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Thursday, June 08, 2006
CityBeat Blasts Enquirer
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
In this week’s “Media, Myself, and I,” CityBeat’s Ben Kaufman blasts The Enquirer in a piece called ”Enquirer Feature Had Dangerous Misinformation.” In it, Kaufman articulately outlines the problem with The Enquirer’s decision to front the Heimlich Maneuver as a response for near-drowning.
Here are some excerpts I thought worth reposting here:
The Enquirer screw-up could have been avoided if it had reported what it long has known about iconic Dr. Henry Heimlich’s unflinching advocacy in the face of expert opposition and doubts about his evidence of success.
A clarification came two days later. It should have been a correction. In it, the paper acknowledges the controversy, says CPR is the preferred first response but suggests the Heimlich maneuver is an alternative. Also, the note directing readers to the correct version misleadingly says the original graphic included “procedures not universally accepted.” Almost “universally condemned” is more accurate.
It is key to remember, as Kaufman points out, that The Enquirer has long known about problems with the work of Henry Heimlich. Even The Beacon gets mentioned in Kaufman’s piece:
The Enquirer can’t claim ignorance. It has known about the controversy for years. For months the maneuver has been a focus of The Dean of Cincinnati, a blogger who is no stranger to the paper’s editor, on cincinnatibeacon.com. The Dean sometimes is aided by Heimlich’s younger son, Peter, who also communicates with local journalists in his national campaign to discredit the maneuver as a near-drowning response.
Ironically, the cock-up opens the long-closed Enquirer door to Peter Heimlich and his allies. The question is not whether Enquirer artists, who produced the “info-graphic,” will be scapegoats but whether the Enquirer will publish a savvy story about Henry Heimlich’s persistent promotion of his maneuver as the appropriate first response to near-drownings.
I think that last idea significant. Will The Enquirer publish a story about Henry Heimlich’s media campaign to promote the maneuver, especially now that they have been a victim of this campaign?
Kaufman’s article closes with an important fact, worth repeating whenever possible:
That’s right, folks—in a near-drowning case, the lungs do not fill with water. There are still Enquirer staff who claim that the maneuver makes sense in order to get water out of the lungs. Why are some folks so long coming in seeing a simple truth?
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08 Jun 2006 at 07:32 am | #
Hey Phil Heimlich. How about a response to Ben’s article from you and the other board members of the Heimlich Institute?
Heimlich Institute Board of Trustees
John Gall, President
Philip M. Heimlich, Vice President
Joseph J. Dehner, Secretary
Piotr Chomzynski
Henry J. Heimlich, MD
William Mashburn
Tom Powell
Richard Weiland
Harry W. Whittaker
E. Anthony Woods
08 Jun 2006 at 07:51 am | #
The Enquirer has long known about problems with the work of Henry Heimlich.
In 2003, Enquirer reporter Robert Anglen was working on the Heimlich drowning frauds and the Jewish Hospital residency fraud. Peter Heimlich was a primary source.
Enquirer editor Tom Callinan killed both stories. Don’t believe me? Ask him.
09 Jun 2006 at 01:51 am | #
It’s time to launch the BOYCOTT and this is a smoking gun.
09 Jun 2006 at 07:59 am | #
Citizens Revolt! may be right. If Callinan killed the Heimlich drowning story in 2003 and there were subsequent injuries or deaths of drowning victims caused by the use of the Heimlich, that could spell trouble.
09 Jun 2006 at 11:29 am | #
City Beat does a good job of emphasizing that the maneuver should not be used and that the Enquirer is wrong for promoting it. What they stop short of doing is explaining why Henry Heimlich has so much influence at the Enquirer that they would print, on purpose, false medical information.
The ties that bind Heimlich and the Enquirer need to be clearly spelled out for this to have any meaning. Only then can we begin to prove what the rest of us already know: that the Enquirer is constantly influenced, by not only Dr. Heimlich, but also other big money interests and cronies instead of the best interest of the public good to the point of intentionally and purposefully printing false information to promote and pander to one of their own buddies.
Anon makes a good point as well. If one emergency water incident has been exacerbated or turned fatal by someone using the Heimlich Maneuver instead of CPR at the Enquirer’s or Dr. Heimlich’s insistence, then they are in big trouble indeed.
09 Jun 2006 at 04:38 pm | #
That Deborah Girl: Anon makes a good point as well. If one emergency water incident has been exacerbated or turned fatal by someone using the Heimlich Maneuver instead of CPR at the Enquirer’s or Dr. Heimlich’s insistence, then they are in big trouble indeed.
Thanks for the shout out, TDG, and I’d like to expand this point.
If Peter Heimlich is correct and the entire Heimlich drowning theory is based on fake cases cooked up by his father, and those fakes led to unnecessary deaths, we can all agree that would have amounted to a huge story for the Enquirer, one which would have had national impact and been widely circulated. Such an impact would have gone a long way towards informing the public of the dangers of doing the Heimlich on drowning victims.
The question is, did any victims die in Heimlich-related drowning incidents anywhere since 2003? For the sake of argument, let’s say that Tom Callinan did, in fact, kill the Heimlich drowning frauds story in 2003, as claimed above by Enquiring Mind. If the story was killed any reason other than that the facts didn’t check out, a case can be made that if the Enquirer had reported the story, those deaths might have been avoided. But even if no Heimlich-related deaths occurred, the Enquirer would still be responsible for knowingly putting the public at risk.
If that scenario turns out to be accurate, Tom Callinan will have to resign. If it turns out that he killed the story for political reasons, he may have a hard time finding another job in the news business.
10 Jun 2006 at 12:57 pm | #
In fact, Peter Heimlich’s website includes a Heimlich Maneuver related drowning death in 2004:
http://medfraud.info/StAug_HM_7-17-04_text.htm
http://medfraud.info/StAugDrowning_6-16-04_text.htm
10 Jun 2006 at 08:13 pm | #
Williams said the Heimlich was used in Marquis’ case as an abdominal thrust in an attempt to clear the airway.
“They weren’t doing the Heimlich to do the Heimlich,” Williams said. “They were having difficulty gaining an airway to administer CPR.”
11 Jun 2006 at 09:13 am | #
td, the “Heimlich maneuver” is only suitable for removing a solid foreign body from an obstructed airway. The American Heart Association is responsible for establishing first aid guidelines and they say the abdominal thrust ("Heimlich maneuver") does not remove water or vomit from an obstructed airway. So the lifeguards in the Fuller case provided incorrect medical care to the boy.
I’ve followed the discussions here and I’ve never seen anybody mention that the “Heimlich maneuver” is simply a means of inducing an articial cough by externally pressing on the diaphragm. That can help a choking victim to “self-expel” a blockage of the windpipe. But if a drowning (or choking) victim is not breathing, pumping the abdomen not only wastes precious resuce time, it can induce vomiting leading to aspiration.