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Friday, February 29, 2008
Slippery Vic Wulsin Runs Away, Refuses to Answer Questions
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Filmed at the NAACP General Membership Meeting, Thomas A. Moore Building, 2/28/2008
For more information about Vic Wulsin’s connections to malariotherapy, please click here.
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29 Feb 2008 at 09:20 pm | #
Well Boys, at least she didn’t mention any girl bands to you as she was driving away!
Seems like she learned the Heimlich Run Maneuver Very well.
Good Job Vic! So they taught you that at the Institute too huh?
29 Feb 2008 at 09:38 pm | #
She answered the question…you just didn’t get the answer you wanted. She maintains that there is no truth to the allegations. I have no idea whether that is true or not, but she didn’t refuse to answer, she just didn’t give you the answer you wanted hear.
29 Feb 2008 at 10:45 pm | #
The stocky bearded guy accompanying Dr. Wulsin is Josh Levin, her campaign manager.
Good job, Beacon TV!
29 Feb 2008 at 11:41 pm | #
First, I asked why she did not report the ethical violations. As a member of the American Medical Association, she is held to a code of ethical conduct which requires her to do that. She failed. She did not report the action to an oversight agency. She participated, which is evidenced by her report. She failed to answer that question.
Second, I asked if she would repudiate the work, and if so why she has waited so long. She responded by saying she wrote a negative report and then got fired. I did not ask her that. I did not ask her if she told the Heimlich Institute anything about malariotherapy. I asked her why she didn’t report the ethical issue to an appropriate oversight agency, then if she would repudiate the work. She still didn’t do that.
But I took what she said about the report, and used it for my third question: if she disagreed with the experiments, as she seemed to suggest, how come the very report she cited wanted to continue the experiments? She just walked straight to the car, saying nothing.
So, she failed to answer any question leveled at her. When she responded, it was a bad attempt at changing the subject.
01 Mar 2008 at 01:03 am | #
Anon 8:45 pm-
I’ve looked and looked for Josh Levin, the campaign manager, in this video and can’t find him anywhere because he isn’t shown period. The ‘stalky bearded guy’ is someone else.
If nothing else get the people you are making allegations, false as they may be, right.
01 Mar 2008 at 02:07 am | #
I don’t know either of these candidates and don’t live in their jurisdictions, but I don’t believe the Ohio Medical Board is complicite in a cover up of something this woman may have done wrong.
I say, if the medical board hasn’t launched an investigation - there is no wrong doing on her end.
I would suggest that maybe, just maybe, the Heimlich Institute and Wulsin had a contractual relationship that is common in professional fields, just as paid, medical expert testimony, that prevents them from taking a pro active position against their client and the only thing she could do was tell the truth in her report and make it public.
The whole Heimlich experiments received extensive review by a number of national and international groups - it seems, noone crossed the precarious line in any of their minds.
01 Mar 2008 at 02:07 am | #
ok, here’s the thing with responding to false allegations, nobody can satisfy the barrage of questions with an adequate answer because what they are trying to clarify is entirely false. No answer is going to be complete enough to satisfy someone who has created a false and distorted account of reality. This is an unfortunate, but true, reality.
Not to mention that if you look at both the much discussed report by Wulsin and the complaint and other public information/record, you can see that the allegations make no sense.
As to how I became aware of this allegation today it was seeing the ad for Black flooding the airwaves. As any good citizen I started doing research into the matter, esp since I found the concept highly disturbing. Immediately I found this post as a result.
(pardon, an interjection if you will)
I’ll admit right here I am and have been a huge supporter for Wulsin ESPECIALLY because of here work in public health and her integrity. One look at her C.V. indicates this. But I am not so niave to think everything shown to me is absolute fact, so I took time to investigate her works, opinions, etc.. before giving my full support. My support for Wulsin allowed me to give her a chance while investigating this new claims on my own, she deserved that much. As I suspected even post-research Wulsin is worth proudly supporting- highly. (end aside)
My response to this clearly inaccurate ad, and allegations made here, is no different than the process of how I found Wulsin a highly credible candidate in the first place. After investigating sources from Black ad, your video, the replies of the Wulsin campaign, her report to the Heimlich Inst (the very one in question I believe) and exploring every hit I can find trying discern more information, I still proudly support Wulsin and find absolutely no basis for the false allegations.
01 Mar 2008 at 08:21 am | #
There are no false allegations here. Just read her report. By doing so, you will see that she analyzed raw human data from East African AIDS subjects. As a member of the American Medical Association, she should have reported this to appropriate oversight agencies. She did not. She decided to be paid, and to write a business plan that suggests further experiments, and renaming malariotherapy to “immunotherapy” to avoid bad press.
The complaint against Wulsin’s medical license is active. That has been reaffirmed time and again. Just because they have not taken action yet is meaningless. That means the complaint is active. The investigation is not finished. If it were finished, the complaint would be closed. It is open. These kinds of processes take time. Just think of any court case. The stuff takes longer than most people think it should.
I must conclude, therefore, that anyone who claims to “investigate” this, and then to find no merit—these people must be paid Wulsin staffers or campaign volunteers. The evidence is clear. One only need to read her report—and to read the entire report, not just stop once finding a sentence or two that supports one position over another—and anyone can see that the report, as a whole, shows that she was involved in the work.
01 Mar 2008 at 08:51 am | #
I must admit that I’m new to this malariotherapy business, but out curiosity, what was it that Wulsin is supposedly guilty of? She read a report about something dealing with human experimentation and didn’t report it? Is human experimentation in itself, unethical? I know companies in the Cincinnati region who do that. Just listen to the radio: if you are a woman 18 - 49 and you smoke, call this number, etc. Were the exepriments conducted with these people done without their consent?
I think I recall reading something about people with malaria have bad fevers for prolonged periods of time, but was this because they were testing different treatments?
01 Mar 2008 at 09:24 am | #
What jurisdiction does the AMA have over Africa ?
01 Mar 2008 at 10:13 am | #
According to an April 23, 2007 article by Jason Zengerle in The New Republic, the Heimlich experiments in Africa are ongoing and involve at least 48 patients:
(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.
If Dr. Wulsin had reported the Heimlich Institute to legal authorities in 2004, the experiments might have been stopped, thereby preventing needless suffering for vulnerable human subjects in Ethiopia and Gabon.
Among other questions:
Why isn’t Cincinnati mainstream media including CityBeat (which, by the way, is owned by Tom Schiff of Cincinnati Financial, a longtime board member of Deaconess, the corporation which owns the Heimlich Institute) asking Dr. Heimlich or the Heimlich Institute to supply more information about the experiments and Dr. Wulsin’s participation?
Why isn’t Dr. Wulsin calling on Dr. Heimlich or anyone else from the Heimlich Institute to back up her version of events?
01 Mar 2008 at 10:26 am | #
<i>The ‘stalky (sic) bearded guy’ is someone else. If nothing else get the people you are making allegations, false as they may be, right.
If the “stocky bearded guy” isn’t Josh Levin, then I suggest the Dean ask the Wulsin campaign to identify him. Dean, if you so so, please post your inquiry in the comments section here. Thanks for your continued efforts to bring out the facts.
01 Mar 2008 at 11:43 am | #
BEFORE I START- ALL OF THIS HAS BEEN PREVIOUSLY COVERED IN PREVIOUS BEACON ARTICLES.
#9- Any time that you even write an academic piece that mentions that you observed students, test students, test that students took, or medical test- you must first complete this huge book of questions that is then taken to the sponsoring institue’s IRB- Institutional Review Board. There are strict standards on what you can and can not write about. ESP- children with parental authorization. My son participated in a study- and the paperwork for me to say it was ok-was 6 pages long. And all they were doing was observing how he worked at school completing the state test! How is watching a child taking a test going to hurt him? Well I had to agree that his privacy in the report he would be reported by a number-not a name, that they would not talk to him or distract him, that he would be observed in a large group so he would not feel singled out, that at no time would anyone from the observation group would approach him, and the biggie-he would never know the results of their report unless I sign and give it to him myself! Even after he reaches adulthood. This is all to protect him.
IRB’s are put in place to protect privacy, the safety of those in the study-mental and physical and most of all that the person in the study understands all of the complications that the study may cause- long term and short term.
The Malaria Therapy study has been KICKED OUT OF THE US, MEXICO AND CHINA because there has been no IRB approval of the study any place.
UCLA- came very very close to losing part of their school of medicine over this study about 6 years ago when they found out that 2 of their teaching staff was involved in the China experiments with them not having any IRB paperwork. That put the institute in risk of losing all of their Medicare and Medicaid funding. Big time stuff. And that is where Black is getting the quote from the LA times. Just read the article in total. Not just the little quote he has. Or go to the UCLA Medical School and see if they still have the press releases on line- I bet they have then ripped off line by now!
This isn’t my district- all I know is that as a physician she took an oath that said- “Physican do no harm.” There has been a great deal of evidence years before she was involved that there was harm being done and yet she took the job at the Institute for the $10K a month. And this election when she is asked to provide the full report- acts like it doesn’t exist- when last election-she eventually provided it.
And as far as her CV- there are some things missing from it as well! Jump over to the arch rival board- the Whistleblower for the info on that one!
I’m all for getting Jean Schmidt out of Washington- yesterday, but I’m not for putting someone who is the equal to a German prison camp physician in Washington. That is what this boils down too. She is living a lie and that is what makes me so sad.
The Ohio Medical Board is REVIEWING AN ACTIVE CASE ON AN ACTIVE LICENSE. This isn’t a closed case like she is wanting you to believe. Go to the website and look. There is an ACTIVE ACTION on the license.
And Dr. Baratz came here to explain it. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to put 2+2 together to figure out that they are looking for an IRB report someplace. And when they can’t find it-look for the license to go into a suspend state.
She messed up- and all she would have had to do is go to Columbus and address this head on. She thought it would just go away. No- innocent children are now orphans or were subjects to this mess. It isn’t going away.
But as I said- I just want anyone but Schmidt in Washington- but not someone like this. I’m ashamed to be a Democrat.
Keep up the good work guys- she did not answer the question- she avoided the question and did a big circle talk. Black is on to something Big and I hope he doesn’t stop.
01 Mar 2008 at 01:11 pm | #
With all due respect for the Beacon TV crew (and they’re due a sizable portion, in my opinion), if Wulsin can’t handle their pea shooters, how is she going to be able to deal with the howitzers of the Beltway media? Sorry, Vic-heads, she ain’t ready for prime time. Looking for someone to blame? Aim your daggers at the Democratic leadership. It was their job to vet the candidate and, as you all know, this one’s been floating in the bowl for two years.
01 Mar 2008 at 09:27 pm | #
It won’t be the media that eats her alive- look at what they did to Schmidt on the floor when she opened her mouth-her own kind will eat her for breakfast- throw her up for lunch and eat her as a snack before dinner. The house will just have at her. And if Tim Russert gets this- He will be unmerciful with her. She will be in tears- he’s done that to grown men.
She’ll have to leave. It won’t be pretty.
02 Mar 2008 at 04:58 pm | #
What do you mean? I know the case is active, but where do you see it reported online by the Board?
02 Mar 2008 at 06:37 pm | #
The stocky bearded guy is named Bill O’Neil. He’s a retired industrial designer who does volunteer work for the Democratic Party.
03 Mar 2008 at 10:27 am | #
According to the Ohio medical Board web site -there are no actions pending. Her license # is available on her web site. The license is active but there are no complaints or open cases.
03 Mar 2008 at 05:50 pm | #
According to the Ohio medical Board web site -there are no actions pending. Her license # is available on her web site. The license is active but there are no complaints or open cases.
This has already been explained repeatedly, but some people are less perceptive than others, so here we go again. From the 2/17/08 Enquirer: http://tinyurl.com/276fq3
The facts: A request for an investigation of Wulsin’s work for the Heimlich Institute was filed on Nov. 3, 2006 by Robert S. Baratz, a Massachusetts doctor who, under the NCAHF banner, has been a harsh critic of Dr. Henry Heimlich, founder of the institute. The letter accused Wulsin of “participation in unsupervised, unapproved, and dangerous experiments”
Wulsin worked for the institute in 2004 while it was conducting controversial experiments based on the idea that infecting AIDS patients with malaria might restore their immune systems. Wulsin said her only role was to review records and analyze data. She said she wrote a report criticizing the study and concluding that the therapy was ineffective, and was fired immediately by Heimlich.
The Ohio Medical Board will not confirm or comment on any investigation, other than to report that as of Feb. 14, it has taken no action against Wulsin. The case apparently remains open, as Black’s campaign says. Neither Baratz nor Wulsin has received the customary letter the board issues when it closes a case.
The Beacon, 2/29/08: http://tinyurl.com/2l4ypm
Robert S. Baratz MD PhD DDS, National Council Against Health Fraud: November 3, 2006—I authored and submitted a request for investigation regarding an Ohio-licensed physician, Victoria Wells (Wulsin), License #35.058016, to the Ohio State Medical Board. This was through their complaint process and involved several serious issues under Section 4731.22 of the Ohio Revised Code. The request involved investigation regarding deviation from the standard of care, unprofessional conduct, and false and misleading advertising. Specific examples were given and documented with the request.
I received a written reply from the Board that the matter had been referred for investigation. The letter stated that active investigations are confidential, however, the letter went on to state that I would be notified at the conclusion of this investigation. I have not been notified that this matter has been concluded, and thus this remains an open and active investigation. I have been contacted on several occasions by Board investigators and, based on information I cannot reveal here, understand that this is still an active investigation.
04 Mar 2008 at 12:31 am | #
~
Formal Action Information No formal action exists.
~
04 Mar 2008 at 11:04 am | #
Formal Action Information No formal action exists.
We know that. The medical board does not post any notice of action while a preliminary investigation is underway.
Per THE INVESTIGATION IS OPEN, FER CHRISSAKES!, Dr. Baratz has already stated that an investigator from the medical board has contacted him. Meanwhile, Dr. Wulsin has refused to answer multiple inquiries from the Dean as to what communications she has received from the medical board. (See “What are Victoria’s Secrets?” http://tinyurl.com/292unp )
$100 says if Wulsin wins today, someone else is going to ask her the same question - ie, reporters and/or Jean Schmidt.
05 Mar 2008 at 01:34 am | #
~
Seems, the voters had all the answers !
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11 Mar 2008 at 08:53 am | #
Seems, the voters had all the answers
First, if the voters choose to elect a criminal, they can elect a criminal. That doesn’t mean the candidate is not a criminal.
Second, if the voters elect a criminal because the media fails to inform them of the candidate’s criminal conduct, considerable responsibility for electing the criminal goes to the media.