Heimlich Institute press release opens the door to narco doc skeletons in my father's closet

A press release issued last month by the Heimlich Institute unintentionally introduced one of the darkest and best-kept secrets of my father's career and personal life -- his relationships with doctors who lost their medical licenses for extreme over-prescribing of prescription narcotics. 

Two of them did prison time after being convicted on drug charges.

One of the two, Gerson Carr, was employed for a decade as the Heimlich Institute's "Research Director" after my father helped parole him from a New Mexico state pen.

The other ex-con, Ryan Krebs, is a close friend of my brother Phil Heimlich, the longtime vice president of the Heimlich Institute.

Via the January 21, 2013 Heimlich Institute press release, here's another charmer:

The late Dr. Uhley, a notorious Beverly Hills "Dr. Feelgood," managed to avoid the slammer, perhaps because he had plenty of rich and famous patients in high places.

And he kept 'em high.

For instance:

Source

A couple months later....

Source

Ever see the Blake Edwards film S.O.B. in which actor Robert Preston plays a famboyant Hollywood doc who always had a hypo ready to jab into anyone who needed a boost? Rumor has it the character may have been based on my father's colleague.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Uhley finally had to put away his prescription pad.

Faced with charges of "gross negligence," "excessive prescribing," "prescribing to addicts," "prescribing without a good faith prior examination," "repeated negligent acts," "incompetence" and more, my father's colleague surrendered his license to the Medical Board of California in 1996.

Here are some home highlights from the July 21, 1995 Accusation. (See below for the entire document.)

Dr. Uhley's year 2000 obit in Variety neglected to mention any of that, but is it my imagination or is this there a nod and a wink between the lines?

Back to last month's Heimlich Institute press release:

(Drs. Heimlich and Uhley) collaborated on a pair of articles about the Heimlich maneuver, describing the historical and technical aspects of the maneuver, which appeared in a 1979 issue of Clinical Symposia.

Not precisely a peer-reviewed journal, Clinical Symposia was a pamphlet published by a corporation with which my father's "collaborator" may very well have had a working relationship:

My inquiry letter today to the Barbados Minister of Health re: the "Heimlich maneuver for asthma" medical study conducted on dozens of children (3/24/13 update)

UPDATE: As a result of a recent general election, John Boyce MP replaced Donville Innis as Barbados Minister of Health.

Click here for my March 24, 2013 letter to Mr. Boyce requesting information about "the Heimlich maneuver for asthma" experiment reportedly conducted on dozens of children.

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Per my December 20 item, according to the Sunday Sun (the leading daily newspaper in Barbados, West Indies), as a result of my recent media inquiries, the Ministry of Health was "carrying out an investigation" into a medical experiment conducted there about a decade ago.

According to the University of Cincinnati News Record, the unpublished study used 67 children, age six to 16, to test the effectiveness of the Heimlich maneuver to treat asthma attacks.

Records held by the University of Cincinnati's medical library show that the project was funded by the Rotary Foundation of Cincinnati and the Heimlich Institute, my father's nonprofit.

Unrelated to the Barbados study, as reported by numerous media outlets, the Heimlich Institute has a long history of conducting violative offshore medical experiments in China and Africa. For example, via the Cincinnati Enquirer:

(Dr. Heimlich's "malariotherapy") experiments - which seek to destroy HIV, the AIDS-causing virus, by inducing high malarial fevers- 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.''

Barbados Chief Medical Officer Joy St. John MD and Minister of Health Donville Inniss (source)

Back to the Barbados asthma study, in response to my media inquiries -- I was trying to get information to report here -- I received a January 5 e-mail from Minister of Health Donville Inniss.

He suggested that I submit a formal inquiry, so today I did -- click here to download a copy:




Here's the accompanying 156-page file referenced in my letter -- click here to download a copy:



Click here (and bookmark) my web page tracking the developing "Heimlich maneuver for asthma" experiment conducted on children in Barbados.