‘ONLY METHOD’
It took more than a decade for the medical establishment to adopt the Heimlich Maneuver, partly because there had been no official human trials. The American Red Cross recommended it only as a secondary method to back-slapping.
In 1984, Heimlich was given the prestigious Lasker Award for public service. A year later C. Everett Koop, then the U.S. surgeon general, said the Heimlich method should be “the only method” used for choking victims.
In 1986, it was officially recommended as the primary anti-choking technique by the Red Cross, although the organization would reverse that decision in 2006, saying “abdominal thrusts” should only be a secondary method.
As the Heimlich Maneuver became part of American culture, its namesake sought more innovation. He thought his technique should also be used to clear mucus from the lungs during an asthma attack and was better than cardiopulmonary resuscitation for drowning victims – claims that were dismissed by authorities such as the Red Cross and the American Medical Association.
Heimlich damaged his credibility further by espousing malaria therapy, saying the high fevers of malaria stimulated the body’s immune system enough to counter AIDS, cancer and Lyme disease.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discounted that theory, but under Heimlich’s direction, human malaria therapy trials were conducted in Mexico, China and Africa because they would never have been permitted in the United States.
“I don’t follow all the rules if there’s a better, faster way to do it,” he told the Los Angeles Times in a 1994 interview. “If your peers understand what you’ve done, you are not being creative.”
His fiercest critic turned out to be son Peter, who had once played in a band called Choke and done the music for Heimlich’s promotional film. The son devoted himself to debunking Heimlich’s work – first in a pseudonymous blog – and denounced him as the creator of “a remarkable unseen history of fraud.”
Heimlich’s work with malarial therapy to fight AIDS was briefly a popular cause in the mid-1990s, especially in Hollywood, where celebrities hosted fundraisers for his research and donors included Jack Nicholson, Bob Hope and Ron Howard.
Dr. Edward Patrick, a longtime collaborator who died in 2009, issued a press release in 2003 saying he was the co-developer of the Heimlich Maneuver.
Heimlich also was credited with inventing a valve that bears his name and is used to prevent air from filling the chest cavity in trauma cases.
Heimlich and Jane Murray, daughter of dance school magnate Arthur Murray and a proponent of alternative medical methods, were married from 1951 until her death in 2012. They had four children.
(Additional reporting by Frank McGurty, editing by G Crosse)