Choking alone (without back blows) to assist a choking victim, is referred to as "The Heimlich Maneuver." The purpose of abdominal thrusts is to create pressure that will expel any object lodged in the airway upwards to relive the obstruction. The Heimlich Maneuver specifically excludes back blows; its inventor, Dr. Henry Heimlich, believed that back blows were likely to cause an airway obstruction to become more deeply lodged in the victim's airway. So, while abdominal thrusts are part of other choking victim protocols, the Heimlich Maneuver uses only abdominal thrusts to attempt to dislodge airway obstructions. The American Red Cross recommends
Henry Heimlich may have saved the lives of more than 50,000 people. However, according to Sayre in 2005, "Despite widespread education on the use of the Heimlich maneuver and other techniques for treatment of acute airway obstruction, the death rate remains stable." From the early 1980s, Heimlich advocated malariotherapy, the deliberate infection of a person with benign malaria in order to treat ailments such as cancer, Lyme disease and (more ) HIV. the treatments were unsuccessful, and attracted criticism as both scientifically unsound and dangerous. The United States Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have rejected malariotherapy