The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 95 - Henry Heimlich
Episode Date: July 8, 2015Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the man behind the Heimlich Maneuver.SOURCESTOUR DATESREDBUBBLE MERCHPATREON...
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out how much at Airbnb.ca-host. Good afternoon sirs. You are listening to
the dollop. This is a bi-wiggy podcast in which I, Mr. Dave Anthony, read a story
from American history to my friend. Garrett Reynolds who has no idea what the
topic is about. What's happening? Thank you very much for listening. Excuse me?
We'll be right back. What? Do you want to look who to do? I'll do one bottle. People say this is funny. Not Gary Gara. Dave okay. Someone or something is tickling people. Is it for fun? And this is not going to become a tickly podcast. Okay. You are Queen Fakie of made-up town. All hail Queen Shit of Liesville. A bunch of religious virgins go to Mingle and do what? Pray. Hi, Gary. No. Is he dead my friend? No. No.
Cool girl. 1963. Jesus Christ. Sorry. Wait. I'll be at NerdMelt this Saturday opening for
Will Anderson. July 11th. I'm going to go to that and watch. Great. Now shout your
fucking date. I already did it. July 11th. I'll be at NerdMelt. It's just not good when
you do it. When I do it, it's like. Alright. Okay. There's something to it. Something
special. Jesus. Florida Coroner. Florida Coroner? You heard me. Call him the
Floriner. The Floriner. Robert Hogan published an article in the Journal of
the American Medical Association that called the attention to the cases of
nine Florida diners who collapsed and died while eating at restaurants. Oh god.
Wait. What? This is about nine people who died? Nine people died at restaurants.
Total? Yeah. Okay. Not just at like Long John Silver's or something. Because that
is not a story. That's a lot more than nine. Yeah. No. That's a Friday night at
Long John's. Their deaths were first attributed to natural causes, usually a
heart attack. It wasn't until Hogan performed an autopsy that he discovered
food lodged in each person's airway, steak in four cases, beef in two, ham, fat in
one, kippered herring, kippered herring in one, and broiled lobster in another.
Ham fat? Ham. Ham. Ham fat. Ham? One guy died from ham fat, which means it was a
big, like he took a big piece of like of just fat from a ham and put it like
enough fat from a ham. What year is this? This is 1963. Enough fat from a
piece of ham to choke you, which is a lot of fucking ham fat. To be choking on
fat, that's not really a life. That's also a shitty restaurant. Yeah. How do you
want your ham fat in huge chunks? Thanks. Quote, the cause of death was determined
to be asphyxiation. Hogan called this phenomenon the cafe corn coronary. Wait,
so they all thought that I'm, this is 1963. Yeah. How when someone is choking in
a restaurant, are you like their heart when they're pointing at their throat?
It was a different time. It was a different time. He's doing a seal
impression because of his heart. It was a different time. I don't, I don't know. I
don't know. I don't know. I think gesturing was around in the 60s as much as it is
today. Either way, a very clever coroner put the problem together and he
realized that there was stuff that everybody's. They're joking. He called it
the cafe coronary and implored the medical community to recognize choking as a
serious problem. What? I don't know. Wait. It is the 60s. They didn't recognize choking as a
thing? No. What happened when a guy drowned? What was that? He had underwater
heart attacks of his lungs. This guy got shot, but he must have a heart attack.
Yeah. No. He had one of those exploding heart attacks with metal. He died. Yeah.
Some guy will bring it on. Medical researchers began working to come up
with an anti-choking treatment that was better than the current treatment, which
was. Ignoring. Which was the back slap. The back slap. How you doing, Bernie? Way to go,
man. You ate the fuck out of that ham fit. One doctor invented the throat evac,
which, after being inserted into the victim's mouth and creating an airtight
seal, sucked up whatever was obstructing the airway. Okay. Can I predict the
downside? What? That it would fuck your lungs up? I mean, I can't, I can't see how
it would be great to have put a vacuum over your face. Put a vacuum through? It's
just not. Also hard to do. Yeah, and who's carrying it around? Right, who's carrying it around?
Hey, I'm telling you, I know it's been a thousand meals without incident, but that
one, that one. Hogging himself marketed a nine inch long plastic tweezers called
the Chokesaver. Called the worst thing to put in a throat. Oh, he's throwing up. The
public became fearful of choking. Radio stations were running public. Amazing.
They just, we just discovered choking. Are you choking me? That's insane. But they
just found out about it. Now people are like, oh shit, man, I don't want to be the
next choking. People have been choking for centuries. Tiny pieces. People have
always choked. Nobody knew. How the fuck did you not know? I don't know. What the
phagemi Hendricks died of choking on vomit like three years later. Yeah.
Thank God they acknowledged that otherwise they'd be like Jimmy's heart threw up in
his mouth. They were public service announcements about the threat posed by
the Cafe Coronary. It became obvious that whoever invented a way to solve the
choking problem would be a hero. I can solve it. Chew. Chew, you fat fucks. Chew. Chew
your fam fat. Henry Heimlich was all about fame. Whoa. He had experienced it in
1941 when as a 21 year old passenger on a New York City bound train, he rescued a
fellow traveler after the train derailed in Connecticut. He got a mention on the
front page of the New York Times and a gold watch from the Greater New York
Safety Council. Okay. Heimlich went on to serve as a Navy doctor in World War Two
during which he volunteered for prolonged extra hazardous duty in the Gobi
Desert. After he returned to New York and specialized in thoracic surgery, a field
that allowed him to hold a patient's beating heart in his hands, but he just
wasn't feeling it. He needed more. I can't feel it. I can't feel it. It's not. This is
boring. Is it? Is anybody else bored? I was sitting on my hand. Is that the
problem? He needed more. Being a surgeon, he was limited to just helping one person
at a time. He realized that he came up with a, if he came up with a new and
revolutionary treatment or procedure, he could exponentially increase the number
of lives he saved. But it's also about attention. A little bit. So he's a little
bit like the Elron Hubbard of the esophagus.
Yeah. Okay, cool. Let's make sure. First in the mid 50s, he introduced a surgery
that made it possible for people with severe esophageal damage to swallow
food. Okay. He called it the Heimlich operation. Okay. So he's just, he's just
trying to put a stink on everything. Then he came up with a Heimlich lunchbox. Then
he came up with a chest drain valve that could be used to treat a collapsed lung,
which he named the Heimlich valve. Oh, wow. Okay. So he's like Ron Coe.
In 1969, Heimlich moved to Cincinnati with his wife and four kids, where he
became a director. What is for kids Heimlich, Heimi, Lick, and Heimer. He became
director of surgery at the city's Jewish hospital. He then turned his attention
to choking. He started to develop a treatment that was, as he put it, so
simple anybody could do it. From his thoracic surgery experience, Heimlich
knew that at the moment of choking, the lungs contain a substantial amount of air.
He concluded using that air to expel whatever was lodged in the larynx was
the best hope. In his hospital's animal lab, he partially anesthetized a 38 pound
beagle. Oh, God. Quote the equivalent of having three or four good stiff drinks at
dinner, he told his lab technician. Yeah, I'm sure it's easy to equate what it's
like to drug a dog. Well, don't worry. It's just like having four drinks to the
dog. It's like when he goes down to the regal beagle. Next, he strangled the dog
with an endotracheal tube. Then Heimlich attempted to dislodge the tube. At first,
he tried pressing on the dog's chest, but nothing happened. With the beagle on the
verge of death, he sadly removed the tube. Then inspiration struck. I just got the
idea that if I push up on the diaphragm, the diaphragm comes up, the chest
cavity decreases in volume, and that would compress his lungs. Sure enough, when
he did just that, the tube flew out. He tried the same technique on three other
beagles each time with the same result. These beagles were like,
Why, God, why? Terrible beagle life. Terrible beagle life. Alated, he sent his lab
tech down to the hospital commissary for some raw hamburger. That flew out of the
beagles mouths, too. Beagles are like, Stop, can we eat the hamburger? Jesus Christ.
It's over there again. I just almost had it down. So he proved how one could save
a choking dog, but he still had had not proven that it would work on people.
Heimlich reached out to a medical journal that did not require articles to be
peer reviewed. It's always a good sign, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's a journal. I am
published in the shit journal. Yep. In the June 1974 issue, his article was
published. It was called Pop Goes the Cafe Coronary. Heimlich got a copy of the
journal to Arthur Snyder, the Chicago Daily News nationally syndicated
science writer. Snyder wrote an article. Heimlich instructed would-be rescuers on
how to perform the maneuver. He urged readers to report the results of their
rescue attempts to him. So now the general public are basically the researchers and
the subjects. Yeah. It's a giant world lab. Well, because there's not a product. He's
released information. Just a giant lab test. Yeah. One week later, a man in
Washington state used the new treatment to save his choking next door neighbor.
People are really choking a lot. For people who just found out about it, it
seems like an epidemic. There were no knives until 1972. Yeah, what the fuck? This is a
big piece of meat I'm about to put in my mouth. And I mean, what was the mental
adjustment from going like, well, none of those people died of heart attacks. They all fucking choked.
News article helps prevent a choking death reported the Seattle Times. That's a
great title. It's really good. Yeah. Other Snyder readers across the country made
similar rescues leading to more headlines, but not everyone jumped on the
Heimlich maneuver bandwagon. Based on the lack of hard scientific evidence, the
American Red Cross would only endorse the Heimlich maneuver as a secondary
technique to be used if back blows were unsuccessful. Back blows.
All right, hit his tummy. Oh, that's a meatball. Callback. Yeah, callback. In June, 1976, the
National Academy of Sciences Committee on Emergency Medical Services held a two-day
conference on emergency airway management. It's a great conference. Yeah, fun. If
you want to have a good time. Oh, God, the buzz. The buzz. The buzz when you're
finding your seat in that room. Oh, the personality. Oh, man. Doesn't matter where
you're sitting in that cafeteria, you're going to be sitting next to a winner.
That's right. It'd be great if someone choked in there and they were like, he's
having a heart attack. All the bigs and emergency saving techniques were there.
Heimlich gave an impassioned speech bragging that more than 500 lives had
been saved by the maneuver. After a speech, nine conference members gathered to
try to reach an official consensus on choking treatments. For hours, they
debated. Finally, just after midnight, they voted six to three in favor of
elevating the Heimlich maneuver above the backslap.
Hmm. Tommy backslap was like, no, come on. I took so long. How am I going to
sell these t-shirts? Oh my God, I overbought shirts. And mugs. And mugs. But the
group's chairman and anesthesiologist named Don Benson still wasn't on board.
The next morning, he told the conference that the group had been unable to obtain
a universal opinion. Heimlich flipped out. He stormed out of the conference. He was
convinced they were just all jealous because he was an unknown man in the
field. So Heimlich decided to bypass the medical establishment and to take his
maneuver directly to the public. He sold Heimlich maneuver posters and t-shirts
and made a slick film that featured choking actors being saved by his
technique and a horror movie-like score composed by his son Peter, a musician who
performed in a band called Choke. What? I mean, I don't even want to get into how
weird that is. I love you dad. I love you dad. We're a tribute band of my dad's
technique. And he's like, call yourselves the Heimlich. He's like, we're going with
Choke. He's like, no, fuck. It's a boy who loves his dad. Yeah. But I love that
time when like, reefer Matt, when you could just like make something scary as
fuck in the public and be like, well, shit. Although we still fall for that shit.
But yeah, we do. Yeah. Heimlich took his maneuver on tour across the country and
even appeared on The Tonight Show. He cracked suggestive jokes while Johnny
Carson demonstrated the maneuver on Angie Dickinson. What? That's a great
doctor. Yeah. Yeah, look at that. You're getting a little hard back there. Yeah.
Yeah, you know you're a good doctor when you're sitting in with the Jane Goodall
spot. He spoke to non-medical groups about the maneuver. He told stories of
miraculous rescues and his speeches often ended with him asking everyone in
the audience to practice the maneuver on the person sitting next to him. What is
going on? It's like a hula hoop. It really is. Like taking everyone by storm. By the
late 1970s, a booking agency ranked Heimlich as one of the top 10 public
speakers in the United States. Oh, God. So it's working. It is working. I mean, it
worked. We already know it worked. Eventually the Red Cross and the rest of
the medical establishment realized it was fighting a losing battle. Even though
Heimlich still lacked convincing laboratory studies, he had managed to
create a set of facts in the public. Even though he didn't have scientific facts, he
did shoot hamburger from a choking beagle four times. In 1985,
surgeon general C. Everett Koop proclaimed the Heimlich maneuver the only
method that should be used to treat choking victims. The American Heart
Association, along with the Red Cross, recommended the maneuver as the primary
anti-choking treatment. All right. How about that? There we go. The rise of the
Heimlich. Heimlich won and made himself a household name. Yeah, listen. I mean, yeah,
he is. He's on posters, but sounds like a bit of a psycho. Well, he had created
enemies. I'm sure. Due to Heimlich's constant criticism of the Red Cross,
enrollment in their first aid classes dropped. The Red Cross looked into
suing him for slander. The National Academy of Sciences was also pissed.
Heimlich had declared backslaps, deathblows, and accused the organization of
engaging in a cover-up of medical Watergate. He called it. Wow. He's a good
winner. Yeah. He also pissed off individual doctors. He even tried to initiate
ethics proceedings against one doctor who opposed the Heimlich maneuver. In the
end, Heimlich's maneuver proved to be correct, and it went to his head,
particularly because he had butted heads with the medical community and been
proven right. While becoming a hero in the eye of the public, now he thought he
was uniquely equipped to solve other, more pressing medical problems. He
searched for even bigger life-saving ideas in the early 80s. In 1974, a surgeon
named Victor Esch claimed he had used the Heimlich to save the life of a man who
had nearly drowned on a beach. More similar reports trickled in. So in 1985,
Heimlich argued that the maneuver should replace CPR at a joint American Heart
Association Red Cross beating in Dallas, Texas. Even the image of that is just
like graphic, arguably. Someone just like a limp body where you're like, hold
them up so I can punch his stomach a bunch. Trust me. I have a beagle. Once again,
Heimlich had zero scientific studies to support his claim, and this time he had
even fewer anecdotal reports. Drowning experts were worried that the Heimlich
maneuver was dangerous since it could delay resuscitation efforts and was
likely to induce vomiting, which can lead to aspiration pneumonia. But four
members of the drowning panel agreed to add the maneuver to the drowning rescue
protocols as a secondary treatment. This time, there are second guests in
themselves because Heimlich had won the previous fight over choking. Yeah, don't
fucking bet against Heimlich. He'll go out on a goddamn tour. Heimlich makes
bumper stickers. Do what he says. Quote, we were aware that there was controversy
over the prior set of guidelines on choking, says Joe Ornato, the drowning
panel's chairman. I didn't want anyone to potentially not have his life saved if
it turned out Dr. Heimlich's idea was correct. We were worried. We didn't want to
look stupid. Well, we were operated from a place of fear. That's what you want
from doctors, which is good when we're dealing with drowners. It's better when
your doctor's scared. Yep. But that was not good enough for Heimlich. He kept
pushing for the maneuver to replace CPR as a primary near drowning treatment.
Eventually, the Institute of Medicine, the nation's leading medical advisory
group, agreed to give him a hearing. In 1993, Heimlich testified before a
committee. Quote, Heimlich kind of impressed me as a guy who doesn't really
know anything about research science, says Peter Rosen, who chaired the IOM
committee. It was an old man telling tales. Is that good? Oh, that's perfect. The
IOM committee's report concluded that there was no good evidence to support the
use of the Heimlich maneuver for drowning victims. So Heimlich was like, I'm
taking this shit public. I thought he was going to move on to be like, well, if
someone breaks their arm, that's how you fix it. Heimlich. Heimlich. You get
syphilis? Heimlich. Just as he had done during his fight over choking, Heimlich
decided to go around the medical establishment. He went to a U.S. Life
Saving Association seminar and urged lifeguards to ignore the American Heart
Association guidelines. Oh boy. Quote, I think the Nuremberg trials told the
story that no one can be excused for saying I was ordered to do so or was
taught to do so to kill people. What the fuck? This is the Heimlich maneuver?
He was just a raging psycho? Yeah, well, basically. When you hear about this, you
think that this was just some guy who was like, oh boy, I don't know. Call it the
Heimlich maneuver, I guess. I'm just here to make people's lives easier. Instead,
it's the total opposite. Yeah, the fucking lunatic. It's a fucking egomaniac. Who
doesn't give a fuck if people die? Jeff Ellison Associates, the nation's
largest private lifeguard company, which trains about 35,000 lifeguards. Now,
don't tell me that they don't tell me that they told people to listen to
Heimlich or something. Begin teaching the Heimlich maneuver as a first response. Oh
god damn it. They continue to do so for the next five years until a reporter.
Until everyone died. Until a reporter for the Water Park Industry Trade magazine,
Fun World. Action Park News. Fun World. Fun World. I'm a reporter from Fun World.
I'm not talking to Fun World. Last time you guys got me. You know, it fucking
60 minutes. Now, how do you respond to these allegations? Sorry, Fun World. Fun
World's on the phone. No, they make you have a good time. They lull you and then
you admit you're bullshit. It's not a Fun World. And it's not a Fun World. Fun World
wrote a story documenting the questionable science behind Heimlich's
crusade. Sorry, is anybody reading Fun World publication for any medical
information? You know what I was reading in Fun World the other day about cancer.
Oh, you read the cancer thing? That was pretty amazing. Did you read the
diabetes thing and cat fancy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. There's the
link between litter and diabetes. The other or no definite definitive numbers.
There were rumors that Ellis lifeguards rescues went
parachaped because of the Heimlich. Dr. James Orlowski tracked the use of the
Heimlich maneuver in droughtings and discovered that more than 30 cases in
which the Heimlich maneuver had been used produced destructive results from
stomach rupture to aspiration ammonia to death. I just can't imagine like
physically seeing that. Oh God, I know. Like an unconscious person being given
the Heimlich maneuver. It just looks like fucking crazy. Zombie rape. Yeah, this is
exactly what it's called. Thank you. Orlowski says he he Orlowski said he
found no instances where the maneuver saved a near drowning victim. Ellis
lifeguards then dropped the maneuver, which was a severe blow to Heimlich. Yeah.
Well, let's keep our eyes on what matters here. How's Heimlich's ego? Who cares if it's
killing people? My name was out there. I was first. He looked to his family for
support. His son Phil was always there for him. Phil used to sell Heimlich maneuver
t-shirts. But now he was on the Cincinnati City Council. Peter of the Banchoke now
lived on the West Coast. Banchoke now lived on the West Coast, but he had amassed
what is probably the world's largest private archive of Henry Heimlich
articles. Heimlich came out of his funk ready to fight. He had other ideas to
cure the world of its ills. Oh God. In 1917, the Austrian psychiatrist Julius
Wagner von Jettig proved that a malaria induced fever would kill syphilis after
testing the theory on patients. Okay. Malaria therapy soon became the standard
treatment for neuro syphilis. Oh boy. Wagner von Jettig was awarded the noble
prize in medicine. Okay. So what is he going to take? Then the discovery of
penicillin in the 1940s rendered malarial therapy obsolete and it was
eventually abandoned as a medical treatment. Now my worry here is that
Heimlich is going to get involved with malaria. Why would you think that? Because
he's in, he really wants, he wants more. So why don't you go ahead right now and
tell me what he was doing with malaria. One Dr. Heimlich started campaigning to
resurrect the practice, not as a treatment for neuro syphilis, but as a means to
fight other diseases like cancer. Oh, what? Well, getting it done. Yeah. He had
zero expertise in oncology yet his idea of treating cancer with malaria therapy
was not immediately dismissed. The CDC invited him to Atlanta to discuss it
but refused to supply Heimlich with malaria. Oh, come on. Blood. Give me a
little bit. Just give me like a pint. Give me a shot. Give me a shot. Give me a
pint of malaria. A shot glass. Fine, just one little bit. Come on. A little bit of blood.
A taste. A little bit. A spoonful. Come on, I'm not walking out of here with a little bit. Pour a little bit in your palm of your hand. I'm not walking out of here with some blood. Come on. Come on, I go buddy Heimlich. Come on, buddy. Want to do the Heimlich on you? Heimlich. So he headed out of the country. Sure, go get that malaria blood. In 1987 he talked doctors at the Mexican National Cancer Institute to begin
treating five patients with malaria therapy. Interesting call. Less than a year or four the
patients were dead. All right. So, pretty good. Heimlich decided that if malaria
therapy didn't work on cancer, it would probably cure something else. Sure. In
1990 he published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine suggesting
malaria therapy as a treatment for Lyme disease. Okay. It wasn't long before Lyme
disease suffers, known as Limies. But so if you're an English person with Lyme
disease, Limie Limies. So they started requesting the treatment because
they're suffering and there's no cure. So they'll do anything. Request came in from
all over the world. But the excitement was short-lived. A New Jersey woman who
was one of his first Lyme patients announced Heimlich, quote, if anybody
asked me about Dr. Heimlich and his supposed cure, I wouldn't hesitate to
tell them to run away as fast as possible. The Limes, who were a small knit
community, quickly turned against malaria therapy. Yeah. But nothing would stop
Heimlich. Take it to the top. By the early 90s, he was touting malaria therapy as a
solution to AIDS. Oh, boy. Eminent immunology experts dismissed Heimlich's
idea as quite dangerous and scientifically unsound. Seriously dangerous
because what do you mean? Because it's a blood disease. What could go wrong?
Many things. If you give people with AIDS malaria, I don't see what can possibly
hurt. I think their blood is going to get affected negatively. That's
weird. Yeah. But Heimlich did not need the support of immunology experts. Fuck
no, he had faith. All he needed was some cash and a place to trout his idea.
Hollywood supplied the money. Oh, God. Prominent members of the entertainment
industry like Amy Irving and Estelle Getty gave bundles which allowed Heimlich
to establish a malaria therapy clinic for HIV patients in Guangzhou, China. It's
always a good sign when you have to go to China to prove that you're right.
Yeah. Where you've taken your Mexico technology to China. You're in a good
spot. They're a team of four Chinese doctors injected at least eight HIV
patients with malaria blood. For each patient, the Heimlich Institute provided
the doctors with between five and ten thousand dollars. It's fine. Fine. Fine
trade there. Normal. That doesn't feel like body trafficking. There's no
problems. No problems there. Just selling humans. In 1996, Heimlich went to the
International Conference on AIDS in Vancouver and made an amazing
announcement. I've killed five people.
I have an announcement. If you put malaria in people with AIDS, they die. I have an
announcement. I peaked at the Heimlich Maneuver. He reported that CD4 counts,
which go down as HIV progresses to AIDS. Right. It's like your T cells. Yeah. So
in two of the Chinese HIV patients, the CD4 counts had increased after
a course of malaria therapy and that the counts remained high two years later.
Okay. But when AIDS experts looked at Heimlich's results, they saw that the test
the Chinese doctors had employed to measure CD4 levels was completely
unreliable. Great. So good info. The CD4 levels have gone up. What are you counting
with? I am using a mirror and pairs. Marbles. This led Heimlich to having a
falling out with the Chinese doctors. It then searched for other countries where
he could kill people with no cures. Cool. But no one else wanted to get on board
with the Heimlich train. Shocking. So he did the next Bex thing. He went to a
country without telling the government what he was doing and performed his
experiments. Perfect. That's always a good sign. Yeah. Yeah. That's when you know
you're on to something right. Yep. Lie. When you're lying to foreign
governments. This time it was Ethiopia. Terrible. But now the experiment was a
bit different. The Heimlich Institute was collecting CD4 and viral load data on
HIV positive patients who became infected with malaria. I can't believe we're
talking about the guy who invented the maneuver. He's just like in my head he's
like Mr. Rogers. And here he is going to Ethiopia to fucking just kill people because
he's a famed fuck because he just wants fame fuck. Yeah. He's a fucking fame
hunting cunt. So here's the catch. Everything is when some of the HIV came
down with malaria they would withhold treatment for malaria. Sorry. When some
but when he was giving people with HIV malaria. Yeah. They were having people who
got malaria who had HIV come in and they would withhold treatment. Oh Jesus. The
idea was that not treating the patient for three weeks would give them an
extremely high fever that would kill off the virus. It's a good plan. It's not.
I can't get over the last fact. But someone was after the good doctor. Someone
was out to ruin him. In 2002 a letter was sent to the Office for the Protection
of Research Subjects at the University of California at Los Angeles. It accused
two UCLA medical researchers of participating in illegal human
experiments on HIV patients in China. Quote these experiments have been
these experiments have been conducted under the direction of Dr. Henry
Heimlich known for the Heimlich maneuver. The letter was from a Dr. Bob Smith.
Mm-hmm. Certainly not a certainly not a made up name. No that feels real. It was
only the beginning. A few months later editors at more than 40 publications
received letters from a David Ayonscu accusing Heimlich of improperly taking
credit for inventing a type of esophageal surgery. Then. Oh boy. In September
2003 the website HeimlichInstitute.com went online. The official website of
Henry Heimlich's Institute was HeimlichInstitute.org but the.com site
was dedicated to destroying the doctor. Oh boy. The site featured a long angry
indictment of Heimlich and accused him of all sorts of medical misconduct. The
site's proprietor was listed as Holly Martins, a protagonist in the 1949
film noir The Third Man. The attacks began to exact a toll. UCLA launched
an investigation into its researchers work with Heimlich and ultimately found
that one researcher had violated federal laws. Meanwhile the Cincinnati
Inquirer Heimlich's hometown paper ran a front page story in which a rival
doctor called Heimlich a liar and a thief. One doctor says he invented the
Heimlich. Okay. Other doctors soon followed suit. Heimlich and his family
were traumatized. Quote. It's an incredibly painful and difficult thing
for someone to go through in the twilight of his life. Phil Heimlich, the
eldest of the doctor's four children. It's true though. That is so hard. It would be
like, you know, if you had AIDS and malaria and someone stopped giving you
medicine. Emotionally. Emotionally. Emotionally. It is the emotional version. It's
emotionally. Yeah. In 2004, Victoria Wells-Wolson MD was hired by the Heimlich
Institute to conduct a review on malaria therapy. Mm-hmm. Wilson wrote a draft
report summarizing her findings. She concluded that the preponderance of
evidence indicates that neither malaria or immunotherapy will cure HIV AIDS and
recommended that the Institute wait for results of other studies. She was fired
the next day. Well, she's an idiot. In 2006, the Red Cross, with that
explanation, amended its first aid guidelines, reinstituting backslaps as
the primary choking treatment. What? They really snuck that under it. And first, I've
heard of backslaps being the fucking driver of this. And relegated to Heimlich
and Maneuver, or as the Red Cross now calls it. Oh, give it to me. Abdominal
thrusts. Ah, fuck you, Heimlich. To secondary treatment status. Oh, man. Oh, God. No one
knows the results of the studies in Ethiopia. He changed. I do. Yeah, it's
probably not. Yeah, all died. All not good. All died from AIDS and malaria. He
changed the name of malaria therapy to immunotherapy because people were shying
away from malaria therapy. What about that name doesn't invite? It's always a
good sign when you're a doctor if you have to change the name of what you're
doing because it's getting a bad rep. Should just call it AIDS dice rolling.
Gamble AIDS. He told the reporter that six of the first seven HIV patients in
Ethiopia had experienced decreases in their viral loads and that he was
eagerly anticipating the results of the 42 other patients. Oh, gosh. Quote,
I've been right in just about everything I've done and when it gets to
something like this, I know. Cool. Heimlich, that shit crazy. Yeah. Meanwhile,
Heimlich hired a lawyer and an investigator to determine who was
behind the attacks on him. He knew he had a long list of enemies. He drew up a
short list and gave it to an investigator. It was quickly determined
that none of the people on the list were involved. But the investigator did make
some progress. He determined that all the email accounts, fake names, and web
hosting services could all be traced back to the same ISP number. Then in a
lucky break, the investigator discovered one of the phone numbers used by
Heimlich's nemesis. It had also been used in an internet classified ad for a 27
inch television and VCR. Whoa, okay. That's always a sweet combo. The seller was
located in Portland, Oregon, and the company he owned was called Global Fabric.
The seller identified himself as Pete, also known as Peter Heimlich. What the
fuck? What? Peter and his father had become estranged in 2001 over family
issues. He felt his father had ignored someone who had a medical issue in the
family. Pete then- Just give him malaria, put him in a bed.
They're fine. Pete then began looking into his father's career and concluded he was a
complete fraud and dangerously unethical. He and his wife closed their business and
spent all their time investigating and trying to ruin his father, Henry Heimlich.
Jesus. He now no longer uses the pseudonyms to attack his father. He uses his
real name and he continues the attacks. Classic father versus Jesus Christ. In 2014,
Heimlich 94 released his autobiography, Heimlich's Maneuvers. Oh gosh. At 94, that's
the best you could come up with. You've had a long time to mull it. That's good,
man. Heimlich's Maneuvers. That's a catchy name. It's awesome. To be called Heimlich my ass.
Yeah. So apparently according to the book, you saved a lot of lives and invented a
lot of techniques. How do you feel about Heimlich? Well, I feel I'm shocked. This is
shocking and I'm talking. However, there has been a recent thing that they do at
the Mayo Clinic where they are using diseases like smallpox and AIDS mutated
versions of them. But it's not the same thing. To fight cancer. No, it's totally not.
Yeah, they're using the disease as a weapon. They're using a mutated version of
the disease as like almost like he was just giving people. He was thinking
completely aware of how he was not helpful. Who thinks malaria can kill AIDS?
Well, just straight giving it to someone. If it was true, then people would
have been already cured and you'd know about it. No, you don't. Yeah, I got malaria and
my age is gone. No, and I don't even know how you really like how do you stoke
that fire out of nowhere? How are you like, yeah, malaria. That was good. Fuck if I
know. All right, Heimlich, you've been Heimlich. I'm joking.