#2700: Kristin Comella & Theodore Gradel

Stem cell quackery is a serious problem. Stem cell clinics preying on people in difficult situations with ‘experimental’ but non-evidence-supported and often nonsensical cures for various serious conditions, have been popping up all over the US (and Mexico) over the past fifteen years, and some of them have even received boosts from mainstream media in the form of anecdotes reported as “miraculous” recoveries from serious disease. Now, people suffering from serious diseases are often willing to try almost anything, and they are accordingly easy targets for cynical grifters and delusional woomeisters with unproven techniques – after all, the grifters don’t need to offer any promises; a glimmer of hope may be sufficient to ensure that people with serious diseases sacrifice their savings as they also often lose their lives.

 

There is little protection to be had against such businesses, but in 2018 the FDA at least cracked down on two of the most obviously bad actors using unapproved stem cell treatments that had seriously harmed patients: at those clinics, fat was removed from patients’ bellies by liposuction and then an extract of it was injected into various parts of the body, like knees or the spinal cord, based on the (unsupported) conjecture that the extract contained stem cells that could provide replacement cells that would repair damage from injury or illness. One of the targets was the U.S. Stem Cell Clinic L.L.C. of Sunrise, Florida, its chief scientific officer, Kristin Comella, and its co-owner and managing officer, Theodore Gradel. (The other target was the California Stem Cell Treatment Center, including the Cell Surgical Network Corporation of Rancho Mirage, and Dr. Elliot B. Lander and Dr. Mark Berman)

 

In fact, the US Stem Cell Clinic, LLC, offers not just stem cell quackery but a whole cornucopia of quack techniques, including food allergy testing, IV nutritionals, ozone therapy, and infrared therapy. But with regard to its stem cell procedure, the clinic claimed, with little to no evidence, that the procedure could be used to treat a wide range of conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, pulmonary fibrosis, Crohn’s disease, lupus, and diabetes. The FDA had also prior to 2018 not been particularly impressed. (It’s worth noting that the clinic put in serious efforts to prevent the FDA from carrying out an inspection, for instance denying them access to employees, and yeah, the administration at the clinic clearly has some serious problems with honesty.) The FDA’s focus on the clinic was motivated in part by the clinic’s aggressive marketing strategies and demonstrable patient harm, e.g. three women who lost their vision after “stem cell treatment” for macular degeneration – and yeah, the clinic’s practices were truly egregious; more details here, and even more here. (Note, too, that there are no reporting requirements for adverse effects outside of clinical studies, so similar harm from stem cell treatments may be way more common than we realize.)

 

Kristin Comella is the clinic’s “chief scientific officer”. According to her website, she is a “world renowned expert on regenerative medicine with a focus on adipose derived stem cells” but her academic background consists of an MA in chemical engineering and a “Ph.D in Stem Cell Biology” from the Panama College of Cell Science, an unaccredited offshore virtual college where you can buy a PhD degree for $8100 (they promise you a degree “beautifully created in color in the approximate size 8 x 10 inches, using various fancy font styles”). Comella is also the founder and president of the Academy of Regenerative Practices, a position she uses to call for donations to create a “legal defense fund” to fight the FDA; “in fields where you’re starting to do a new paradigm and bringing something forward that is a disrupter,” she said, “there’s always going to be naysayers”. Well, there will certainly be naysayers when what you do is causing irrepairable harm to patients through quackery, too. Comella relies on her potential customers to not consider that possible explanation for nay-saying. Her pitch has in any case made her a sought-after speaker at health industry conferences and conferences of longevity quacks, such as the annual Revolution against Aging and Death Festival.

 

An interesting tidbit: The unaccredited Panama College of Cell Science was founded by Walter Drake, a onetime cancer researcher who claims – conveniently for Comella –  that treatments involving reinjection of a patient’s stem cells shouldn’t be subject to clinical trials; and Drake’s relevant credentials for the claim? A “PhD in stem cell biology” … from his own unaccredited institution, no less.

 

Diagnosis: Yeah, so ‘loon’ might not immediately come across as the most accurate epithet, but if we apply Hanlon’s razor, then that’s what we end up with. Dangerous.

 

 Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence

#2699: Loren Coleman

Note: We messed up the alphabetical order here, but we had already written up this one and it’s likely that there will be some time before we get back around to this spot in the alphabet, so here we go.

 

Loren Coleman is a full-fledged and somewhat legendary pseudoscientist and cryptozoologist, and a writer on a range of (allegedly) paranormal phenomena. His earliest work is heavily suffused with appeals to New Age magic – Coleman was a major promoter of the psychic projection hypothesis – though his more recent work tends to try to offer instead less quasi-religious and magical interpretation of various nonsense (primarily cryptozoology), without being at all closer to taking any reasonable, evidence-based approach. Coleman is sometimes viewed as a person of some authority in certain pseudoscience groups insofar as he has legitimate academic credentials – never mind that his academic background is in social work rather than anything remotely relevant to the pseudoscientific claims he is making. He has been featured in numerous TV series dedicated to “unsolved mysteries” and cryptozoology run by the familiar promoters of pseudoscience and alternative facts such as History Channel, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, and is also the founder of a Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

 

Coleman’s early, 1970s work, such as the books The Unidentified: Notes Toward Solving the UFO Mystery and Creatures of the Outer Edge (both with Jerome Clark), was largely responsible for, in Coleman’s own word, “the amalgamation of Bigfoot and UFOs”. In particular, Coleman suggested that UFOs, poltergeists, yetis and other “manimals” and what have you were to be explained by virtue of psychokinesis: human thought, according to Coleman, would sometime manifest itself as physical phenomena – “borderline phenomena”, in Coleman’s terminology – in the world: “Whatever the source may be its signals must be filtered though human consciousness and perception, which shape the manifestations to conform to certain archetypal forms that are both strange and yet oddly familiar to us. Strange because they appear supernatural or extraterrestrial, but familiar because, in a sense, we have created them,” said Coleman and Clark. The mechanism by which this would work was of course left largely unexplained, so the hypothesis wouldn’t have been much of an explanation even if the target phenomena to be explained – physical UFOs, yetis and other “manimals”, and ghosts – had existed, which they don’t; calling the explanatory attempt “pseudoscientific” is accordingly somewhat, well, charitable; “incoherent nonsense” is probably more accurate. Reality-oriented commentators were not impressed.

 

As mentioned, Coleman’s more recent work tends to eschew appeals to magic; unfortunately, they aren’t much less ridiculous for that. Though he official rejects the “believer” label regarding Bigfoot, Coleman’s book Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America (2003) does, rather unambiguously, state that “One day Bigfoot will be recognised as a living creature” and he bases his case mostly on the familiar Patterson–Gimlin film, the Minnesota Iceman, footprint casts, (alleged) eyewitness testimony, and no actual evidence. His 1999/2006 book (with Patrick Huyghe) The Field Guide to Bigfoot, Yeti, and Other Mystery Primates Worldwide is reviewed here. Coleman apparently also believes in the Loch Ness Monster.

 

Diagnosis: According to commentators, Coleman knows how to spin a yarn, but that’s no reason to take any of the nonsense he spews seriously. He remains something of an authority in groups devoted to motivated reasoning about the paranormal, however, where the null hypothesis “maybe we’re wrong” is never taken particularly seriously.

 

Hat-tip: rationalwiki

#2698: Carol Collins

Carol Collins offers you “the James experience”. She is, according to herself, “the voice for The Entity James and The Collective” and in general a “verbal, conscious channel who has the ability to speak with non-physical vibrational Beings clairvoyantly and verbally. She gives workshops, classes, readings and mentoring with the Entity James.” Who James is and why you should trust him might come across as unclear unless you spoil the joke and conclude that James is, of course, Collins herself. Also, don’t ask her what it would mean for non-physical things to vibrate. Anyways, what she offers is the usual deranged New Age bullshit, which, as always, is so inane that one is hesitant to call it a scam. (It is a scam.)

 

Collins, however, managed to land herself in some controversy in 2020 when her ads claimed that she was channelling George Floyd: “Carol channels George Floyd. A powerful message from George about choosing life, choosing to offer friendship love and forgiveness, to help stop the suffering, to ‘go home – enjoy your family, tell them you love them … remove my name from being associated with hate .. civil liberties are not what we need to be fighting for, be the one who says I love you to all.” Yes, right; this New Age troll-snowflake claims to channel George Floyd, and Floyd’s message is, conveniently, to stop fighting for civil liberties, and that all lives matter. Suffice to say, her surroundings were not amused.

 

Diagnosis: In fairness, her scam doesn’t seem to have been able to live down the George Floyd incident particularly well, but yes: she deserves every piece of flak she could conceivably have received.

 

Hat-tip: Pharyngula

#2697: Joshua Coleman

Joshua Coleman is an antivaxer activist associated with the conspiracy film VAXXED and the originator of the hashtag #SaidNoMother for antivaxx parents to create memes with their child’s (alleged) vaccine injury story in a way that maximizes emotional appeal (so as to downplay the facts). The rationale for the hashtag and campaign is of course that “vaccine injury” is, according to antivaxxers, often scorned in the media, as if “injury can not exist.” But, according to antivaxxers, the campaign shows that “[i]t exists. From this we know.” Yes, who would rely on evidence when they could listen to antivaxxers making memes, and what is careful study compared to antivaccine parents making causal inferences based on gut feeling and failure to grasp basic statistics? In any case, Facebook got littered for a while with memes like “ ‘My child quit talking after getting the MMR vaccine and now bangs his head against the wall every day, lost all his eye contact, doesn’t recognize me anymore and is now afraid to eat new foods, but HEY – I’m glad he doesn’t have the Measles, which can cause a runny nose, cough, and a rash, can be treated with vitamin A, typically lasts only 7-10 days and resolves itself.’ ~Said no mother of a vaccine injured child, ever.” [courtesy of antivaxx conspiracy theorist Lyndsy Karrie] Of course, vaccines demonstrably do not cause autism, and Karrie’s variant of the Brady Bunch misinformation gambit about measles is dangerous nonsense. But yeah: the hashtag was used to run virtually any piece of antivaccine talking point, conspiracy theory and associated quackery in existence.

 

As an antivaxx activist, Coleman is zealous and tireless, and he has, over the last five years, emerged as a major figure in the antivaccine movement. In 2020, he and his organization V is for Vaccines for instance organized protests outside Jimmy Kimmel Live and the Frozen II premiere to protest vaccines, and had infiltrators interrupt the Jimmy Kimmel broadcast while Kimmel was interviewing Kristen Bell, since Kimmel and Bell, according to Coleman, are “two of the most openly hateful figures towards people who do not or selectively vaccinate” – this is not about facts and evidence for Coleman, but about oppression, marginalization and othering of him and likeminded conspiracy theorists who peddle misunderstandings and falsehoods that seriously threaten public health. Coleman is otherwise the “brain” behind various potentially colorful antivaccine stunts, such as having Star Wars cosplaying antivaxers descend upon Disneyland and V-cosplaying (hence ‘V is for vaccine’, of course) antivaxxers infiltrating the San Diego Comic-Con in 2019.

 

Coleman himself is the father of a boy that Coleman is convinced is vaccine injured; the boy developed transverse myelitis just over 6 weeks after he received a round of vaccines when he was 17 months old, and according to Coleman, “it was in fact determined that it was vaccine induced transverse myelitis,” even though current research does not support a causal link between vaccines and transverse myelitis. Coleman, however, has read and misunderstood vaccine package inserts, where, for some vaccines, “transverse myelitis” is listed as an adverse reaction (which, to emphasize, just means that some people receiving the vaccine have been reported to also develop transverse myelitis – like Coleman’s son – and not that there is any shred of indication of a causal link). Coleman, however, feels that he was not given true informed consent to the vaccines because he wasn’t told that “transverse myelitis” was listed in the package inserts even though there is no indication that vaccines contribute to transverse myelitis.

 

Such details – like facts, evidence or accuracy – doesn’t matter much to Coleman. His organization for instance sells packs of protest signs of what they claim to be “basic vaccine facts” filled with familiar antivaccine misinformation and talking points refuted a thousand times, including claiming that

 

-       “Vaccines are not placebo safety tested” (blatantly false; when confronted with the relevant studies, antivaxxers will of course try to move the goalposts)

-       “Childhood vaccines: 24 in 1988, 69 in 2019” (this is an easily refuted myth, but it is interesting how it never goes away, even though the numbers antivaxxers use vary wildly).

-       “Vaccines are made with aborted fetal cells” (of course they aren’t, but of course Coleman’s group will claim they are)

-       “Vaccine makers are exempt from liability” (blatantly false)

-       “US Law classifies vaccines as unavoidably unsafe” (yes, of course they would be trying to mislead people with that one; it tells you so much about them and so little about vaccines)

-       “Live virus vaccines shed and spread” (nope)

 

Yeah, the claims on those signs are easily debunked, but Coleman, his organization, and their followers, are using them at protests across the nation, and it wouldn’t be surprising if some parents, who don’t, after all, have expertise in these fields, might be scared. “These are all undisputed facts. Everyone should know these things,” says Coleman.

 

Coleman and his V is for Vaccine rose to prominence particularly through their campaigning against California’s SB276, which would protect children from potentially lethal, transmissible disease by making it harder to obtain exemptions from vaccine mandates (receiving the patronage of anti-vaxx celebrity Rob Schneider, for instance). Ostensibly peaceful protests, the antivaccine campaigns were notable for their violent rhetoric, and Coleman and Olivia Mikos (another figure in the group – we haven’t tried to determine official positions, if there are any, but Mikos and one Kyle Evatt are recurring figures) were quick to appeal to conspiracy theories to suggest that people associated with the movement who were demonstrably not peaceful were double agents planted to make the movement look bad (which was, needless to say, demonstrably not the case). We guess it’s tricky to stay on the right side of ‘peaceful’ when you have deluded yourself into thinking you are civil rights martyrs fighting not only tyranny but for your children’s lives; Coleman, who had convinced himself his campaigns are addressing a civil rights issue, struggles mightily with how to position himself along the lines here, especially given that stalking and harassment remain among his favorite activist tools. His group quickly expanded their efforts to other states as well.

 

Coleman was also quick to see the opportunity provided by Covid to ramp up antivaccine rhetoric and attract more followers, especially by coopting the language of rightwing populists to recruit people sympathetic tp wingnut views and associated conspiracy theories – the antivaccine movement was, in March 2020, in Coleman’s words, in “a very unique position in this moment in time.”

 

More recently, Coleman has teamed up with groups like the Proud Boys: “They seemed like really good guys. Over the last few years I’ve met many more and seen them at events they either organized or attended,” says Coleman, who also thinks they “are being unfairly attacked in the mainstream news”.

 

Diagnosis: As a deludedly self-declared civil rights warrior and freedom fighter, Coleman apparently feels justified in employing virtually any tactic that will serve his need, and his willingness to do that, combined with tirelessness and zealotry, has made him one of the movers and shakers in the antivaccine movement, A frightening figure, whose path you don’t want to have intersect with yours.

 

Hat-tip: Vaxopedia

#2696: William Cole

We have had the opportunity to cover the quackery known as functional medicine a number of times already, and that’s not particularly surprising: functional medicine is quackery, but it is luctrative quackery, so it is a natural gravitation point for people with poor critical thinking skills and/or a poorly developed moral compass. Though it is somewhat hard to define exactly what functional medicine is, given that it is usually described in vague handwaves (descriptions precise enough to be tested and/or legally actionable tend to be avoided – there’s a lot of focus on ‘imbalances’), a notable characteristic is practitioners’ tendency to prescribe a vast array of useless and expensive tests, the results of which they use (based on wallet medical intuition and pseudoscience) to develop “individualized treatment plans” (‘individualized’ to ensure that you pay what you can pay) based largely on useless treatment regimes and supplements.

William Cole is a good example. Cole is a chiropractor and practitioner of functional medicine who has written a very helpful article, “Feeling Off? These Are The Tests To Have Your Doctor Run”, that inadvertently lays out the scam insome detail. “As a functional medicine practitioner, I run a lot of labs,” Cole admits. Of course, since he is not a medical doctor, there may be limits to what kind of tests he can actually run (like blood tests); luckily, we can guarantee you that your health problems are to be located in the results of the tests he can and does decide to run. He is quick to point out, however, that “every person’s health case and biochemistry is unique”, or in other words: reading up on science and evidence is pointless. And he admits that a “general practitioner probably won’t be ordering these tests”, so he recommends “working with an integrative or functional medicine doctor” instead. Now, “many of these test won’t be covered by insurance” because they are not science- or evidence-based, but you should trust the holistic intuitions of your local quack to order and interpret them nonetheless. You can also order at-home tests from commercial websites with prominent Quack Miranda Warnings.

His website is slick-looking and replete testimonials, presumably from people who has taken his tests, received a fake diagnosis, gone through his treatments, and then suddenly not suffered from the ailment the fake diagnosis stated that they suffered from anymore. The website titulates his approach as “the future of natural medicine”, and given the money potentially involved in the set-up (and the complete absence of any sense of accountability among natural medicine practitioners), we suspect he might be right about that.

It may be illustrative to look at the kinds of tests Cole actually recommends for people who are feeling tired:

• a 24-hour adrenal stress index to determine that you suffer from adrenal fatigue, an infamous fake disease  
• a full thyroid panel: although feeling down can, in rare cases, be a symptom of thyroid disease, the kinds of tests Cole recommends are well-known to be bunk (Cole even recommends potential customers to disregard real lab results that show that your TSH is “normal” – “normal” on real tests just means, according to Cole, that “you’re just like a lot of other sick people” – and rather rely on him and his tests, which will surely not show “normal”; it is telling that he essentially just lies about how reference levels for lab tests are determined 
• Gut permeability labs 
• Sex hormone labs 
• Inflammation labs (rarely helpful) 
• Genetic testing

Yeah, no.

Diagnosis: Do not fall for this!

Hat-tip: David Gorski @ sciencebasedmedicine

#2695: Lucy Cole

Lucy Cole (middle)

California bill SB 276 was introduced in 2019 as an effort to curb parents’ use of ideological exemptions to vaccine mandates for children attending public schools, and it was desperately needed. It was, of course, vigorously opposed by antivaccine groups, including lunatic antivaccine conspiracy groups like the Church of Scientology and the Nation of Islam. In California, the efforts of the former group were spearheaded by Lucy Cole, a Scientology Operating Thetan VIII, the highest current auditing level in Scientology. Cole was for instance leading the effort to have the church and the Nation of Islam coordinate their antivaccine efforts, and worked closely for instance with Minister Tony Muhammad, the regional representative for Nation of Islam on the American West Coast and, as it turns out, also a Scientologist, at various antivaccine events. Cole and Muhammad have also for instance appeared together with Del Bigtree, and helped promote the anti-vaccine conspiracy video Vaxxed.

 

Beyond her membership in the Church of Scientology and her antivaccine activities, we admit that we do not know much about Cole – her church isn’t exactly renowned for its level of transparency. If she’s still around, we doubt that she’s up to anything good, however.

 

Diagnosis: Crazy and delusional old lady, though on the bright side: scientology’s involvement with anti-vaccine efforts may ultimately harm the latter movement more than it helps.

#2694: Leonard Coldwell

A.k.a. Bernd Klein (or Bernd Witchner) (original name)

 

Some promoters of pseudoscience and alternative medicine are dangerous because they are somewhat successful at impersonating real medical experts, and may thereby succeed in fooling otherwise intelligent people. Others are just batshit loons whose attempts to pass as respectable practitioners don’t withstand the most superficial scrutiny, but may yet, because they’re scrupulous when it comes to making grandiose claims, still be able to attract the attention of people in very difficult situations. Leonard Coldwell is definitely among the latter, and something of a legend in the fringier circles of alternative medicine (his videos have a scary amount of views). Coldwell is a promoter of various “natural remedies” and has produced numerous movies and websites promoting pseudoscientific nonsense and conspiracy theories (e.g. pushing cholesterol denialism). Given that his ideas are not anchored in reality (or anything else, really), they tend to change rather arbitrarily, and it is instructive to compare claims made on his more current websites with those made on earlier and abandoned websites.

 

Coldwell is known to refer to himself as the world’s leading authority on a lot of things, including cancer. (He has actually referred to himself as “the God of Healing”.) Located firmly at the summit of Mount Stupid, Coldwell possesses little understanding of biology and medicine, however, and no understanding of science and how to confirm or disconfirm hypotheses through testing.

 

(Alleged) Background

Originally active in Germany, Coldwell (then Bernd Klein) claims to have discovered his healing gifts as a child (or adolescent – it seems to vary a bit) when he saved his mother from a suite of serious and terminal illnesses, including hepatitis C (a virus that wasn’t isolated and identified until 1988). He offers no evidence for the claim, of course, and neither a shred of evidence to support his abysmally unlikely claim of having run a string of European hospitals with a 92.3% cure rate. He ostensibly left Germany for the US due to persecution from Big Pharma and the medical establishment who were trying to silence him. In fairness, the notion that he managed to land himself in legal trouble doesn’t strike us as that far-fetched.

 

In the 90s he changed his name (if his background story were accurate, you might justifiably wonder why he would) and set up shop (the Fit For Life Health Resort and Spa) in Florida together with Harvey Diamond, before launching his membership-based Neuro-associative Programming System® [NAPS], ostenislby “The world’s only integrated self-help system”, promised to cure asthma, rheumatism, muscular dystrophy and cancer, as well as to teach you the “secrets of people who are on average between 120 and 140 years old and healthy and fit.” There are some details on his backstory here.

 

Coldwell’s qualifications are an area of some murkiness. He claims expertise in a wide range of areas (including naturopathy), though his documented qualifications rarely (well: never) goes beyond the level of diploma mill spam and clip-art – his professed four PhDs, for instance, are in generally indeterminate fields and stems from unclear sources, though he has also claimed to have a doctorate in psychology from Columbia State University, a diploma mill operated by stage hypnotist and legendary fraud Ronald “Dr Dante” Pellar that was closed by court order in 1998. He has also claimed to be a professor at the Virginia Health University of Delaware, an institution for which google returns more or less exclusively results related to Coldwell. He does, in fact, hold an honorary Doctor of Humanities award from the Louisiana Baptist University, which is ostensibly “Non Accredited, but very prestigious”. There is some delving into Coldwell’s ‘credentials’ here.

 

Coldwell has a history of being aggressively litigious, and for presenting himself as a deranged madman before the courts – there is a good (hilarious) example here and another funny one here (more details here). His court cases are also notable for the conspicuous absence of highly relevant background information that he would otherwise likely be asked to document (like his claims to have run hospitals in Germany and cured thousands of patients).

 

More recently

Coldwell was for a while an ardent supporter of convicted felon Kevin Trudeau (the support was mutual) and the latter’s Global Information Network (GIN) pyramid scheme, with Coldwell e.g. saying claiming that GIN “will make you become a millionaire or rich beyond your wildest dreams. This is the only answer to success.” They later seem to have had a falling out.

 

Coldwell, however, promptly set up his own GIN-like personal enhancement plan together with ex-GIN leader Peter Wink, called the Instinct Based Medicine System (IBMS). According to Coldwell, IBMS is “endorsed by every significant physician and healer” (much hinges on the extension of “significant”, which we suspect consists mostly of himself) and has “seen almost 65,000 patients”. Indeed, IBMS is marketed as a “secret society” that is “created by achievers for achievers” Membership is expensive, and what you get for your expenses is unclear. (You can , however, purchase twenty-minute CDs of relaxing nature sounds ($99 for a set of three) and a 13-CD set ‘Curing Life’ ($454.87) without membership). At least the system is explicitly “instinct-based” rather than evidence-, science- or reality-based. The basic idea is that by listening to Coldwell’s magic CDs you can rewire your brain to achieve whatever you want. IBMS has been described as a “cult”.

 

Though it is somewhat hard to keep track of his activities, he has at least served on the advisory board for the crank organization the Anti-Cancer Institute, and is a regular feature on the YouTube channel ihealthtube, which belongs to infamous quack product distributor Swanson Health Products.

 

Cancer

A self-declared authority (world’s leading) on cancer, Coldwell has promoted an impressive range of potential causes of cancer, none of them rooted in reality or evidence, including mental and emotional stress and lack of self-esteem or hope, tap water, dehydration, chemotherapy, mammograms, sunscreen, vaccines, bras, processed meat, conventional (and herbal) medicine, chemtrails, teflon, couches, bras, tuna, deodorants and antiperspirants, baby shampoo, preservatives, GMOs, cell phones and microwave ovens, power lines, computers and laptops, being acidic, root canal work, sugar (including corn syrup) and artificial sweeteners, milk, insulin, MSG, food coloring, pringles, and Obamacare.

 

The list of proposed cures is even more extensive, and possibly even less anchored in reality, and includes water, herbal medicine, homeopathy (more water), vitamins B, C (injected and in general), D, E; baking soda and alkaline diets, ozone therapy, raw food, pink salt, garlic, aloe vera, curcumin and turmeric, cannabis and hemp seeds, pomegranates and grape seeds, balsamic vinegar, broccoli, beetroot, colloidal silver, dandelion, bee pollen, mushrooms, spirulina, tree nuts, walnuts, everything green, pineapple, raspberries, laetrile, cherry pie, hydrogen peroxide, ginger, sea cucumber, honey, magnesium, frankincense, dirt, smiling and prayer.

 

A sample of his own words (in relation to Breast Cancer Awareness Month 2014): “I am just watching the criminals on the main stream news making billions for the international bankers (owners of the pharmaceutical and medical industry ) with the breast cancer awareness hoax. Mammograms done prevent cancer they cause cancer. A breast tumor grows 7 to 12 years to a size that they can even find it. There is no need to any hurry and fast surgery and the murder via chemo, radiation and anti hormone therapy in my experience. I can cure every cancer in 2 to 16 weeks. ( not every person but every cancer ). There are over 400 natural cancer cures known today.” But yes: Coldwell continues to claim a 92% cure rate for all cancers, and even challenges doctors to match his cure rate (though he won’t, of course, provide any documentation for any of his own numbers). There is a comment on one of his videos here (note the detail about table salt, which according to Coldwell is “one third” glass or sand, and the reason it causes hypertension is because the glass scratches the arteries and makes them bleed, leading to cholesterol to go there to stop it from bleeding. No, really; and he goes on to claim that humans need a total cholesterol of at least 250 mg/dL and that real doctors are too stupid to know what they are talking about; of course, he also recommends a raw vegan diet, so it’s all moot – and no, he doesn’t notice the tension. He also calls cancer survivors “idiots”.) Then he pivots to claiming that “[c]ancer is systemic the tumor is only the symptom not the cancer. To cure cancer you need to identify and eliminate the root cause of it. Cancer is cause to 86% [science uses numbers so look: he’s a scientist!] by mental and emotional stress. If you don’t eliminate that energy draining stress that allows the body to malfunction you can't eliminate the cancer.” And the solution? Sign up for IBMS, of course. It’s rather hard to fathom that anyone would fall for this ridiculous scam, but they do.

 

Oh, yes: There is also German New Medicine references, and the claim that there is “[V]ery often a correlation between cancer and fungus / Candida overgrowth is mentioned in the medical world [that would be Tullio Simoncini, but Coldwell wouldn’t be able to distinguish the medical world from the comment section on an incoherent Red Ice Creations videos if his life depended on it]. To make sure I dont suffer from this Candida overgrowth I would do the Candida Remediation Protocol from awesomesupplements.com which was also created after the producer researched my historical use of protocols with my patients in the past”. What happened to the 86% bad attitude claim? Yeah, methinks we are asking the wrong question here. Coldwell also pushes colon cleansing, supplements, “alkaline healing”, and laetrile, in addition to his insanely overpriced CDs of relaxing nature sounds. People like Ty Bollinger treat him as an expert.

 

Conspiracy theories

Coldwell has pushed a number of conspiracy theories, though conspiracy theories concerning Big Pharma are of course the most frequent ones. Coldwell claims to have had his car bombed, been “shot at” and received multiple death threats daily from Big Pharma, which according to him spent “42 million dollars just last year to destroy [his] reputation”. He generally has a fondness of dismissing his critics as not only shills, but as (e.g.) paedophiles, former prostitutes and dog poisoners. Or as being Jewish.

 

But of course. According to Coldwell, “[r]emember the Jews started the first and second world war and financed Hitler and Stalin at the same time to buy all Europe cheap after it was all over. Take the money away from the Rothschild and Rockefeller’s Goldman Sachs and the other Jews and all evil on earth will disappear”. And “[t]he only reason why the jews are starting WW3 is because Russia and most of Europe ended the Fed and the Fiat money, because they created their own REAL money and will drop the worthless piece of paper that says Federal Reserve Note on it” [yes, his understanding of (a.o.) international politics is such that it leaves room for many colorful hypotheses]. But no: this foray into anti-semitism and Holocaust denialism is not a one-time affair, and “Holocaust gas chambers = Jewish Zionist hoax” is some distance beyond dog-whistle level. (As is “The Jews were not the victims; the Germans were”, and “Did you know that Russian communism was not Russian at all? It was Jewish. Jewish Bolshevik Russians invaded Russia in 1917 and mass murdered Russian Christians in a Jewish communist takeover.”) Also: “After Jews won the First World War they literally robbed the German people of almost everything they had” during “the Jewish Weimar Republic”, so the Holocaust would have been justified if it happened, which Coldwell claims it didn’t. Here are some examples of Coldwell’sviews on Black people, which would have been considered crude in rural Alabama in the 1920s (“Go home to Africa if you hate amerika that much” doesn’t exactly exude intellect).

 

Coldwell has, unsurprisingly, a difficult relationship with the fact-checking and myth-debunking website Snopes, and claims to have reported the website to the US Justice Department for “[n]ot telling the truth about aspartame”. The rationale for filing such a report is rather unclear (quite apart, of course, from the fact that Snopes did tell the truth about aspartame). Some of his overall strikingly incoherent charges against Snopes include being funded by “uber-Leftist (Marxist) Billionaires”, being owned by “a flaming liberal”, being “a hoax” and having “no formal background or experience”. He even brags about how he managed to “reveal” that Snopes was owned and run by David and Barbara Mikkelson after “several years research”, information that is, of course, readily available on Snopes’s website.

 

In 2013, after actress Angelina Jolie underwent preventative double mastectomy, Coldwell was infuriated, claiming that she had received hundreds of millions of dollars for “[t]his big hoax and scam”. No, the conspiracy theory never had more of a head or tail (or evidence) than that.

 

In recent years, Coldwell (and associates) have been largely griping about Facebook, where he tends to land himself in Facebook jail. Facebook, you see, is part of the establishment targeting those “who have spoken out for truth on matters such as politics, COVID-Hoax, Masks, for natural health and not big pharma, called out Monsanto and Bill Gates, or even Georgy Sorros [sic] who wants to destroy the world as we know it are being scrutinized for every word they type. Why? Because Facebook is a communist/socialist website who [sic] is pushing the agenda of the New Normal hard. They want you all to be obedient. They want (end game) for you to be vaccinated mindless drone of a slave to the system.” In response, Coldwell created his own version of Facebook, Champ book, which was promptly overtaken by spammers and bots.

 

Publications

Coldwell has released a number of books in his “The only answer …” series; according to himself, he is a “19 times Mega Bestselling author”. Questions for which Coldwell promises to provide the only answer include cancer; success; becoming a sales champion; stress, anxiety and depression; and surviving your illness and your doctor. Some of them are available as DVDs as well. His websites also advertises a secret book, selling at $99. There is an incomplete list of products here.

 

Diagnosis: Truly among the most deranged figures on the internet – and a case study for how the most insane, stupid, incoherent and obvious lies can nevertheless remain fairly popular among certain groups. Still dangerous.

 

Hat-tip: Rationalwiki