[RADIOLAB INTRO]

JAD ABUMRAD: Hey, I'm Jad Abumrad.

ROBERT KRULWICH: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab.

ROBERT: This is our podcast, and we're going to be—we're gonna tell you a tale. It's actually about a person that we think we deeply admire, if by the way, you'd even paused long enough to admire him at all.

JAD: Yeah.

ROBERT: And the story comes from our own Pat Walters.

PAT WALTERS: This one gets kind of weird. I'm just gonna start just talking about myself.

ROBERT: Okay.

PAT: I think this is the closest I've ever come to dying.

JAD: Really?

PAT: It happened when I was 11, so I was in sixth grade. I was at lunch in the cafeteria. Lots of kids milling about, and I was sitting at the table with my best friend eating my little packed lunch that my mom had made for me. And I was eating an apple, and all of a sudden, I—I couldn't breathe.

JAD: You just—you started choking?

PAT: Yeah. And I put my hand up in the air, none of the cafeteria ladies came over. And I put both my hands in the air, and they finally came over and dragged me across the hall to the nurse's office. And ...

ROBERT: You're choking all the way to the nurse's ...

PAT: All the way to the nurse's office, yeah.

ROBERT: Gasping for air kinda choking?

PAT: No, just totally clogged up.

ROBERT: Clogged up.

PAT: And I get over there, and someone calls the paramedics.

JAD: Wait, how much time has passed since you—since you breathed?

PAT: Like two, two and half minutes, I think.

JAD: Really? That long?

PAT: Yeah.

JAD: Wow!

PAT: But then the nurse grabs me, wraps her arms around me, jerks me really hard under the rib cage and—pop!—this apple peel shoots right across the room.

JAD: Nice!

ROBERT: Like a projectile kinda—pow!—kinda thing?

PAT: Yeah, it was like in a cartoon. I mean, I don't actually remember, I have a terrible memory, but I've pieced this together from talking to my mom. And this story's just this thing that's been around. You know, I've told it a million times, it comes up at family gatherings. And I don't know, maybe a year ago, I was reading some things online about the Heimlich maneuver. I don't even know how I ended up there, and I realized I didn't know who actually is Heimlich? I didn't know anything about him. Like, who is this guy who invented this maneuver that saved my life?

[phone rings]

PAT: And that's when I discovered a story I totally did not expect.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Hello?

PAT: Hello, this is Patrick.

HENRY HEIMLICH: You downstairs?

PAT: I am.

JAD: Who's that?

PAT: That's Doctor Heimlich.

JAD: What?

HENRY HEIMLICH: I'll buzz you in. Take the elevator to four and turn left.

JAD: He's alive?

PAT: Yeah.

JAD: I just would have assumed he died, like, a hundred years ago.

PAT: Yeah, so he lives in Cincinnati. And I went to see him because ...

ROBERT: [laughs] You went to see—does that happen to you every time—like, if I told you ...

PAT: Well, this is what's cool about our job, right?

ROBERT: Yeah. "Oh, I've heard of him, I guess I'll go meet him."

PAT: I kinda wanted to say thanks!

HENRY HEIMLICH: Oh, I accept! [laughs]

PAT: Good to meet you.

PAT: And I wanted to find out, you know, the story of how he came up with this thing.

PAT: Can you just say who you are so I have it on tape?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Doctor Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich maneuver. [laughs]

PAT: Okay. And many other things that we'll talk about.

HENRY HEIMLICH: And each of them is saving many, many lives.

PAT: That's a matter of some debate. But let's just start the story at the beginning. And for our purposes, the story starts in the summer of 1941.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Yes.

PAT: Heimlich was 21 years old, and he was on a train heading back to New York City from a summer camp that he worked at upstate. And as the train is going along the shore of this lake, the front end of it jumped the track.

HENRY HEIMLICH: The whole engine jumped into the middle of the lake. I jumped off and walked up to the front to see if anyone was hurt.

PAT: And as he approached the front of the train which was sort of sticking in the water, he saw this guy trapped.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Under the water with his feet under the train wheel.

PAT: Like, his feet were stuck and he was kind of hanging down into the water?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Correct.

PAT: The guy's head was bobbing up and down. He was desperately trying to keep it above the water.

HENRY HEIMLICH: So I jumped in the water and I held him up.

PAT: Kinda hooked his arms under the guy's armpits and lifted his head and shoulders.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Out of the water. And I held him for a long time.

PAT: For an hour or so.

HENRY HEIMLICH: And ...

PAT: And by the time the paramedics arrived and freed the man, a crowd had formed.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Yeah.

PAT: And as Heimlich crawled out of the water ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: A couple near me said, "You saved a life. You saved a life."

PAT: That was the first time. After college, Heimlich went to medical school and became a ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Thoracic surgeon, a chest surgeon.

PAT: Started saving lives for a living. Then he joined the military.

HENRY HEIMLICH: I was in the Navy.

PAT: Navy surgeon.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Because I like ships and the sea.

PAT: Where he saved more lives.

HENRY HEIMLICH: [laughs]

PAT: And while he was overseas, he noticed that many times soldiers who got shot died not necessarily because they bled out, but because the bleeding from the wound would fill their chest and crush their lungs.

HENRY HEIMLICH: I'm thinking ...

PAT: There must be a way to solve this.

HENRY HEIMLICH: And one day ...

PAT: It hit him.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Why not a valve? So I ran to the five-and-ten-cent store.

PAT: Bought a few simple parts, and actually made this tube device that you could slip into a wound that ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Takes the air out and blood and lets nothing in.

PAT: It's called the Heimlich chest drain valve.

HENRY HEIMLICH: This is the tube and this is for the valve.

PAT: He showed me one of them. It's just a small six-inch tube with a little plastic flap that only lets air go one way. Really simple. But during Vietnam, the US Army bought 20,000 of these valves, distributed them to infantrymen.

HENRY HEIMLICH: When your buddy got shot in the chest, you slipped the tube into the chest and it saved his life.

PAT: And they're still around today. I called the company that makes them, and they told me that four million have sold since the 1970s, which translates to, like, who knows how many lives saved?

JAD: Wow, so this dude's amazing!

PAT: Wait, we haven't even gotten to the good part yet. One morning, in the winter of 1972.

PAT: Set the scene for me. So you were—at that time, you were living—you were living here?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Yes, I was living here.

PAT: Heimlich is drinking his coffee, reading the paper. And he happens upon this one article about people who die in restaurants.

HENRY HEIMLICH: In those days, many people who died in restaurants, they were thought to be having heart attacks.

PAT: Mm-hmm.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Until an autopsy was done.

PAT: And the article quoted a coroner who'd done a bunch of these autopsies, and had found that actually no, these people had choked. The article went on to explain that more than 2,500 people ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Thousands of people were dying ...

PAT: Every year. From choking.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Yes. I think it was the sixth-leading cause of accidental death.

PAT: Higher on the list than guns.

HENRY HEIMLICH: And the worst thing was that the great majority were children.

PAT: And nobody knew what to do about it. You could, like, thump a person on the back. But some doctors warned ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: That if you hit them on the back, the choking object would go deeper into the airway.

PAT: Do you—do you remember if there were people trying to come up with, like, devices? I feel like I read something about ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Yes, there was one who had a, like ...

PAT: Like a pair of plastic pliers.

HENRY HEIMLICH: You would jam that in.

PAT: All the way through?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Apparently.

PAT: Another guy invented a sort of vacuum that you'd use to suck the food out. Not surprisingly, these things ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Just weren't effective.

PAT: People were getting desperate. I found this little clip from the New York Times, which described this guy whose wife choked on a piece of food in a restaurant. And not knowing what else to do, this guy, who happened to be a surgeon, grabbed a steak knife off the table and tried to perform an emergency tracheotomy.

ROBERT: On her neck? Like, on her ...

PAT: Yeah.

JAD: Oh!

ROBERT: And what happened?

PAT: She died in the restaurant.

JAD: Wow!

PAT: So Heimlich was reading about all of this, and being a thoracic surgeon ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: A chest surgeon.

PAT: ... he had an idea.

HENRY HEIMLICH: I realized that there was enough air in the lungs, if you could compress that air ...

PAT: Push it up against whatever was clogging the windpipe ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: ... you could carry the object out of the mouth.

PAT: So he gets a dog.

ROBERT: He got a dog?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Yes.

PAT: Where'd you get it?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Oh, we had a laboratory that had some dogs there.

PAT: This wasn't like Fido, the Heimlich family pet.

HENRY HEIMLICH: No, no.

PAT: Laid the dog down on the operating table. And then he jams this piece of meat ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Probably beef.

PAT: ... down the dog's throat.

JAD: Did he at least sedate the dog before this?

PAT: Dog is anesthetized. And he ties a piece of string around the beef in case he needs to pull it out.

ROBERT: Okay, that's ...

JAD: Oh.

PAT: But anyway, the clock is ticking. He gets behind the dog.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Took my fist just above the belly button and pressed it there. Nothing.

PAT: So he tried again.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Repeated it. Nothing.

PAT: And then, on the third try—pop!—that beef ball ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Flew right across the room. I knew we had it.

PAT: So in 1974, Heimlich wrote up a little description of this maneuver and sent it to a medical journal. Pretty soon, that got picked up by a national paper.

HENRY HEIMLICH: The Chicago Daily News. And not quite a week later ...

PAT: A retiree named Isaac Peehaw, who had just read about the Heimlich maneuver in the paper ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Came out on his porch and his neighbor started screaming for help.

PAT: Guy runs over to his neighbor's house, finds his neighbor's wife ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Face down in the food. And ...

PAT: Just like he'd read in the newspaper ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: He did the method and—pop!—a big piece of meat flew out of her mouth and she fully recovered. And so he was recorded as the first one to use the procedure.

PAT: Pretty soon ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Stories from around the country ...

PAT: Began pouring into Heimlich's mailbox. Los Angeles, California, Fresno, California ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: And it got out very quickly.

PAT: One about a babysitter saving the kid she was looking after.

HENRY HEIMLICH: The whole country.

PAT: Bangor, Maine. Somewhere in Florida. Here's one about a custodian who saved an eighth grader choking on a ravioli.

HENRY HEIMLICH: You know, they just kept coming in.

PAT: There was stories about celebrities being saved by the Heimlich maneuver.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Different actors and actresses.

PAT: Cher, Goldie Hahn, Walter Matthau, Carrie Fisher. And Ronald Reagan!

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Johnny Carson: Okay, I'm in—this is the symbol that you're choking, right?]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Henry Heimlich: Right.]

PAT: This is Heimlich teaching Johnny Carson how to do the maneuver.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Henry Heimlich: I'm gonna put my arms around your waist.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Johnny Carson: Oh, yes!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, David Letterman: Come on over here, and I guess you're gonna demonstrate ...]

PAT: He taught Letterman, too.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, David Letterman: ... how to do it.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Geraldo Rivera: I just wanna read you, Doctor Heimlich, one letter that you got from a third grader in Kentucky.]

PAT: This is him on Geraldo.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Geraldo Rivera: "Dear Dr. Heimlich. Roses are red, violets are blue, I might be dead if it wasn't for you." A third grader saved from choking on an apple. And if you think ...]

PAT: And for most of us, I think, that's where the story seemed to end, with Heimlich as sort of a national hero. But the story goes on and gets kind of murkier.

ROBERT: What do you mean?

PAT: Like, at the height of his fame, Heimlich starts going to medical conferences and claiming that the Heimlich maneuver can be used for more than just choking.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Henry Heimlich: Now we have a new use for the Heimlich maneuver, and that's its use to stop an asthma attack.]

JAD: Asthma?

ROBERT: How? Because ...

PAT: The way he explained is that when you have an asthma attack, your lungs get filled with a lot of excess mucus, and if you do the Heimlich maneuver, it will expel the mucus and stop the asthma attack.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Henry Heimlich: In addition, you can prevent an asthma attack by using the maneuver to keep the mucus out of the lungs. You use it maybe once every week or two.]

JAD: I live with someone who suffers from bad asthma. I'm supposed to give her the Heimlich maneuver once a week to help her with her asthma? That just seems weird.

PAT: Yeah.

JAD: Well, that's ...

ROBERT: Well, does that work?

PAT: No, there's no proof that that works.

ROBERT: Huh.

PAT: And at the time, asthma experts attacked him, saying the idea was dangerous. And it wasn't just asthma. On TV, Heimlich began to argue ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: That you can also save drowning victims with the Heimlich maneuver.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Henry Heimlich: Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is not effective when the lungs are flooded with water. The way to save a drowning victim is to do the Heimlich maneuver first. The lungs will clear after four Heimlich maneuvers. The Heimlich maneuver expels the water from the lungs.]

ROBERT: Does it work?

PAT: No.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: There are a lot of misconceptions about when someone drowns, that their—their lungs will be full of water.

PAT: This is Jonathan Epstein.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: I'm the executive director of Northeast Emergency Medical Services.

PAT: Also a member of the American Red Cross' scientific advisory board. And he says what actually happens in most drowning cases—I didn't know this at all, is that ...

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: The back of the throat will kinda spasm or close off.

PAT: And keep water from getting into the lungs.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: And it is so important to quickly start that CPR process to replace the oxygen that was lost.

PAT: By giving the Heimlich maneuver, you're not only wasting time that you could be using to put oxygen back into the victim, but you also put them at risk of—like, of vomiting. You do the Heimlich maneuver, they might throw up and inhale their vomit, which could make things even worse.

JAD: But did people take him—take this idea seriously?

PAT: Yeah. Several major companies that train lifeguards started teaching their students to use the Heimlich maneuver before doing CPR. And for years, thousands of lifeguards were taught to do the Heimlich maneuver first. And as the years went on, Heimlich's ideas got increasingly radical. In the early 1980s, he announced that he might have found a cure for Lyme disease, cancer, and ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: I believe that I have a possible cure of AIDS.

JAD: AIDS?

ROBERT: AIDS?

PAT: How do people usually react when you say you have a cure to AIDS?

HENRY HEIMLICH: I don't say it to the wrong people.

PAT: Because the secret to his cure ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Malaria.

PAT: ... kills more than a million people every year.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Malaria therapy.

PAT: This isn't Heimlich's idea originally. He got it from a guy named ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Wagner-Jauregg of Austria.

PAT: Who in the early 20th century ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: 1918.

PAT: ... started treating victims of neuro-syphilis by giving them malaria.

HENRY HEIMLICH: And he cured it.

PAT: Because the fever was so severe that the fever from the malaria would kill the neuro-syphilis, but not the person?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Correct.

PAT: And based on this work, Juaregg, the guy who came up with this ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: In 1927, we won a Nobel Prize for it.

PAT: It wasn't long though before antibiotics came along, and malaria therapy disappeared. But in the early 1980s, Heimlich figured maybe this could work for seemingly intractable diseases like cancer and AIDS. First thing he tried it out on was ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: Lyme disease.

PAT: He raised some money.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Got some volunteers. Went the University of Mexico in Mexico City.

PAT: And he ran this small, unregulated clinical trial, in which he infected these volunteers with South American malaria. The CDC caught wind of what he was doing, denounced the treatment, called it unsafe, but that did not stop Heimlich. And through the 90s and into the early 2000s, he ran other unregulated trials on cancer and AIDS patients.

HENRY HEIMLICH: In South China.

PAT: And in Africa.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Ethiopia.

[NEWS CLIP: Doctor Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health says Doctor Heimlich's theory about malaria therapy has been thoroughly debunked by medical science.]

PAT: This is from a report on ABC News that quoted one of the world's leading AIDS researchers saying there's no scientific reason to believe malaria therapy would be effective against AIDS.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Anthony Fauci: And it does have the fundamental potential of actually killing you. That is a big risk to put a person through in an experiment in which there's no fundamental basis to even imagine that it would work.]

PAT: Uh, what happened with Peter?

PAT: And the criticism wasn't just coming from medical experts.

PHIL HEIMLICH: I have absolutely no idea. Absolutely no idea.

PAT: This is Heimlich's eldest son, Phil. And he explained to me that several years ago, his little brother, Peter, came out and began publicly condemning his dad's ideas. He launched a website and started sending emails to reporters, leading eventually to dozens of articles, most of which were critical of his father.

PHIL HEIMLICH: Why does a son do that? I have no idea.

PAT: When I called Peter, he told me that he didn't do it for any personal reasons, but because he felt his dad's ideas were dangerous, that they were putting people's lives at risk.

PAT: And you told me—repeat for me what you ...

PAT: Phil didn't want his father to have to deal with questions about Peter.

PHIL HEIMLICH: Basically because of the pain that this has caused my parents, because of their age ...

PAT: In fact, he wouldn't even give us access to his father unless we agreed to that.

PHIL HEIMLICH: I just—I just don't want my parents to go through that.

PAT: Phil also had another condition: that we not include Peter's voice. We thought he'd waived that condition in a subsequent interview, and therefore we did include Peter's voice in the original version of this story. But Phil didn't see it that way. Even though some ambiguity remains, we've decided to resolve the matter by respecting Phil's understanding of our agreement for accessing his dad and removing Peter's voice from the story. We should say though that even though we removed Peter's voice, this version of the story contains the same facts as the original. Anyway, the whole family drama aside, Heimlich was happy to address his other critics. And he said the way he sees it ...

HENRY HEIMLICH: "Creative ideas are often attacked because people oppose change or do not understand new concepts."

PAT: This is from an article Heimlich wrote about his career for the Encyclopedia Britannica.

HENRY HEIMLICH: "When a prominent discovery is revealed, particularly if it provides an obvious and simple answer to an important question, experts who have worked for years unsuccessfully on the same problem, they lash out at the creator and the idea because they're upset at themselves to not find the solution. Creativity requires courage."

PHIL HEIMLICH: People who have genius and great ideas often—often have to struggle to get their ideas out.

PAT: That's Phil again, and he disagrees with his brother Peter when it comes to their dad's work.

PHIL HEIMLICH: Yeah.

PAT: In fact, they don't even really talk anymore.

PHIL HEIMLICH: I trust my father's judgment. I trust the way his mind works, and I trust his ability to find simple solutions to very difficult problems.

PAT: And everybody seems to agree that his most famous solution, the Heimlich maneuver itself, is an incredibly effective one. But lately, some people have started to question whether it's the best one. At the end of my conversation with John Epstein ...

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: In the American Red Cross ...

PAT: ... the Red Cross guy that we talked to before, he told me that every five years, all the major lifesaving organizations worldwide get together and review their guidelines for all different kinds of rescues.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: It is an exhaustive scientific research process.

PAT: They look over ...

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Case reports and case studies.

PAT: ... controlled experiments on animals and cadavers. And Epstein told me that two reviews ago ...

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: In 2005.

PAT: ... the report yielded some new information about choking.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: It was very clear that back slaps or back blows ...

PAT: Just thumping somebody on the back between their shoulder blades.

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: ... appeared to be equally effective ...

PAT: As the Heimlich maneuver.

ROBERT: Really?

PAT: And in fact, the Red Cross ...

ROBERT: Wow!

PAT: ... upon finding this out, went so far as to change their recommendation for what you should do when you find someone choking from "just do the Heimlich maneuver," to "first, hit someone on the back five times, then do the Heimlich maneuver."

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Yes.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Nonsense. It's unbelievable.

PAT: And also, the Red Cross no longer calls it the "Heimlich maneuver."

ROBERT: Whoa!

JAD: What do they call it?

ROBERT: What do they call it?

JONATHAN EPSTEIN: Abdominal thrusts.

JAD: Abdominal thrusts?

HENRY HEIMLICH: This is wrong.

PAT: And as I sat there with Heimlich, I did start to wonder, like, how will we remember this guy? Will we remember this guy? I mean, does—do those bad things that he did later in his career in any way put his legacy as a lifesaver in jeopardy?

PAT: When I told people I was coming here, a lot of people reacted with wonderment that you're still here. People thought you'd been dead for a hundred years.

HENRY HEIMLICH: That makes me feel very good.

PAT: Makes you feel good?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Yes.

PAT: Why?

HENRY HEIMLICH: My name is something that they just know. They just know it so well that it is self-established, that these handful of people who were trying to do harm really don't mean anything. I mean, to me right now, it's a great pleasure to know my name means saving lives. And when I'm gone, it's still going to be the Heimlich maneuver, and it's still going to be saving lives. I could just pull up my Google alert with the name "Heimlich" on it.

PAT: Yeah, could you?

PAT: Heimlich has a Google alert that he checks pretty much every day.

HENRY HEIMLICH: Here. "Sycamore boy saves life of friend choking on atomic fireball." "Custodian recognized for saving choking girl."

PAT: You find dozens, hundreds of these stories of people being saved by the Heimlich maneuver.

HENRY HEIMLICH: "Off-duty police officer saves neighbor's life."

PAT: You don't find a lot of stories about the controversies surrounding drowning and malaria therapy, or the Red Cross' new guidelines.

HENRY HEIMLICH: "Oregon football player performs Heimlich on man at Beef Bowl." [laughs]

PAT: This is just from one week?

HENRY HEIMLICH: Yeah.

PAT: And flipping through these stories, it does give you the sense that this guy and his maneuver have somehow become kind of immortal. Which on the one hand I kind of get.

CINDY ENNIS: Hello?

PAT: Hello, is this Mrs. Ennis?

CINDY ENNIS: Yes.

PAT: This is Pat Walters. I don't — I don't know if you remember me, but ...

PAT: Just before I finished making this story, I found Mrs. Ennis, the nurse who gave me the Heimlich maneuver when I was 11.

CINDY ENNIS: That was lunchtime wasn't it?

PAT: It was lunchtime.

CINDY ENNIS: Yeah. An apple?

PAT: It was an apple, yeah.

CINDY ENNIS: Yes.

PAT: And after she gave me the Heimlich maneuver, I sent her a thank-you note, and she sent me back this letter.

CINDY ENNIS: All right. Tell me when to start.

PAT: Whenever you're ready.

CINDY ENNIS: Okay. Right now. "Dear Patrick, when I accepted a job as the school nurse in the Wilson School District 33 years ago, I told myself that I would never allow anything to happen to children in my care. To my sorrow, I have watched Whitfield children I loved die of cystic fibrosis, AIDS, accidents and cancer. I think when you said, 'I can breathe,' was one of the happiest moments of my life. I treasure yours and your parents' letter and the privilege of being your school nurse. Sincerely, and with a big hug, Cindy Ennis, R.N."

PAT: I get a little—I get a little choked up just listening to you read that to me. I feel uh ...

CINDY ENNIS: I feel it very sincerely, Patrick. I truly do. It was from the heart.

PAT: I think what I take away from this is that, like, I'll always think of that thing I call the Heimlich maneuver as the Heimlich maneuver. And so will Mrs. Ennis. But when I think about my kids—I don't have any kids but, like, the kids I might have some day, when they learn this thing, it won't be called the Heimlich maneuver. And based on what I know now, I really don't think that I would tell them to call it that.

JAD: Even though it saved your life?

PAT: Yeah.

ROBERT: Thank you, Patrick.

JAD: Thanks Pat.

ROBERT: And we ...

JAD: Thank you guys for listening.

ROBERT: Yeah.

[LISTENER: Hello, world. This is Jamie from Glasgow in Scotland. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. Thanks]

 

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