The Cincinnati Beacon
“Buffalo’d in Buffalo”: Dr. Heimlich’s Latest Media Campaign
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
Dr. Henry Heimlich is up to his old tricks—pushing unsound medical advice into mainstream press at every opportunity that presents itself. This time, he used the event of a lifesaving in Buffalo, New York to plug his mischief into the AP newswire.
In a June 21st article, ”Heimlich Highlights Lifesaving Duo,” Carolyn Thompson reports about Dr. Henry Heimlich’s appearance to honor some lifesavers. The story is an interesting one: a 17 year old kid uses the Heimlich maneuver to save the life of a choking nurse—the same nurse who saved the kid’s life seven years prior.
Dr. Heimlich seized the moment to honor them through the Heimlich Institute’s “Save A Life Award” —and also to push his quackpot medical theories into yet another media outlet. Thompson writes:
“It’s the first time I have heard of two people, seven years apart, saving each other’s lives. It’s startling and moving to everyone who hears it,” said Heimlich, who at age 86 continues his medical research, focusing now on AIDS and cancer.
Dr. Heimlich is currently focusing on AIDS treatments? Is this a reference to ”malariotherapy,” Heimlich’s dangerous idea of injecting Chinese and African AIDS patients with malaria in human experiments some have likened to Nazi Germany? Bob Kraft, Dr. Heimlich’s publicist, has gone on the record saying malariotherapy experiments have ended—but it seems Dr. Heimlich is still pushing his cause.
But that’s not all. Check out the conclusion Heimlich snuck into Thompson’s piece:
The Heimlich maneuver is credited with saving 50,000 lives since its inception in 1974, including President Ronald Reagan, New York City Mayor Ed Koch and actors Jack Lemmon, Elizabeth Taylor and Goldie Hawn, according to its inventor.
More recently, it has been shown to help drowning victims and asthmatics, Heimlich said.
And so Dr. Heimlich uses another unwitting reporter to build his attempt to popularize the maneuver for near drowning cases. Now that it’s hit the AP wire, the Heimlich media campaign has already started to spread.
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