Vernon Coleman

Coleman in 2019

Vernon Coleman (born 18 May 1946) is an English conspiracy theorist,^[1][2][3] anti-vaccination activist,^[4][5] AIDS denialist,^[6][7] blogger and novelist who writes on topics related to human health, politics and animal issues.

Coleman's medical claims have been widely discredited and described as pseudoscientific. He was formerly a newspaper columnist and general practitioner (GP).

Early life

Coleman was born in 1946, the only child of an electrical engineer.^[8] He was raised in Walsall, Staffordshire, in the West Midlands of England, where he attended Queen Mary's Grammar School.^[8] As a young child, Coleman was undecided on a career, deciding to become a doctor at 12 on a family friend's advice.^[8] Before attending medical school at Birmingham,^[9] he volunteered from 1964-65 in Liverpool, getting children to aid and assist the elderly by painting their houses and doing their shopping.^[10]

Career

Coleman qualified as a doctor in 1970 and worked as a GP. In 1981, the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) fined him for refusing to write the diagnoses on sick notes, which he considered a breach of patient confidentiality.^[11] He is no longer registered or licensed to practice as a GP, having relinquished his medical license in March 2016.^[12]

An anti-vivisectionist, Coleman has been a witness at the House of Lords on vivisection.^[13]

He was reported to have been made an honorary professor by the International Open University based in Sri Lanka.^[9]

Writing and media appearances

Coleman became a self-published author of a range of books in 2004 after Alice's Diary, a book about his cat, was turned down.^[14][15] He is also a blogger and majority of his work contains conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific claims.^{[16][17][1][18][19]} After publishing his first book, The Medicine Men, which accused the National Health Service of being controlled by pharmaceutical companies, Coleman left the NHS to focus on his writing.^[8][15][20]

He has been a newspaper columnist for a number of publications including The Sun and The Sunday People,^[8] where he had been agony uncle until he resigned in 2003.^[17][21] During his time at the paper, he had been censured by the Press Complaints Commission for making misleading medical claims.^[9][14]

In 1987 Coleman later appeared on the Central Weekend Programme as a skeptic against jogging for fitness.^[22]

A 1989 editorial in the British Medical Journal criticised Coleman's comments made for The Sun as the 'Sun Doctor' on leprosy as a 'particularly distasteful piece of tabloid journalism...[containing] a catalogue of selected facts and misinterpretations' following the announcement that Diana, Princess of Wales was to shake hands with a person with leprosy. The incident was later covered on Channel 4's Hard News, with Coleman declining to defend his statement without a fee covering travel costs.^[23]

In 1994, a High Court judge granted a temporary injunction preventing Coleman from publishing the home address or telephone number of Colin Blakemore, who had been targeted by anti-vivisection activists. He also agreed not to publish anything about Blakemore that might jeopardise his safety, and to give solicitors the names of anyone to whom he might already have given the information.^[24][25]

In 1995, Coleman published the book How to Stop Your Doctor Killing You, which the Advertising Standards Authority later subjected to an advertisement ban.^[26] Coleman has also written under multiple pen names; in the late 1970s, he published three novels about life as a GP under the name Edward Vernon.^[27]

Coleman's 1993 novel Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War was turned into a film in 2002 with the same name.^[28]

AIDS-denial

Writing for The Sun newspaper in the 1980s, Coleman denied that AIDS was a significant risk to the heterosexual community. He later claimed AIDS is a hoax, writing, "it is now my considered view that the disease we know as AIDS probably doesn't exist and has never existed". Such claims have been rejected by the medical community.^[29][30]

On 17 November 1989, The Sun published an article under the headline "Straight sex cannot give you AIDS—official", claiming "the killer disease AIDS can only be caught by homosexuals, bisexuals, junkies or anyone who has received a tainted blood transfusion". The following day, Coleman supported The Sun's claims with an article under the headline "AIDS—The hoax of the century", similarly claiming AIDS was not a significant risk to heterosexuals, that medical companies, doctors and condom manufacturers were conspiring to scare the public and had vested interests in profiteering from public service announcements, and that moral campaigners were attempting to frighten young people into celibacy to establish traditional family values. Coleman also claimed gay activists were "worried that once it was widely known that AIDS was not a major threat to heterosexuals, then funds for AIDS research would fall".^[6][7]

Journalist David Randall argued in The Universal Journalist that the story was one of the worst cases of journalistic malpractice in recent history.^[31]

Anti-vaccination and Conspiracy Theories

Coleman has claimed that COVID-19 is a hoax, that vaccines are dangerous and that face masks cause cancer, all of which have been debunked by the medical community.^[4][5]

In 2021, Coleman claimed "no one can possibly know if the [COVID-19] vaccine is safe and effective because the trial is still underway; thousands of people who had the vaccine have died or been seriously injured by it; legally, all those people giving vaccinations are war criminals". The claim was debunked by Health Feedback, a member of the World Health Organisation-led project Vaccine Safety Net.^[32][33] Coleman later claimed "COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous" and that "bodies of vaccinated people are laboratories making lethal viruses". Both claims were similarly debunked as inaccurate, misleading and unsupported by the Poynter Institute due to a lack of evidence from the legitimate medical community.^{[34][35][36][37][38]}

At an anti-lockdown protest in London on 24 July 2021, Coleman claimed that the wearing of face masks caused cancer, dementia, hypoxia and hypercapnia, bacterial pneumonia due to oxygen deficiency. These claims were similarly debunked by the medical community due to a lack of peer-reviewed evidence.^[39][40][41] Coleman later claimed that the wearing of face masks caused Mucormycosis, despite no link being found between mask wearing and Mucormycosis.^[42] All evidence suggests that wearing masks is an effective way towards protecting individuals from COVID-19.^[43]

Despite being debunked, Coleman's conspiracy theories have been used to push COVID-19 denial and anti-mask propaganda. Police officers urged residents in Prestwich, Greater Manchester to dismiss anti-vaccination leaflets in May 2021 which had been distributed in the area and credited to Coleman. In a statement, the local authority "requested the public to dismiss the message being sent out and is encouraging all relevant age groups to take up the offer of a vaccine".^[44] Similar leaflets have been distributed across Scotland and condemned by Shirley-Anne Somerville of the Scottish Parliament.^[45][46]

The Catholic Church urged parishioners to "read the Vatican document on vaccination morality" after Coleman's anti-vaccination videos and quotations were circulated in 2021 by a Franciscan priest in Gosport, Hampshire. In an investigation, the Diocese of Portsmouth announced "The Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth is very disappointed that one of the Family of Mary Immaculate and St Francis in Gosport has publicly expressed a personal view about the Covid vaccination programme that is contrary to the official position of the Catholic Church and the Diocese. We would encourage all our parishioners to benefit from the protection afforded by the vaccine."^[47]

Advertising Standards Authority rulings

In 2005, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned an advertisement for a book published by Coleman entitled How to Stop Your Doctor Killing You which claimed doctors were "the person most likely to kill you". The ASA upheld complaints that the advert was misleading, offensive and denigrated the medical profession. The ASA found Coleman's claims were lacking evidence, "irresponsible" and "likely to discourage vulnerable people from seeking essential medical treatment".^[48] In response to the ruling, Coleman called for the ASA to be banned and later made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading, claiming "the ASA's action(s) are in breach of Article 10 of the Human Rights Act".^[49] The Office of Fair trading did not pursue Coleman's complaint.^[50]

In 2007, the ASA again found Coleman had made misleading claims in an advertisement promoting a supposed link between eating meat and contracting cancer. Coleman failed to respond to the ASA's enquiries. He was subsequently found to have again breached the organisation's code of conduct, with the ASA deeming Coleman's advert was again lacking evidence and likely to cause undue fear and distress. Coleman was instructed not to further run the advertisement and informed to respond to future ASA investigations.^[51][26]

Personal life

Coleman is married.^[52]

Notes

External links

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