneuver anti-choking
treatment. I have a journalism background and since 2003 research into my father’s career by my wife
and me (and my outreach to journalists) has resulted in scores of mainstream print and broadcast
news reports that exposed my dad as a remarkable – and dangerous – medical charlatan. Since 2010
I’ve done original reporting via my blog, The Sidebar.

One of my research/reporting interests is the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

(PCRM), a high-profile Washington, DC nonprofit that’s been around since 1985. Per my website, I’ve
also been a public critic of PCRM because of their problematic 30-year relationship with my dad.

My Google News alert sent me a Rochester Post Bulletin article from last month by Jeff Kiger, Mayo
Clinic criticized for using live pigs in doctor training, who reported:

After talking to Mayo Clinic for more than a year, the Washington, D.C.-based Physicians
Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a complaint asking the U.S. Department of
Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to investigate Mayo’s use of
pigs in annual training emergency medical training.

...Dr. John Pippin, the Physicians Committee’s director of academic affairs, said that Mayo
Clinic uses pigs in once-a-year training for residents on how to treat patients with emergency
airway injuries.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to share with you some information which in my opinion raises
some interesting questions about the organization.

Via PCRM’s website:

Mission
The Physicians Committee is dedicated to saving and improving human and animal lives
through plant-based diets and ethical and effective scientific research.

Vision
Creating a healthier world through a new emphasis on plant-based nutrition and scientific
research conducted ethically, without using animals.
Junk science debunker Joseph A."Dr. Joe" Schwarcz PhD, Director of McGill University's Office for
Science and Society, expressed a more pointed opinion in a 2011 column:

I consider PCRM to be a fanatical animal rights group with a clear cut agenda of promoting a
vegan lifestyle and eliminating all animal experimentation.

In any event, via numerous published articles from 1994 to the present which I’ve compiled on my
blog, PCRM has been called an “animal rights” activist group. If accurate, presumably that perspective
influenced the complaint they filed with the USDA against your institution.

Perhaps related, Dr. Pippin, lead signatory of the complaint, explained his moral philosophy in a
profile published in the Spring 2011 issue of American Dog magazine (emphasis added here and in
subsequent citations); click here to download a copy of the article:
 “I am about animal protection, a position that focuses on ending our abuse and killing of
animals for food, research, drug and product testing, education, entertainment, hunting,
and all other human purposes,” (Dr. John Pippin) says. “I’m also about a fundamental level
of animal rights, because I believe that all sentient creatures - human and nonhuman -
have an inherent right to freedom from abuse and killing. This means, of course, that I
support the no-kill animal shelter movement.”

Two pivotal events led Dr. Pippin to a life of protecting and saving animals. The first was in
1987 when he realized that animal research is not only horribly cruel, but also a fraud that
cannot prevent or cure human diseases. This epiphany changed his career and made him a
vocal critic of animal experimentation. The second was in 2004, when Dr. Pippin had to
choose between continuing to advocate publicly against animal research and keeping his
career as founding director of cardiology at Cooper Clinic in Dallas. He chose the animals,
and has never regretted the choice.

“Animals have nobody but the animal protection community between them and egregious
misuse, abuse, and death at the hands of our species,” he says. “For those of us with true
hearts for animals, such evils as eating, wearing, fighting, breeding, imprisoning,
hunting, and experimenting on our animal kin must be ended.”

For the past six years, Dr. Pippin has worked full time with the Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine…

Although some may disagree that eating a BLT or wearing leather shoes is “evil,” clearly Dr. Pippin
brings strongly-held personal convictions to his work, presumably including the complaint to USDA.

Moving right along, via a program for a 2005 PCRM fund raising gala, here’s when and how my dad
entered the picture:

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.

Here’s some context re: “the cruel dog-drowning experiments.”

In the literature and popular press, since 1974 my father tirelessly insisted that “the Heimlich”
(abdominal thrusts) should be the first treatment response for near-drowning emergencies. For four
decades, his only evidence to support the treatment recommendation was a handful of anecdotal cases
in which bystanders happened upon near-dead drowning victims and spontaneously decided to apply
his namesake anti-choking treatment. Miraculously, according to dad, all the victims immediately
recovered.

Via Heimlich Applauds Decision Against Dog-Drowning Research, Associated Press, March 17, 1986:

The developer of the Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims says animal-rights
activists performed a service when they protested a plan to test the maneuver (as a treatment
for near-drowning) by subjecting dogs to near-drownings.
It would have been cruel and unnecessary to perform the proposed experiment, in which 22
dogs would have been nearly drowned to see if the Heimlich maneuver is effective in aiding
people who are in danger of drowning, says Dr. Henry J. Heimlich.
...After public outcry from animal-rights activists, Dr. Richard Melker of the University of
Florida decided to forgo his request for $18,000 from the American Heart Association to
perform the dog experiments.
Melker had originally wanted to experiment on 42 dogs, but scaled it back to 22 after Heimlich
wrote a Feb. 5 letter of protest to University of Florida officials, urging them to veto the
research proposal.
Via Animal researchers dogged by abusive calls by Laura Young, The Alligator (Gainesville), February
13, 1986:
Holly Jensen, the Florida representative of People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said
Heimlich sent (his February 5) letter to all "to all the (animal rights) groups."

With quotes from the letter blown up to poster size, the animal rights activists garnered more
than 900 signatures on a petition.

At the committee meeting, one of the protestors, dressed like comic strip character Garfield,
presented the petition to committee chairman Dr. Richard Halliwell.

...Four of the committee members and the researchers have received abusive phone calls.

Why would any scientist want to shut down research testing his own claims?

Via Dangerous Maneuvers by Kendra Kozen, Aquatics International Magazine, May 1, 2012:

(Information) uncovered by Peter Heimlich indicates that actually it was the case studies his
father used to support his position that were at issue, and it appears fraudulent, in many
instances.

“For 30 years, my father endlessly trumpeted the cases in the media and in medical journals as
proof of his claims,” Peter says. “I fact-checked all the cases and discovered that they ranged
from dubious to outright fraud. For example, a couple of doctors who were the alleged rescuers
in two of the ’miracle cases’ just happened to be longtime buddies of my father, a fact that none
of them disclosed.”

In 2004 and 2005, the US Lifesaving Association and the National Council Against Health Fraud
wrote to my father and asked him to produce supporting documents for the “miracle cases” he
published. Dad came up empty.

In my opinion, dad feared that if the UF research had proceeded, the case frauds would have been
exposed which, of course, would have destroyed his reputation. 1

The 40-year “Heimlich for drowning rescue” fraud was not without consequence. Via NoVa parks
authority teaches lifeguards discredited Heimlich maneuver by Tom Jackman:

In Tampa, which has one of the highest drowning rates in the country, Dr. James Orlowski said
he has documented nearly 40 cases where rescuers performing the Heimlich
maneuver have caused complications for the victim.2 Orlowski is chief of pediatrics
and pediatric intensive care at University Community Hospital in Tampa.
“You’ve got one man and a few small supporters,” Orlowski said, “that continue
to push this in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
For decades, those supporters included PRCM and the group’s founding president, Neal Barnard MD.

1 More details about the case frauds via Heimlich's Maneuver - Henry Heimlich is Ohio's most revered doctor.
He may also be the most dangerous. Ask his colleagues -- and his son by Thomas Francis, Cleveland Scene
(cover story), August 11, 2004; Off the Deep End - Dr. Heimlich's Dangerous Maneuvers by Curt Guyette,
Detroit Metro Times (cover story), December 8, 2004; Heimlich's son cites Dallas case in dispute - he says
dad is wrong in urging maneuver be used on near-drowning victims by Jennifer Learn-Andes, The Times
Leader (Wilkes-Barre, PA), August 22, 2007:
2 Click here to see some of the victims, including children.
Via an undated PCRM press release (likely 1992), What's the Most Important Thing To Bring To The
Beach This Summer? Knowledge of the Heimlich Maneuver To Save Drowning Victims:

The Heimlich Maneuver has long been used to save the lives of choking victims. Posters
in restaurants show customers how to apply the technique, and it has saved nearly 50,000 lives
in the U.S. over the past twenty years. Now two public-interest groups have launched an
information campaign to let people know that the Heimlich Maneuver can also save the lives of
drowning victims.

...The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) has teamed up with the
Heimlich Institute to produce a public service video in which Dr. Heimlich demonstrates the
maneuver he invented and PSAs for newspapers and magazines which ask the question "What's
the most important thing you can take to the beach this summer?" (Answer; It's Not a Towel,
Trunks or Suntan Oil. It's Knowledge Of The Heimlich Maneuver.)

Click here to view the PSA, part of which was included in a June 8, 2007 ABC 20/20 report by Brian
Ross, Is Dr. Heimlich Really a Savior?

Dad refused to be interviewed, but click here for a clip of Dr. Barnard hyping “the Heimlich” for near-
drowning rescue. (Click here to view the entire report which opens at a 2007 PCRM fund raising gala
in Washington, DC with actor Alec Baldwin introducing my father.)

Even after the treatment had been thoroughly discredited and my father had been exposed as a
dangerous scammer, Dr. Barnard continued to urge the public to perform the Heimlich maneuver on
near-drowning victims.

Here’s his letter to the editor via the September 22, 2004 Philadelphia Weekly in response to Deadly
Medicine, a September 15, 2004 expose by staff reporter Steve Volk, about the dangers of performing
the Heimlich maneuver on near-drowning victims and the dubious evidence my father used to
promote the treatment:

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.
Along the same lines, here’s Dr. Barnard’s letter to the editor via the October 6, 2004 Cleveland Scene
in response to the August 11, 2004 cover story, Heimlich's Maneuver - Henry Heimlich is Ohio's most
revered doctor. He may also be the most dangerous. Ask his colleagues -- and his son by Thomas
Francis:

I was surprised to see the recent attack on my good friend Henry Heimlich, 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.

Next comes what was arguably my father’s most notorious scam, “malariotherapy.”

Via a 1982 Wall Street Journal article (in which he claimed he knew how to bring about world peace),
dad claimed he could cure cancer by infecting patients with malaria. Dad credited Julius Wagner-
Jauregg, a German eugenicist, Nazi sympathizer, and winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for Medicine as
his inspiration for the concept.

In the late 1980s, Cincinnati’s nonprofit Heimlich Institute conducted clandestine experiments in
Mexico which were eventually shut down by the Mexican government.

Dad then began claiming malaria could cure Lyme Disease and, in collaboration with a New Jersey
physician, the Heimlich Institute oversaw clandestine experiments on US Lyme Disease patients in
Mexico City and Panama City. (More about that below.) The project was shut down in 1992 after an
investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) because returning patients
infected with malaria were bringing the disease into the US. (For more information/documents, visit
the CIRCARE bioethics website.)

My father then began claiming malaria could cure AIDS and in the 1990s, he partnered with UCLA-
trained researcher Dr. Xiaoping Chen,3 who conducted "malariotherapy" experiments in Guangzhou
which the World Health Organization and prominent bioethics experts have called a medical
"atrocity." The project also resulted in investigations by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
and the US Justice Department.

The work was so radioactive that as a result of a 2002 letter my wife and I sent to UCLA, the school
initiated a widely-reported investigation which resulted in the discipline of two faculty researchers
who participated in the project. (Via my blog, click here for a compilation of media reports plus related
TV commercials about a US Congressional race.)

3 Per Spotlight: Experts warn malaria for cancer treatment "scientifically unsound," risky for patients by Tan
Jingjing published a couple days ago, Xinhua News Service, Dr. Chen is at it again.
Next, dad headed to Africa. Via a landmark two-part November 2005 Radar Magazine expose by
Thomas Francis:

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."

Untreated malaria is horrible and includes periods of 105-degree fever, excessive sweating
followed by chills and uncontrollable shivering, blinding headaches, vomiting, body aches,
anemia, and even dementia. Heimlich's malariotherapy literature recommends the patient go
two to four weeks without treatment. Delay in treatment, warns the CDC, is a leading cause of
death.

Wondewossen says 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."

What makes the history even more bizarre is that my dad (who died in December 2016) had no
background or training in immunology. Nevertheless, because of the fame he acquired as a result of
developing and promoting his namesake anti-choking maneuver, people trusted him and he was able
to raise millions of dollars from private donors including Hollywood celebrities like Jack Nicholson
and Ron Howard who helped fund the experiments on Chinese AIDS patients.

As it happens, in 2008 Eric Matteson MD, your prominent Mayo Clinic colleague, corresponded with
PCRM's Dr. Pippin about the “malariotherapy” experiments and his organization’s relationship with
my father. For your convenience here’s a transcription of the key aspects of the exchange.
Matteson to Pippin, December 8, 2008:
I have an interest in medical history and the eponymic naming of diseases and conditions and
so was interested in some of the particulars regarding the naming of the so-called "Heimlich
maneuver." As I looked up Dr. Heimlich, I found your website, which lists Dr. Heimlich as
being a board member. I note that your organization has a particular emphasis on preventing
the exploitation of animals in medical research for a variety of reasons including ones which
are moral and ethical. As I explored Dr. Heimlich's background, I came across a couple of
things of concern in that regard. One concern has to do with what is termed "malariotherapy"
for the treatment of different diseases including AIDS. I noted that there are experiments being
done in an African country, but I was not able to find out anything more about this, other than
Dr. Heimlich stated that he is moving forward with new experiments in an unnamed country. I
looked on the NIH website of registered clinical trials, and I was unable to find any such trial. I
also saw a mention of malariotherapy administered to Lyme disease patients as well.

These references are very concerning to me from a standpoint of ethics in human subjects'
research, and I am hoping that you will be able to shed some light on this for me.

Pippin to Matteson, December 17, 2008:

Thanks for your letter dated December 8, 2008 (attached), regarding Dr. Henry Heimlich and
his research. You wrote about PCRM: “I note that your organization has a particular emphasis
on preventing the exploitation of animals in medical research for a variety of reasons including
ones which are moral and ethical.” This is correct, and PCRM is equally committed to this
mission as it regards the human animal. We have a long record of advocacy and clinical
research addressing ethical and medical issues.

I’ve forwarded your letter to Neal Barnard, M.D., PCRM’s president, and we have discussed
your concerns. Neal has known Dr. Heimlich for many years, and he is confident that any
research Dr. Heimlich has undertaken is ethically sound. However, we are not familiar with the
specifics of the research efforts you mention in your letter.

Matteson to Pippin, December 17, 2008:

You state you are unaware of the specifics of the research efforts I mentioned. I am not certain
if this means you don't know about them at all, or you don't know the protocols. For this
reason, I send to you links to several reports I found which are concerning, and as you are
particularly concerned with ethics in medicine, I hope that you will be able to look into and
respond to them. Some of the content includes such statements as "Heimlich's efforts to cure
AIDS, Lyme disease, and cancer by giving patients malaria -- called malariotherapy -- have
been condemned by the World Health Organization as charlatanism, yet Heimlich has
persisted, advertising malariotherapy on his website and conducting experiments on people in
China. He has sought to establish malariotherapy clinics in South Africa." (from the Francis
article).

Deadly Medicine? by Steve Volk, Philadelphia Weekly, September 15, 2004

Is Dr. Heimlich Really a Savior? by Brian Ross, ABC 20/20, June 8, 2007, (I note that Dr
Barnard, to whom you sent a copy of my letter, was interviewed also).

Heimlich's Maneuver by Thomas Francis, Cleveland Scene, August 11, 2004

Pippin to Matteson, December 17, 2008:

I have received your reply and references. I will look at these and also forward to Dr. Barnard
with the results of my review. We certainly understand concerns related to possible issues of
human research ethics and scientific merit. You will of course receive a reply.
Matteson to Pippin, December 26, 2008:

I hadn't heard back from you, but was curious about a couple more things I have found after
taking your suggestion about making further inquires of the Heimlich Institute. One is this
website of the Heimlich Institute:
http://web.archive.org/web/20031014232253/www.heimlichinstitute.org/
malariotherapy.html

One of the articles there is a speech by Dr. Heimlich in 2002 referring to preparatory trials, as
well as a study done (apparently by Dr Heimlich or coworkers) on malariotherapy for HIV in
China to which I found further reference at
http://www.lightparty.com/Health/MalarioTherapy.html There is reference to a study of
malariotherapy done in the Congo, (not Dr Heimlich's study) but as far as I know, the study
was never published.

I've not been able to find any information about where either of these trials were registered, or
how they were conducted, or what the final results were. Do you have any other information
about them?

[NO REPLY]

Fast forward to December 17, 2016, the day after my dad’s death. Via a PCRM media release that day,
The Physicians Committee Remembers Henry J. Heimlich for Innovative Medicine:

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine salutes the life and career of Henry J.
Heimlich, M.D., a tremendously innovative and creative scientist. The Heimlich maneuver, for
which he is known, has saved countless lives. But it was Dr. Heimlich's unwavering
compassion, and his steadfast refusal to support animal experiments, which consistently
impressed his colleagues.

In 2005, he gave his name for the Physicians Committee’s Henry J. Heimlich Award for
Innovative Medicine,4 an award that recognizes the ability to see innovative and surprisingly
simple solutions to seemingly insurmountable medical issues.

...“Dr. Heimlich was the embodiment of innovation, compassion, and getting the job done,”
says Physicians Committee president Neal Barnard, M.D., F.A.C.C. “His work has inspired
researchers and medical students to break convention, think creatively, and focus on what
counts: saving lives.”

I can’t account for Dr. Barnard and his organization’s unwavering admiration for my dad, especially
their unwillingness to distance themselves from the Heimlich Institute’s horrific “malariotherapy”
experiments, described here by Cyndi Monahan, a New Jersey Lyme Disease patient via a June 1991
American Health article, Heimlich's Maneuver?

"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."

4 To my knowledge, PCRM hasn’t presented the award since 2010 at a celebrity-studded event that was
reported by the LA Weekly.
As it happens, per this letter donated by my dad to the University of Cincinnati’s Henry J. Heimlich
Archival Collection, Dr. Barnard may have helped finance Ms. Monahan’s “treatment”:

May 30, 1991

Neal D. Bernard, M.D.

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
P.O. Box 6322
Washington, D.C. 20015

Dear Neal:

I received your generous donation of $1,000.00 on May 20. Thank you so much for your
continuing support of our research projects.

I'm pleased to report our first group of Lyme disease patients has completed malariatherapy at
the clinic in Panama and their induced malaria is being cured. In fact, I leave tomorrow so that
I can be there this weekend. The results so far are gratifying, and we hope to see even more
progress in the weeks to come.

In about an hour, Susan and I will be meeting with Mike Handley to discuss the PSA's to focus
on responsible medicine.

Keep in touch. As soon as I have finished documenting our recent malariatherapy group, a
report will be sent to you for your interest.

Thought you might care to see the enclosed speech given at graduation of Eastern Virginia
Medical College.

Thank you again for your support.

Sincerely,

Henry J. Heimlich
President
The Heimlich Institute
2368 Victory Parkway Suite 410
Cincinnati, OH 45206

Finally, re: the use of animals for training or for medical research, I have zero knowledge of the
subject, therefore I have no opinion.

I do, however, have a devil’s advocate question that might be posed to Dr. Barnard, Dr. Pippin, and/or
other PCRM representatives.

Via Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary published in the June 1974 issue of Emergency Medicine in which dad
first described the treatment he subsequently named the Heimlich maneuver.

Every year in the United States, 3900 healthy people strangle on food stuck in their tracheas.
That’s more people, by the way, than are killed each year in accidental shootings.

...What's really needed then is a first aid procedure that doesn't require specialized instruments
or equipment and can be performed by any informed layman - or even considered by a
physician before resorting to tracheostomy with its attendant hazards. So, experimentally at
least, I have developed such a procedure. It's been tested only on dogs but I believe the logic of
the concept and the favorable findings warrant public dissemination.
 ...Standing behind the victim, the rescuer puts both arms around him just above the belt line,
allowing head, arms, and upper torso to hang forward. Then, grasping his own right wrist with
his left hand, the rescuer rapidly and strongly presses into the victim's abdomen, forcing the
diaphragm upward, compressing the lungs, and expelling the obstructing bolus.

...The procedure is adapted from experimental work with four 38-pound beagles, in which I
was assisted by surgical research technician Michael H. McNeal. After being given an
intravenous anesthetic, each dog was "strangled" with a size 32 cuffed endotracheal tube
inserted into the larynx. After the cuff was distended to create total obstruction of the trachea,
the animal went into immediate respiratory distress as evidenced by spasmodic, paradoxical
respiratory movements of the chest and diaphragm. At this point, with a sudden thrust. I
pressed the palm of my hand deeply and firmly into the abdomen of the animal a short distance
below the rib cage, thereby pushing upward on the diaphragm. The endotracheal tube popped
out of the trachea and, after several labored respirations, the animal began to breathe normally.
This procedure was even more effective when the other hand maintained constant pressure on
the lower abdomen directing almost all the pressure toward the diaphragm.

We repeated the experiment more than 20 times on each animal with the same excellent
results When a bolus of raw hamburger was substituted for the endotracheal tube, it, too, was
ejected by the same procedure, always after one or two compressions.

Here’s my question.

Since dad used the beagles in his research, if PCRM had been around at the time would Dr. Barnard
and his organization have attempted to shut down the research and thereby presumably derail the
development of the Heimlich maneuver which, according to PCRM’s remembrance of my father, “has
saved countless lives”?

Thanks for your time/attention and I’d welcome any thoughts or questions.

Sincerely,

Peter M. Heimlich
STREET ADDRESS REDACTED
Peachtree Corners, GA 30096 USA
ph: (208)474-7283
website: http://medfraud.info
blog: http://the-sidebar.com
e-mail: peter.heimlich@gmail.com
Twitter: @medfraud_pmh
bio: http://tinyurl.com/ych7o7dr

cc: Karl Oestreich, Media Relations Director