From: Dan.Tierney@governor.ohio.

gov
To: peter.heimlich@gmail.com
Subject: RE: Peter Heimlich following up our telecon
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2019 17:30:43 +0000

I have passed this on to our staff so that we can respond.

Thank you,

Dan Tierney

Press Secretary
Office of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine
Office number: 614-466-6242
Mobile number: 614-653-6676
Dan.Tierney@governor.ohio.gov
June 5, 2019

The Hon. Mike DeWine, Governor

% Dan Tierney, Press Secretary
Dan.Tierney@governor.ohio.gov
77 South High Street
Columbus, Ohio 43215

Dear Governor DeWine:

In the interests of protecting the health and safety of infants and others in Ohio and
elsewhere, I’d appreciate your help in addressing and preferably putting a halt to unfounded,
dangerous medical information being circulated by this Cincinnati organization.

Heimlich Heroes
615 Elsinore Place, Suite 901
Cincinnati, OH 45202

According to the group's website:

Heimlich Heroes was developed through a cooperative effort of Deaconess

Associations, Inc. and the Heimlich Institute...To date more than 100,000 people have
learned the Heimlich Maneuver through Heimlich Heroes training program.

Here’s a primary concern.

Per this training video the organization published on YouTube and a training poster from the
organization’s website, Heimlich Heroes teaches the public to perform abdominal thrusts (the
Heimlich maneuver) on choking infants:
Since 2002, my wife and I have been researching and reporting about the Heimlich maneuver
(named by and after my father, the late Henry J. Heimlich MD). To our knowledge, since dad
introduced his namesake anti-choking treatment in 1974 no legitimate medical organization
or medical expert has ever recommend using it on infants.

Here’s why.

As I reported last year, the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Red Cross
explained they don’t recommend or teach the treatment because it “may cause injuries.”

What kind of injuries? According to the AHA:

Abdominal thrusts, however, may cause complications. For this reason, the Heimlich
maneuver should never be performed unless it is necessary. Reported complications of
the Heimlich maneuver include damage to internal organs, such as rupture or
laceration of abdominal or thoracic viscera. In fact, victims who receive the Heimlich
maneuver should be medically evaluated to rule out any life-threatening complications.

If those concerns apply to children and adults, it’s easy to imagine the potential complications
for tiny babies.
Shockingly, the Heimlich Heroes organization is aware of these concerns.

Via the group’s training materials:

In other words, Heimlich Heroes has knowingly taught “over 100,000 people” an unapproved
medical treatment of unproven effectiveness and safety that may seriously injure infants or
worse.

Insane as that is, it’s not the only problem.

Via Heimlich maneuver on unconscious persons causes controversy by Nick Kammerer,

Rambler Newspapers (Irving, TX), November 24, 2014:

Heimlich Heroes, a Cincinnati-based first aid program developed partly by Henry

Heimlich, is teaching students to perform the Heimlich maneuver on unconscious
choking victims. This means that school children are being taught a medical practice
that is not recommended by the American Heart Association or Red Cross, two highly
credible public health organizations.
In an attempt to learn more, in 2014 I e-mailed polite questions to Terri Huntington,
Heimlich Heroes’ Program Manager since the organization's founding in 201 3.

Among other questions, I asked her to provide citations for for any published research
supporting the use of the Heimlich maneuver on unconscious choking victims. 1 (I was already
aware that none exists.)

After failing to answer my questions, Ms. Huntington replied:

(We) are not comfortable with the focus of your questions. As such, neither Deaconess
nor any of its affiliates, including Heimlich Heroes, will respond to any additional
inquiries from you and politely request that you refrain from contacting us further.

I wasn’t surprised by Ms. Huntington’s incompetent response. According to her LinkedIn, she
has no medical training, no background in the medical field, and her prior job was in multi-
level marketing.

1 At the time I was unaware her program was teaching the public to perform "the Heimlich" on infants
in choking emergencies.
As it happens, Heimlich Heroes is simply the most recent example of a continuum of
unethical, dangerous conduct by the nonprofit Heimlich Institute which for decades
advocated unapproved, experimental, potentially-lethal medical treatments dreamed up by
my father.

1) As widely-reported -- most recently this March by Xinhua News, China’s largest news outlet
-- “malariotherapy” was arguably dad’s most notorious project. From the late 1980s until
2005, the Heimlich Institute funded and supervised a string of unsupervised offshore trials in
which U.S. and foreign nationals suffering from cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS were
infected with the malaria.

Via Scientists Linked to Heimlich Investigated by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer

(Sunday front page), February 16, 2003:

(Dr. Heimlich’s experiments) 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.''

2) In 1974 using fabricated case reports, my dad began promoting the use of abdominal
thrusts for responding to a drowning emergency.

Via (Northern Virginia) parks authority teaches lifeguards discredited Heimlich maneuver
(UPDATE: Authority discards Heimlich) by Tom Jackman, The Washington Post, June 3,
2011:

The list of experts who reject the Heimlich maneuver (for drowning rescue) is lengthy:
The American Red Cross; the United States Lifesaving Association; the American Heart
Association; the Institute of Medicine; the International Life Saving Federation and
many experienced doctors and academics have strongly inveighed against doing
“abdominal thrusts” for drowning victims.

...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. Orlowski is chief of
pediatrics and pediatric intensive care at University Community Hospital in Tampa.

For more details about some of those poor outcome cases – including children -- please see
this page on my website, Some of the victims - casualties of the Heimlich maneuver for
drowning rescue.

For decades, even after the bodies began turning up, the Heimlich Institute relentlessly and
aggressively promoted the treatment.2

3) Based on zero evidence or research, for years the Heimlich Institute claimed abdominal
thrusts were an effective treatment for asthma.

Via The Trouble With Henry by Shane Johnson, Salt Lake City Weekly, December 29, 2004:

Loren Greenway, administrative director of respiratory and pulmonary medicine for

Intermountain Health Care, and a nationally certified asthma educator, finds
Heimlich's asthma maneuver physiologically unfounded and dangerous.

2 The day after I threatened their nonprofit status, in 2012 the Heimlich Institute reportedly
scrubbed its website of all “Heimlich for drowning” information.
 "Using the Heimlich maneuver in an acute asthmatic condition...could actually kill
somebody," said Greenway.

..."My father is enormously charismatic and persuasive," Peter Heimlich says. "People
trust him because the maneuver for choking has saved so many lives...It doesn't seem
to bother him that people may be hurt or killed. The whole thing's tragic and sick."

Please note that my dad had zero training or expertise in immunology, drowning
resuscitation, or pulmonary medicine,3 but that lack of knowledge didn’t stop him from
spending the last 40 years of his career putting innocent people in harm’s way.

Re: performing the Heimlich maneuver on choking infants and unconscious patients, during
dad’s lifetime –- he died in 2016 – the Heimlich Institute stood alone in recommending and
teaching those treatments.

Based on the above information, is it unreasonable to conclude that the Heimlich Heroes
program was designed to continue the Heimlich Institute’s decades of using the public as
unwitting human guinea pigs to test my dad’s reckless, unfounded medical claims?

In order to address these and other concerns, in recent years I’ve made best efforts to engage
the longtime vice president of the Heimlich Institute, my brother Phil Heimlich. (As you’ll
undoubtedly recall, over a decade ago your son Pat and Phil served together on the Hamilton
County Commission.)

I’ve sent Phil a handful of polite e-mails and faxed him at Mike Allen’s law firm (where he
appears to be employed), but I’ve never received a reply.

Adding to the muddle, according to the most recent tax filing by the Heimlich Institute (2017),
the organization has zero assets.

3 Dad’s last hospital job was Director of Surgery at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital where he was fired for
misconduct in 1977. He never again maintained a medical practice.
Two months ago I learned that the Elsa Heisel Sule Foundation of Fort Mitchell, KY, donated
tens of thousands of dollars to the Heimlich Heroes program, so I sent multiple e-mail
inquiries to the organization's executives requesting more information.

For example, I asked if their foundation consulted any medical authorities re: the
effectiveness/safety of performing the Heimlich maneuver on infants and on unconscious
choking victims.

I received multiple confirmations of receipt but no other communications, so I wouldn’t be

surprised to learn that they performed zero due diligence.

Like other benighted Heimlich Institute projects, it seems inevitable that Heimlich Heroes
will result in serious injuries or deaths. I have no sway to prevent such outcomes, I can only
notify those in authority, hence this outreach.

To perhaps help avoid further tragedies (and accompanying misery), would you please review
the above information, direct it to any/all appropriate oversight agencies, and provide me
with the results?

Thank you for your time/consideration and I look forward to your reply. If you have any
questions I might be able to help answer, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Sincerely,

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