"It's human experimentation if they're collecting data from it," says Baratz, president of the National Council Against Health Fraud. "If you don't tell people that this is not proven and, in fact, there is evidence to show it's wrong, then you are not being honest with them."
When asked about the news release, UH Director of Communications Eric Gerber wrote the Houston Press in an e-mail: "The University of Houston does not provide oversight or specific scientific review on any researcher's project."
In 2000, freelance reporter Pamela Mills-Senn exposed the scientific evidence against the Heimlich maneuver for drowning in a special edition of the trade magazine Fun World, published by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions. Mills-Senn cited several doctors who said that Henry Heimlich had intentionally distorted their studies to support his claims.
E&A abruptly stopped using the Heimlich maneuver just weeks after the article ran. "We stopped because the medical community doesn't recommend it," says Louise Priest, a spokeswoman for E&A.
Peter Wernicke, medical advisor to the United States Lifesaving Association, sent letters in 2004 to Heimlich requesting medical records regarding several allegedly dubious case studies. "...We have an ethical obligation to investigate and correct the record, if necessary," Wernicke wrote. But Heimlich declined to produce any additional documentation.
Even after E&A dropped the Heimlich maneuver from its rescue protocols, Hunsucker dug in his heels. It was an unpopular decision that cost his company several clients, he says.
And why did he continue to promote it?
"Because we never had it not work," he says.
It's a response that drives the medical community bonkers.
"We don't do medical research that way," Baratz says. "That's called 'It-is-because-I-say-it-is.' It violates the basic rules of medical ethics."
Today Hunsucker insists there is no controversy, calling it a dead issue. "Everybody in the industry knows we do this," he says.
Still, he becomes prickly when asked about his critics. "I'm not an MD; congratulations; so what?" he says. "I'm a PhD; I am trained in logical thought. I'm not stupid; I'm not hidebound; I can change. Come up with a logical argument."
He adds: "All the agencies that say, 'Don't do it,' have never asked me for our data." When the Press requested to see any and all unpublished data, Hunsucker said there was none.
A black-and-white photograph shows Henry Heimlich with his arm around John Hunsucker. It's a fitting picture: Heimlich is smiling and relaxed, seemingly gleeful to have found a follower, while Hunsucker wears the sober, circumspect expression of a proudly independent thinker who resists the notion that he is anyone's lapdog.
The undated snapshot appears on the voluminous Web site medfraud.info, maintained by Henry Heimlich's estranged son Peter Heimlich, who writes above it:
"Every major first aid and water safety organization considers the use of the Heimlich maneuver for treating near-drowning as useless and potentially deadly. It's [sic] use has been associated with dozens of serious injuries and the loss of life, including children. So why is Prof. John Hunsucker's Houston-area company NASCO Aquatics teaching lifeguards to perform the Heimlich maneuver on drowning victims?"
Peter Heimlich devotes just a portion of the Web site to Hunsucker and drowning issues. He employs a mix of primary documents, scientific studies, news reports and original writing to create a laundry list of allegations against his father, whom he grandly denounces on the site as a "quack," "crackpot," "humbug" and "one of history's most prolific — and destructive — medical charlatans."
For instance, Peter Heimlich claims that his father financed and organized "illegal offshore human experiments on both American and Third World patients, deliberately infecting them with malaria. Medical experts have compared this unsupervised, exploitative 'research' to Nazi concentration camp atrocities."
It's true that Henry Heimlich has long advocated the use of malariotherapy to treat AIDS victims, in which high fevers are induced to stimulate the patient's immune system. It's also true that many AIDS researchers and medical ethicists have condemned the practice, warning that deliberately giving patients malaria risks killing them.
But Henry Heimlich did nothing illegal, insists his spokesman, Bob Kraft. "There are no secret African experiments going on," Kraft says. "The experiments that were done in China were completely legal; they were done under Chinese government auspices; there was no need for U.S. governmental or regulatory approval."
Peter Heimlich also claims that his father was fired from his last hospital job in 1976, and that he falsely took credit for inventing several medical innovations, including the maneuver that made him famous.
Kraft denies these allegations.
(A disclosure: The Cleveland Scene, a sister paper of the Houston Press, published a story in 2004 regarding a former Heimlich associate. The associate sued the Scene, alleging libel; the case is pending.)
