Henry Heimlich Henry Heimlich Henry Judah Heimlich (; February 3, 1920 – December 17, 2016) was an American thoracic surgeon and medical researcher. He is widely credited as the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver, a technique of abdominal thrusts for stopping choking, described in "Emergency Medicine" in 1974. He also invented the Micro Trach portable oxygen system for ambulatory patients and the Heimlich Chest Drain Valve, or "flutter valve", which drains blood and air out of the chest cavity. Heimlich was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the son of Mary (Epstein) and Philip Heimlich. His paternal grandparents were Hungarian-Jewish immigrants, and his maternal
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States state sponsors of terrorism and of pursuing weapons of mass destruction. The Rumsfeld Commission grouped the three countries together because they all were believed to be pursuing ballistic missile programs based on the Scud missile. In the pre-9/11 days of the Bush presidency, the administration had focused heavily on developing a national missile defense system to counter such threats. A month after the address, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who appointed Rumsfeld as head of the commission, mentioned the importance of the commission's findings in relation to the US ability to predict the threat posed by the axis