The Cincinnati Beacon - Malariotherapy for Dummies: A Brief Timeline of the Heimlich Institute’s Horror Show - Cincinnati blog, Cincinnati news, Cincinnati politics

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Malariotherapy for Dummies: A Brief Timeline of the Heimlich Institute’s Horror Show

This is a collection of news stories and key excerpts going back as far as 1988. Those following the malariotherapy story and Congressional candidate Vic Wulsin’s involvement will be interested in the conflicting timeline data—how she said she was hired in February, 2004 to do a four-month literature review, but then her actual report is dated December, 2004. These excerpts are a must-read for anyone interested in the truth about malariotherapy, and it’s twenty-year history of being blasted as an unethical, dangerous idea.

February 29, 1988 - From Heimlich Uses Malaria to Treat Cancer, (AP)

Dr. Henry Heimlich, the physician who developed a maneuver to save choking victims, is trying to treat cancer patients in Mexico by deliberately giving them malaria, a newspaper reported. Heimlich has treated three people at a Mexico City hospital since December by infecting them with a non-lethal strain of malaria on the belief that the 103- to 104-degree fever produced by the disease kills cancer cells, The Cleveland Plain Dealer said yesterday….Some medical researchers say Heimlich’s procedures should be tested first on laboratory animals and tissue cultures. They also said they were skeptical about the quality of cancer research in Mexico. U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said Heimlich’s so-called ‘‘malariatherapy” was “not an acceptable treatment or therapy.”

June 1991 - From Heimlich’s Maneuver?, American Health

“Within two days I started to get fevers as high as 106 degrees”...After (Lyme disease patient Cyndi) 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.”

April 29, 1993 - From Induced Malaria Infection for the Treatment of HIV/AIDS, Chief, Malaria Branch, Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Since 1990, the Heimlich Foundation has encouraged the use of induced malaria infection for Lyme Disease in the United States. CDC has officially gone on record opposing this therapy….(The) use of induced malaria infection in HIV infected individuals can not be justified.

October 30, 1994 - From Heimlich’s Audacious Maneuver by Pamela Warrick, Los Angeles Times

...Heimlich researchers have begun injecting a small group of HIV-positive men in China with malaria-infected blood. At best, warn infectious disease experts, the treatment will cause no harm. At worst, they say, it can kill. “Heimlich’s life-saving maneuver for people who aspirate food doesn’t qualify one as an HIV expert,” said leading AIDS researcher Dr. Anthony Fauci, who called malaria therapy “quite dangerous and scientifically unsound.”

...Citing concerns for the safety of human subjects, a group of 20 scientists and physicians from the United States and Mexico have petitioned top U.S. regulatory agencies to investigate Heimlich’s Hollywood fund-raising campaign and the touted treatment of HIV.

...Dr. Frank Sonnenberg, a Rutgers physician who evaluates research proposals for the National Institutes of Health, calls Heimlich’s proposal “monumentally flawed,” and says it would be “resoundingly rejected by any credible grant review committee.”

...Sallie Timpone, a 34-year-old mother of three who was with (Cyndi) Monahan in Mexico City, has been speaking out against both Heimlich and malaria therapy for years. Although she, too, experienced an early remission, Timpone says she is now as sick as ever: “I’ve been hooked up to IVs of antibiotics but nothing really helps. I’m so sick and weak most days I can hardly get out of bed. But if anybody ever asked me about Dr. Heimlich and his supposed cure, I wouldn’t hesitate to tell them to run away fast.”

...“He is risking people’s lives and he is trading on the life-saving aura of his name to get people to help him,” said Dr. John Renner of the National Council Against Health Fraud, which has been tracking the Heimlich project. “After this, he won’t go down in history for the Heimlich maneuver. He’ll go down in history as a bizarre, mad scientist.”

November 7, 1994 - Heimlich Using Malaria to Treat AIDS Patients, The Cincinnati Post (AP)

Trustees of the privately funded Heimlich Institute Foundation in Cincinnati said they have heard about the controversy and disagree with critics. Disputes about research have been a part of science since the Inquisition condemned astronomer Galileo for saying the Earth was not the center of the universe, said Joseph Dehner, a lawyer and foundation trustee.

February 16, 2003 - From Scientists Linked to Heimlich Investigated - Experiment Infects AIDS Patients in China with Malaria by Rober Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer

(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.’‘

...Peter Lurie, a former AIDS researcher and now a physician with Public Citizen’s Health Research Group in Washington, D.C., calls the malariotherapy studies dangerous and unnecessary….“It is charlatanism of the highest order,” Dr. Lurie says of malariotherapy. “It is exploiting the lack of decent medical care in China.”

October 30, 2004 - From Conference Uninvites Doctor Advocating Malaria Therapy for AIDS by Anita Wadwani, Nashville Tennessean

Anti-choking maneuver inventor Dr. Henry Heimlich was uninvited at the last minute from a Nashville AIDS conference at which he was scheduled to present new information on his controversial theory that injecting AIDS and HIV patients with malaria can lead to a cure…(Physicians) such as Robert Baratz with the Boston University School of Medicine say that so-called ‘‘malariotherapy’’ is dangerous because it ‘‘can be fatal and it also redirects people with HIV from therapies that have been known to be effective.’’ Baratz also heads the medical watchdog group National Council Against Health Fraud, based in Peabody, Mass.

December 2004 - From Immunotherapy and Beyond: Heimlich Institute by Victoria Wells Wulsin MD DrPH

An American sponsor commences infection with malaria among 12-13 HIV-positive East African patients (2003). The Heimlich Institute engages Wells to review Immunotherapy. Nine-month follow-up on eight of the East African cohort is shared with the Heimlich Institute (2004).

January 21, 2005 - From Family Ties Unraveling by Dan Monk and Andrea Tortora, Cincinnati Business Courier

(In February 2004, Dr. Victoria Wells Wulsin) was hired by the Heimlich Institute to do a four-month literature review of malariotherapy….

November 2005 - From Outmaneuvered by Thomas Francis, Radar Magazine

In December 2004, the day after issuing a draft of her report…Wulsin was fired.

###

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.

...Wondewossen say 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.”

November 3, 2006 - Complaint filed against Dr. Wulsin’s Ohio medical license by the National Council Against Health Fraud

April 23, 2007 - From The Choke Artist by Jason Zengerle, The New Republic

(Dr. Heimlich) opened his last binder, which was marked “confidential”, and pulled out two sheets of paper. “Now I will tell you about the malariatherapy, or immunotherapy as we now call it, in Africa.” He began to read from one of the sheets. “The Heimlich Institute has been collecting CD4 and viral load data on patients who are HIV-positive and have become infected with malaria. This data will provide support for the concept of using malariatherapy for treating HIV infection.” The study involved the questionable practice of initially withholding treatment for malaria, so Heimlich would not tell me where in Africa this new malariatherapy trial was being done. “You never know how the politicians will react in these countries,” he explained…Still reading from the papers, Heimlich boasted about the study’s early results. Six of the first seven HIV patients treated with malariatherapy, he claimed, had experienced decreases in their viral loads. Now he was eagerly anticipating results from the 42 other patients in the study.

• Share This Article! | Listen to this article |

Help The Cincinnati Beacon Grow! Participate in Social Networking!

Socializer!

Members

Tell us what you think!

Anonymous comments are allowed, but you can create an account above to stamp your name and to avoid typing the anti-spam code.

If you are not familiar with our rules for leaving comments, click here! The Cincinnati Beacon is not responsible for the contents of any comments. Comments do not represent the views of the moderators of The Cincinnati Beacon.

annon says:
02 Mar 2008 at 01:56 pm | #

December 2004 - From Immunotherapy and Beyond: Heimlich Institute by Victoria Wells Wulsin MD DrPH

Seems to discount the bias claims that Immunotherapy was recomended as a cover-up !

Tiny Universe says:
02 Mar 2008 at 07:32 pm | #

1) From November 7, 1994 - Heimlich Using Malaria to Treat AIDS Patients, The Cincinnati Post (AP): http://tinyurl.com/2gd4w4

Disputes about research have been a part of science since the Inquisition condemned astronomer Galileo for saying the Earth was not the center of the universe, said Joseph Dehner, a lawyer and foundation trustee.

2) Heimlich the Hero?, Cleveland Scene, December 29, 2004: http://tinyurl.com/27b2f2

It’s been a tough new century for Dr. Henry Heimlich, who’s gone from Ohio’s most famous doctor to its most disgraced.

His hometown paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, busted him last year for stealing credit for a surgical procedure invented by a Hungarian doctor. Both The L.A. Times and New York Times have derided him for advocating the use of his Heimlich maneuver in drowning rescues, as well as for his efforts to cure AIDS and cancer by giving patients malaria. And in August, Scene wrote about scientists who suspected Heimlich of faking cases to burnish his reputation (“Heimlich’s Maneuver,” August 11).

All the same, it’s hard to find good heroes in Cincinnati. So the Cincinnati Business Courier recently announced that it would bestow its greatest honor, the Lifetime Health Care Hero Award, on the 84-year-old Heimlich.

“As journalists at the Business Courier, we realize there are detractors to what Dr. Heimlich has done in the past,” says Doug Bolton, the paper’s publisher. “His work has been controversial, and we’ve written about that and we will continue to write about it.”

In the meantime, they’ll just give him lifetime achievement awards.

But the paper was quick to place the blame, er, credit for Heimlich’s honor on a jury of community leaders.

“We as journalists don’t make those determinations,” Bolton says. “We put the program together. The jury pulls those nominations . . . and looks at the contributions of each nominee before deciding on the lifetime hero.”

And just who nominated the dubious doctor? His lawyer, Joe Dehner.

3) From Heimlich Maneuver Week, Part I: Episcopal Church Leaders Arranged African AIDS Experiments, Cincinnati Beacon, April 6, 2007: http://tinyurl.com/yr59zo

This week’s Enquirer obituary for John Gall, longtime Heimlich Institute president, includes the fact that he and Heimlich worked together on Heimlich’s sicko human experiments on African AIDS patients. But here’s the part that caught our eye:

“In his later years, Mr. Gall and Heimlich turned their attention to the AIDS epidemic. ‘We had a meeting with (Episcopal) Archbishop Herbert Thompson, who helped us to make contact with parishes in Africa to spread our AIDS program,’ Heimlich said.”

Wait a minute. Reverend Thompson and the Episcopal Church were helping to arrange Heimlich’s warped experiments? More from the Spring 1999 issue of “Caring World”, the Heimlich Institute’s newsletter:

“Dr. Heimlich had earlier met with Rt. Rev. Herbert Thompson, Jr., Episcopal Bishop of Southern Ohio, to discuss the African AIDS epidemic. Bishop Thompson wrote to Episcopal archbishops in eleven African countries to urge ‘Dr. Heimlich is especially interested in bringing his work to the attention of leaders in the nations of Africa, which have felt the scourge of AIDS the most,’ Rev. Thompson wrote. ‘Dr. Heimlich sees malariotherapy as an inexpensive and effective way to deal with this deadly disease that has had such a catastrophic effect on African peoples.’”

...Rev. Thompson died last year, but maybe his successor, the Rt. Rev. Kenneth L. Price Jr, could answer that question. So could Joseph J. Dehner, longtime Heimlich Institute lawyer. Dehner is also Chancellor of the local Episcopal diocese.

4) Bio from Frost Brown Todd website: http://tinyurl.com/27rv4x

In 1975 Mr. Dehner joined Kyte Conlan Wulsin Vogeler in Cincinnati, Ohio, after a two-year federal appellate clerkship. That firm merged into Frost & Jacobs LLP in 1978, and became Frost Brown Todd LLC in 2000.

Or maybe they just know each other from church….

5) From West Clermont Democrats Newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/2mh3tu

Victoria and Lawson are active members of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Terrace Park

6) Saint Thomas Episcopal Church, Cincinnati: http://tinyurl.com/39uyaz
7:00-8:00pm Program: “Wrestling with Angels”
Host: Rev’d Noel Julnes-Dehner

7) Photo of Joe & Rev. Dehner with David Pepper and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright: http://tinyurl.com/2f3oqy