Department of the Treasury - Internal Revenue Service

Form 13909
(December 2016) Tax-Exempt Organization Complaint (Referral)
1. Name of referred organization
Please see attached letter.
Street address

City State ZIP code Date of referral

2. Organization’s Employer Identification Number (EIN)

3. Nature of violation
Directors/Officers/Persons are using income/assets for personal gain
Organization is engaged in commercial, for-profit business activities
Income/Assets are being used to support illegal or terrorist activities
Organization is involved in a political campaign
Organization is engaged in excessive lobbying activities
Organization refused to disclose or provide a copy of Form 990
Organization failed to report employment, income or excise tax liability properly
Organization failed to file required federal tax returns and forms
Organization engaged in deceptive or improper fundraising practices
✔ Other (describe)

Please see attached letter.

4. Details of violation
Name(s) of person(s) involved

Organizational title(s)

Date(s) Dollar amount(s) (if known)

Description of activities
Please see attached letter.

5. Submitter information
Name
Peter M. Heimlich
Occupation or business
The Sidebar (blog)
Street address
REDACTED
City State ZIP code Telephone number
Peachtree Corners GA 30096 208-474-7283
I am concerned that I might face retaliation or retribution if my identity is disclosed

6. Submission and documentation: The completed form, along with any supporting documentation, may be mailed to IRS EO
Classification, Mail Code 4910DAL, 1100 Commerce Street Dallas, TX 75242-1198, faxed to 214-413-5415 or emailed to
eoclass@irs.gov. Disclaimer Notice: Your email submission of Form 13909 and attachments are not encrypted for security.

Catalog Number 50614A www.irs.gov Form 13909 (Rev. 12-2016)

June 6, 2019

Internal Revenue Service

Exempt Organizations Division
1100 Commerce Street
Dallas, TX 75242-1198
Sent via e-mail to eoclass@irs.gov

To whom it may concern:

1) This is to request that your agency review the following information and provide me with a
determination if any of the following nonprofit entities are in violation of any IRS statutes and
guidelines.

Heimlich Institute Foundation Inc.

615 Elsinore Place
Cincinnati, OH 45202
EIN: 23-7303161

Deaconess Associations Inc.

615 Elsinore Place
Cincinnati, OH 45202
EIN: 31-1209377

Elsa Heisel Sule Foundation Inc.

250 Grandview Drive
Fort Mitchell, KY 41017
EIN: 20-7277661

2) As noted below, the most recent IRS 990 filed by the Heimlich Institute Foundation Inc.
(2017) shows zero assets. Further, since 2005 (14 years ago) the organization has had no paid
or volunteer employees and appears to be a non-existent shell corporation. Therefore, this is
to request that your agency revoke the organization’s 501(c)3 nonprofit status.

In the event that you choose to allow the Heimlich Institute to maintain its current IRS status,
this is to request that you provide me with a detailed explanation of the reasoning behind your
decision.

#####

According to the website of Heimlich Heroes, 615 Elsinore Place, Cincinnati, OH 45202:

Heimlich Heroes was developed through a cooperative effort of Deaconess

Associations, Inc. and the Heimlich Institute...To date more than 100,000 people have
learned the Heimlich Maneuver through Heimlich Heroes training program.
Per this training video the organization published on YouTube and a training poster from the
organization’s website, Heimlich Heroes teaches the public to perform abdominal thrusts (the
Heimlich maneuver) on choking infants:
Since 2002, my wife and I have been researching and reporting about the Heimlich maneuver
(named by and after my father, the late Henry J. Heimlich MD). To our knowledge, since dad
introduced his namesake anti-choking treatment in 1974 no legitimate medical organization
or medical expert has ever recommend using it on infants.

Here’s why.

As I reported last year, the American Heart Association (AHA) and American Red Cross
explained they don’t recommend or teach the treatment because it “may cause injuries.”

What kind of injuries? According to the AHA:

Abdominal thrusts, however, may cause complications. For this reason, the Heimlich
maneuver should never be performed unless it is necessary. Reported complications of
the Heimlich maneuver include damage to internal organs, such as rupture or
laceration of abdominal or thoracic viscera. In fact, victims who receive the Heimlich
maneuver should be medically evaluated to rule out any life-threatening complications.

If those concerns apply to children and adults, it’s easy to imagine the potential complications
for tiny babies.

Shockingly, the Heimlich Heroes organization (and presumably its corporate parent
organizations, the Heimlich Institute Foundation Inc. and Deaconess Associations Inc.) is
aware of these concerns.

Via the group’s training materials:

In other words, Heimlich Heroes has knowingly taught “over 100,000 people” an unapproved
medical treatment of unproven effectiveness and safety that may seriously injure infants or
worse.

That’s not the only problem.

Via Heimlich maneuver on unconscious persons causes controversy by Nick Kammerer,

Rambler Newspapers (Irving, TX), November 24, 2014:

Heimlich Heroes, a Cincinnati-based first aid program developed partly by Henry

Heimlich, is teaching students to perform the Heimlich maneuver on unconscious
choking victims. This means that school children are being taught a medical practice
that is not recommended by the American Heart Association or Red Cross, two highly
credible public health organizations.

In an attempt to learn more, in 2014 I e-mailed polite questions to Terri Huntington,

Heimlich Heroes’ Program Manager since the organization's founding in 201 3.

Among other questions, I asked her to provide citations for for any published research
supporting the use of the Heimlich maneuver on unconscious choking victims. 1 (I was already
aware that none exists.)

After failing to answer my questions, Ms. Huntington replied:

(We) are not comfortable with the focus of your questions. As such, neither Deaconess
nor any of its affiliates, including Heimlich Heroes, will respond to any additional
inquiries from you and politely request that you refrain from contacting us further.

I wasn’t surprised by Ms. Huntington’s incompetent response. According to her LinkedIn, she
has no medical training, no background in the medical field, and her prior job was in multi-
level marketing.

1 At the time I was unaware her program was teaching the public to perform "the Heimlich" on infants
in choking emergencies.
As it happens, Heimlich Heroes is simply the most recent example of a continuum of
unethical, dangerous conduct by the Heimlich Institute, a member organization of Deaconess
Associations since 1997. For decades my father’s namesake institute advocated unapproved,
experimental, potentially-lethal medical treatments dreamed up by my dad.

1) As widely-reported -- most recently this March by Xinhua News, China’s largest news outlet
-- “malariotherapy” was arguably dad’s most notorious project. From the late 1980s until
2005, the Heimlich Institute funded and supervised a string of unsupervised offshore trials in
which U.S. and foreign nationals suffering from cancer, Lyme Disease, and AIDS were
infected with the malaria.

Via Scientists Linked to Heimlich Investigated by Robert Anglen, Cincinnati Enquirer

(Sunday front page), February 16, 2003:

(Dr. 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.''

2) In 1974 using fabricated case reports, my dad began promoting the use of abdominal
thrusts for responding to a drowning emergency.

Via (Northern Virginia) parks authority teaches lifeguards discredited Heimlich maneuver
(UPDATE: Authority discards Heimlich) by Tom Jackman, The Washington Post, June 3,
2011:

The list of experts who reject the Heimlich maneuver (for drowning rescue) is lengthy:
The American Red Cross; the United States Lifesaving Association; the American Heart
Association; the Institute of Medicine; the International Life Saving Federation and
many experienced doctors and academics have strongly inveighed against doing
“abdominal thrusts” for drowning victims.

...In Tampa, which has one of the highest drowning rates in the country, Dr. James
Orlowski said he has documented nearly 40 cases where rescuers performing the
Heimlich maneuver have caused complications for the victim. Orlowski is chief of
pediatrics and pediatric intensive care at University Community Hospital in Tampa.

For more details about some of those poor outcome cases – including children -- please see
this page on my website, Some of the victims - casualties of the Heimlich maneuver for
drowning rescue.

For decades, even after the bodies began turning up, the Heimlich Institute relentlessly and
aggressively promoted the treatment.2

2 The day after I threatened their nonprofit status, in 2012 the Heimlich Institute reportedly
scrubbed its website of all “Heimlich for drowning” information.
3) Based on zero evidence or research, for years the Heimlich Institute claimed abdominal
thrusts were an effective treatment for asthma.

Via The Trouble With Henry by Shane Johnson, Salt Lake City Weekly, December 29, 2004:

Loren Greenway, administrative director of respiratory and pulmonary medicine for

Intermountain Health Care, and a nationally certified asthma educator, finds
Heimlich's asthma maneuver physiologically unfounded and dangerous.

"Using the Heimlich maneuver in an acute asthmatic condition...could actually kill

somebody," said Greenway.

..."My father is enormously charismatic and persuasive," Peter Heimlich says. "People
trust him because the maneuver for choking has saved so many lives...It doesn't seem
to bother him that people may be hurt or killed. The whole thing's tragic and sick."

Please note that my dad had zero training or expertise in immunology, drowning
resuscitation, or pulmonary medicine,3 but that lack of knowledge didn’t stop him from
spending the last 40 years of his career putting innocent people in harm’s way.

Re: performing the Heimlich maneuver on choking infants and unconscious patients, during
dad’s lifetime –- he died in 2016 – the Heimlich Institute stood alone in recommending and
teaching those treatments.

Based on the above information, is it unreasonable to conclude that the Heimlich Heroes
program may have been designed to continue the Heimlich Institute’s decades of using the
public as unwitting human guinea pigs to test my dad’s reckless, unfounded medical claims?

Adding to the muddle, according to the most recent tax filing by the Heimlich Institute (2017),
the organization has zero assets.

#####

Two months ago I learned that the Elsa Heisel Sule Foundation of Fort Mitchell, KY, donated
$31,250 to the Heimlich Heroes program, so I sent multiple e-mail inquiries to the
organization's executives requesting more information.

For example, I asked if their foundation consulted any medical authorities re: the
effectiveness/safety of performing the Heimlich maneuver on infants and on unconscious
choking victims. I received multiple confirmations of receipt but no other communications, so
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they performed zero due diligence.

3 Dad’s last hospital job was Director of Surgery at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital where he was fired for
misconduct in 1977. He never again maintained a medical practice.
In any event, presumably the Sule Foundation’s funding will be used by Heimlich Heroes to
further circulate and encourage the public to perform unapproved, experimental, potentially-
lethal medical treatments that may add to the Heimlich Institute’s ignoble record of
unnecessary injuries and deaths. Intervention by your agency would likely help avoid such an
outcome, hence this complaint.

Thank you for your time/consideration and I look forward to your reply. If you have any
questions I might be able to help answer, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Sincerely,

Peter M. Heimlich
REDACTED
Peachtree Corners, GA 30096
ph: (208)474-7283
e-mail: peter.heimlich@gmail.com
website: http://medfraud.info
blog: http://the-sidebar.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/medfraud_pmh
bio: http://tinyurl.com/ych7o7dr