NOTE: ALL links to web pages, and comments about the content on those pages, were accurate at the time this post (and updates) were originally written. In this post, information about said content was accurate at least through February 2015, but it appears that subject may have subsequently taken steps to redesign/"clean up" some of his sites.
Note that I've added an update to this post since it was first published on August 7: most notably, I added a fourth item -- lame SEO -- to Coldwell's list of strategies for dealing with criticism.
~CC, 13 October 2014
In Part 1 of this originally two-part but now five-part (!) series, we explored the spurious claims of "defamation" and some of the other outright lies on the new Bio web site of Not-doctor Leonard Coldwell (the former Bernd Klein aka Bernd Witchner, formerly of Germany, also known for being the former b.f.f. of jailed serial scammer Kevin Trudeau). In Part 2 we took a closer look at some of the other content on the site: most notably, Lenny's "medical" credentials, his cancer cure claims, and some of his "therapy centers" in Germany. Now let's put all of that in historical perspective. Or hysterical, as the case may be. I've covered much of this previously, but this is for the benefit of those who are new or who simply wish to review. A good part of the history we're going to cover here is framed around Coldwell's defensive and volatile reactions to questions and criticism. Those reactions are in many ways more revealing than anything else he writes, says, or does.
Coldwell's history of dealing with questions about his credentials and his past
If you've done any research at all about Coldwell, you'll know that despite some of his recent insinuations to the contrary I am far from the only person who has raised questions about his credentials and his past. Nor am I the only one who has observed for a couple of years that when asked on Facebook about his creds, or about other sensitive issues such as his name change from Bernd Klein and the real reason he left Germany, Coldwell's usual response has been...um... less than professional, and that is putting it very kindly. This may be why so many people have been blocked from his main Facebook page, to the point that many thousands are being deprived of his Facebook wisdumb: odd behavior for a "public figure" on Facebook, as I've noted here before.
It's not just Facebook. From what I have seen during my perusal of numerous web sites, forums, and social media conversations that took place over the past few years, Coldwell has generally reacted to questions about his medical credentials in one of several ways:
(1) Manic defensiveness and rabble rousing, which can include any or all of the following: throwing a fit, claiming the questioner is being paid by some big nefarious force(s) to defame him, blocking the questioner on social media, threatening to sue or embarrass the questioner, etc., as well as inciting his lunatic followers to take up his cause.Let's look at some examples.
(2) Ignoring the question altogether.
(3) Offering some garbled explanation about the differences between medical licenses in Germany (or Europe at large) and those in the United States.
[NEW] (4) Lame search engine optimization (SEO) tricks.
Strategy number 1: Manic defensiveness and rabble rousing
Regarding strategy number 1 -- defensiveness and throwing a fit -- here is one example from 2010 (and yes, I know I've linked to this before, but I think it's significant enough to mention again). Though the original Coldwell post that the blogger wrote about seems to be gone, Coldwell's comments to the snarky blog post remain, although in these comments he is pretending to be his long-time buddy and colleague, Dr. Thomas Hohn, whom we visited in Part 2 (mostly under the section titled, "About that 92.3% cancer cure rate (and other cure claims")). Here's another effort by Coldwell-as-Hohn; it appears on a 2010 review of Coldwell's 2008 book Instinct Based Medicine.
Another "number 1" strategy employed by Coldwell is to threaten his critics with lawsuits. Occasionally he actually files one, the most recent case as of this writing being the failed Salty Droid-Jason Jones/Omri Shabat debacle. He would probably rather forget that one. Another one he probably would rather forget -- which of course I mentioned in my first lengthy blog post about him -- is a German lawsuit from the late 1990s. I'll have more about those lawsuits in a following section ("I will not start the fight...").
Sometimes Coldwell gets into even more radical lunacy and accuses his critics of being pedophiles or dog poisoners. Those are the types of strategies that really tend to backfire.
And sometimes Coldwell recruits other crazy people to his cause. For instance, in October 2012, a nutcake named Glenn Canady posted a screed on the wild-eyed conspiracy hub Before It's News. Canady and Coldwell both seemed to be calling A-list conspiracy-porn monger Alex Jones to task for killing thousands of cancer patients by "censoring" Coldwell. By "censorship," Canady means that Alex apparently had not invited Coldwell to be on his nutshow yet at the time.
In this interview on Nsearch Radio [note: Link no longer works ~CC], Dr. Leonard Coldwell completely exposes Alex Jones as having an AGENDA and not being interested in Solutions such as the cures to cancer that Alex Jones talks about every day! Dr. Coldwell discusses the many people that have literally begged Alex Jones to bring Dr. Coldwell on his program to no avail! Alex Jones seems to want people to die of the cancer that he talks about almost daily!I guess that means you would have to be a complete fool to give money to Coldwell, because he has censored me plenty, as well as just about anyone else who has ever asked him a critical question on social media. As you are well aware if you've seen some of my previous posts, I am not even allowed to post to the Facebook pages where he has spread his lies about me poisoning his dog, and making sexual passes at him, and so forth.
Why would a Christian or “Patriot” not share the incredible 92% cancer cure rate that Dr. Coldwell has attained? Any normal person without an agenda would LOVE to share this information as Project Nsearch has done! Coldwell cures cancer with natural treatments that cure cancer in 2-16 weeks! Does it make any sense for Alex Jones to actually go out of his way to censor such information? Of course not!
How many thousands of people could have been cured of their cancer through the Alex Jones Show but have died needlessly because of the actions of this selfish, censoring talk show host that has claimed the leadership position of the alternative media? We’ll never know exactly how many thousands have died due to the censorship of Alex Jones but what we do know is that every day this total goes up! Every day that Alex Jones continues to censor Dr. Coldwell, Alex Jones has more blood on his hands! If you listen to Alex Jones or have supported him in the past you should DEMAND to know why he has done such an evil act to allow Patriots to die needlessly from cancer!
This is just one of MANY things that absolutely proves that Alex Jones is a censoring gatekeeper that is NOT interested in Solutions and certainly does NOT deserve ANY support or money from Patriots whatsoever! Why would you give money to a censoring STOOGE that has potentially killed THOUSANDS of people just by censoring Dr. Coldwell’s cancer cures! You’d have to be a complete FOOL to give money to ANYBODY that censors anything!
Not only does the embedded link in the quotation above not work, but the linked video, which supposedly has the Canady-Coldwell interview where Coldwell "completely exposes" Alex Jones, had apparently also been removed. But I found it somewhere else. I can't watch the whole thing right now because we're reaching our monthly bandwidth limit. But you are welcome to watch it and report back to me. If that one gets removed too we will know there is something sinister going on, and I guess we will just have to rely on the text of that 2012 screed on Before It's News, which goes on to say that the "rabbit hole" on Alex Jones goes much deeper than "killing thousands by censoring cancer cures." Yep, tinfoil hat wearers, there's more: According to Canady, Alex Jones is actually an informant for the FBI! And it just goes downhill after that.
There are numerous links to content on the old projectnsearch.com site but they do not work. I suspect that Glenn let his domain lapse; happens to the best of us. But never fear; there's a new Project Nsearch site, "launched in January of 2013 to reach people about God and his plan for us!" (Glenn Canady loves him those exclamation points.) There's also a Project Nsearch Radio that is a "Christian based radio network that teaches about God in a fun and inspirational way and covers news from a Christian perspective." That should be right down Lenny's alley, since he's a staunch fake Christian, having produced a relaxation frauduct for Christians (only $99 -- but hurry, the retail at "a later date" of this 2009 release will be $250!), and also having received a faux degree in "Humanity" from an unaccredited Christian "university."
Even as recently as January 2014 some of the fans were still fighting for Coldwell's cause, and they took it to Alex's PrisonPlanet forum, from which it has not yet been censored. A guy going by the moniker dustrypatriot85 wrote:
Paul Joseph Watson (member of Alex Jones’ team) even had the gall to try to get in my face about Alex’s censorship of Dr. Coldwell who is curing over 99% of those with cancer that don’t do the Chemo! Here’s the very nasty email Paul sent to my Facebook.My point here is that Coldwell does inspire the dimwitted fanatical defenders -- which of course is why I am so concerned about the little twerp sharing my name and address with his lunatic fan base. I noticed that being a Christian seems to be a very important thing to dustypatriot85, and he is clearly indignant about people who "slander" the good "doctor" without proof. He is apparently unaware that his hero Coldwell does the very same thing.
“Yes, Alex has killed thousands of people by not promoting some bullshit “cure for cancer” – that makes perfect sense. ” – Paul Joseph Watson.
Such nice language there Paul! Are you a Christian Paul? The reason I’m asking is because I have never heard you say it publicly. Christians are proud of their faith and will use every opportunity to share it. Christians sure don’t censor documented natural cancer cures and slander a doctor that has cured hundreds of thousands of caner [sic] without proof!
Of course when I told Paul that Mike Adams, Alex’s cohost is well aware of Dr. Coldwell and his incredible work helping others and FULLY supports Dr. Coldwell, Paul didn’t have the courage to even respond! Instead Paul thinks its okay to slander the great Dr. Coldwell and fully supports Alex Jones’ censorship of Dr. Coldwell who has already been on George Noory’s “Coast to Coast” program!
Why are Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson so hell bent on evil that they refuse to let Dr. Coldwell get access to their fan base when it could potentially save thousands of lives? Why are Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson refusing to allow the cures for cancer to be broadcast while Mike Adams, George Noory and multiple doctors that have been on Alex’s show know that Dr. Coldwell has cured more people of cancer than anybody on the planet and he does it for free!
If Alex Jones and Paul Watson REALLY think that Dr. Coldwell is a fraud then they should at least have the courage to publicly state it so that Dr. Coldwell can sue both of them for slander! Alex drones on and on about how cancer rates are exploding but yet when a man has demonstrated that he has hundreds of natural cures and has written best selling books on the subject Alex proceeds to censor him and Paul Joseph Watson slanders him without ANY proof!
Regarding duxtypatriot85's claim that Mike "Health Ranger" Adams (whom I've written about briefly) fully supports Coldwell, I'm not so sure about that, even though to this day Coldwell describes Adams as "my dear friend." Coldwell and Adams have stroked each other a lot but in the end, they're competitors, though Adams has a much broader fan base than Coldwell. I'm sure they'd both throw each other under the bus if they felt it necessary to preserve their own "credibility" and income stream.
And George Noory? He's an Art Bell wannabe and showcases all of the stuff that is even too nutty for Alex Jones. Art and George have their own little history of fighting over a piece of the nutjob pie.
Coldwell definitely attracts the fans who have a screw loose, and sometimes makes extra efforts to win their sympathy. As threatening as his posts about his critics often are, when it comes right down to it they are all just one big whine-fest, as was this July 17 screed, which he wrote, and that was posted to several of his Facebook pages, including The Only Answer to Cancer page, the IBMS Master's Society page, and his main Facebook page. This was a few days into the dog-poisoning saga. I am unable to comment on any of these pages, and Facebook refuses to take this screed down from his main page. [Update October 2014: They finally did take the posts down after several more complaints. ~CC] Up until now I had not shared this verbatim on this blog, so in case you haven't seen it, here it is, in all its unedited glory (minus my personal information):
A very personal and heartfelt Message to all my friends and supporters:"Somebody call the waaaahhhhmbulance!" That's pretty much every lie in a nutshell (emphasis on "nut") that Coldwell has been telling for a long time. As you may know, I pretty thoroughly covered his lies about the bloggers (and the police report*) in Part 1, and the lies about the credentials and cure claims and "hacked" web sites in Part 2, and the lies about me poisoning his dog on this post, which was originally published between Part 1 and Part 2, and has been updated and added to several times since its original publication.
You know my dear friends,
I am sitting here at 4 am and holding my boy blue who is shaken by seizures all night long and reading your comments. It is really stunning to me, that I always thought my FB page is just one other way to educate interested people in help to self-help, about the over 400 natural cancer cures that the medical profession does not want you to know about or about freedom and liberty, common and constitutional law etc so that all of us may keep at least for a little while longer that tiny bit of freedom that we still have left or that we live with more quality of life, maybe a little longer with a less pain and suffering and maybe even a little bit happier. I always thought that Facebook “ Friends” are simply a group of nice people that have some similar interests as I do.
But:” I was wrong! The last days since my boy Blue was poisoned and seems to die in my arms soon, at least that is what we fear, I made some unusual observations. I thought nobody really cared and no one is really interested in anybody’s life on FB besides the gossip or some valuable information.
But you thought me something different! YOU have been there for me and Amy and Blue when our pain was really deep and more inside and hidden. All of us tried to be strong for the other and tried not to make it even harder on each other. I am sitting here reading the insults defamation and hateful attacks from Connie Schmidt from Waller TX, that is posting her hate filled lies for 3 years now, just because I did not accept her offer to a “ Sex Weekend” I would never forget. She talked to my staff, my family and friends and tried everything to get a date with me. She found 2 proven child molesters, Mahoney who is hiding in Japan from the law and is a professional Hacker that for years is hacking into our websites, email accounts; is setting up websites under fake names or even under my name to spread lies and defamation ( paid by the pharmaceutical industry ) and another molester of little boys Omri Shabat, how is hiding in Israel and is also paid by the pharmaceutical industry to destroy my reputation with lies. The third one is a wanna be lawyer without a license that prides himself that so many people he is spreading lies about want to kill him. This guy, Jason Michael Jones, calls himself a droid, is hiding for over one year so that my lawyers cannot serve him with the court documents. I am thinking these people did spend thousands of hours on fake posts, lies, setting up email and FB accounts under false names just to post lies about me and wonder if they don’t have a life on their own? Connie Schmidt lives ONLY to spill her hate ( because I rejected her ) and has obviously nothing else to do than to spend hundreds of hours each month to post lies? My dear friend Sarah, did set up a Bio website just to put out all my board certifications as a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine and Psychologist, she posted information about my hospitals in Germany and the proof that 3 independent studies came to the conclusion that I have a 92.3% cancer cure rate and helped over 35 000 cancer patients to gain their health back. 7 years ago a women under blackmail and fear was pressured into making a false police report* against me, Connie Schmidt knows that this women has signed a sworn affidavit that all the accusations against me where false and has revoked them and that another women that was forced to lie about me, took her own life because she could not live with what she did to me. Now instead of being able to work on my new books The ONLY Answer to the Cure for Cancer and Going home to Mayberry, ( a book that will help all of us to gain some happiness and love and trust back into our life’s ) I have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for the lawyers suing Connie Schmidt for defamation libel and slander and conspiracy to destroy grounds of business as well as the other 3 pathological sociopath’s. I could focus on creating more self-help videos for cancer and autoimmune disease patients, since my videos on youtube have over 225 million viewers, I am sure I helped many people at least give them some hope when they are given up by the medical profession. But I have to constantly consult with lawyer to have them take down the fake and defamatory websites and FB sites where Connie Schmidt and Bernhard Mahoney and Omi Shabat and the droid are spreading their lies to help the pharmaceutical and medical industry to harm my reputation so that my messages to help cancer patients will tainted by doubts. You know I just see that my Bio site is down again – so that people cannot see all my documentation – as I just see, what a coincidence.
It is so strange that 4 mentally ill sociopath can cause so much trouble, for no good reason. I have never ever been sued, indicted, trialed, convicted of any crime what so ever, but Connie Schmidt, is trying to make people believe I have done something wrong. What have I done in my life? I cured my own mother from Hepatitis C, Liver Cirrhosis and terminal liver cancer with the prognosis of 6 month to live 43 years ago. My mother is still alive and healthy today. I cured my own sister from cervical cancer and over 66 000 patients from all kind of health challenges. I made a deal with God 43 years ago and promised him that I would do everything in my power to help other parents and their children, not have to go through what my mom and I had to endure, if he helps me to cure my mother. All I am doing now and for the lasts decades is to keep my promise to God. I founded the Foundation for Drug and Crime Free Schools and Health for Children and all my profits from my books etc go into that Foundation for decades because I do not want to make money on the suffering of ill people. All of my 19 bestselling books are help to self-help or self-healing educational books, my book The ONLY Answer to Tyranny was so successful teaching people about freedom and how to successfully end Tyranny that the publisher was “convinced” to stop publishing it. I have lead the Rally for the Troops, lets Freedom Ring in support of our great military, I trained Firefighters, Police, Military, 9 11 first responder, the Naval Weapon station Medical staff, the security chief of SC etc etc etc to be able to deal more effectively with stress and to prevent illness for over a decade now and I have not charged dime ever.
Since my first book:” Mama please don’t die” came out over 40 years ago I live with death threats, been shot at ( and hit ) multiple times and my care has been bombed to stop me from educating people about natural cancer cures and how cheap and fast ever cancer can be cured or prevented.
For 40 years I studied every healer that was successful, every patient that got cured from cancer, I traveled the world from Brazil to the Philippines, all of Asia in search for the cures. I lived with and African Medicine man 4 month in Nigeria, Africa. I learned everything there is about health and healing and how to help people to be energized, healthy and happy.
What I have learned from the experience with the poisoning of my dog Blue and the defamation campaign lead by Connie Schmidt is:” That I don’t have just anonymous Facebook Friends, I have real friends on Facebook ( and everywhere in the world ) that care. Wonderful people like you that care about me and my loved ones and my boy Blue! I have gotten so many emails, test messages and FB messages etc etc from all of you my dearest friends, that I had tears running down my face while reading your loving and caring messages. Your prayers, your love, your care your positive energy and uplifting thoughts have touched me so deeply that I cant even express my love and gratefulness to all of you. Wendy Horner, my dear friend who wanted to drive through 3 states to bring blue her products and to help him. Sarah that puts all the hacked and destroyed websites back up again and again. Amy who is so caring and supportive and then…. There is: All of you with your love and care and support! I have to say:” Yes I do have friends worldwide real friends and I also, even if I would never had believed it I do have friends, real friends like you, on Facebook. I thank all of you from the bottom of my heard for all your kindness and love in this time of pain and war against insanity.
I dedicated my life to help all of you to be healthier, happier and free. But I had and have to waste the valuable time of my life to defend myself from the senseless attacks of a Sociopathic mentally ill person that is as I heard over and over again, and I believe that too, a heavy drug user. With the name of Connie Schmidt. I have to waste my money instead of helping sick people that cant afford health care to hire lawyers, private detectives etc to fight the defamation, libel and slander from Connie Schmidt.
Friends of mine are setting a website up as we speak where the entire truth about all 4 of them there past their crimes etc will be documented. Maybe you have some comments for her. Her official address as posted on her own business website is:
[REDACTED BY ME, not by COLDWELL, who has broadcast it all over the place]
All my information has been posted on www.DrLeonardColdwellBio.com or www.DrLeonardColdwell.com listen to my radio show every Sunday www.DrColdwellOpinionRadio.com
Please be so kind and repost this article because Facebook will take it down again. Facebook took my first post about the crimes of Connie Schmidt down very fast. Please ignore grammar and spelling errors because I am too tired to reread all of this and as you guys know I never learned English I simply picked it up. Blue is finally asleep and I try to get some sleep now too. Love you all.
Thank you for your love, kindness and support in these tough times your friend
Dr Leonard Coldwell – Help to Self Help Educator
NMD DNM PHD D.HUM CNHP
Board Certified Doctor of Natural Medicine
Board Certified Alternative Medical Practitioner
Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner
Syndicated Radio Host ( GCN - Dr Coldwell Opinion )
And as you may also know, that dog that was supposedly dying in his arms subsequently made a complete recovery, according to Coldwell, who wrote a post which I think implied that perhaps the dog may have ingested a toxic plant of some type rather than having been deliberately poisoned by anyone. But did Coldwell retract any of his lies? What do you think?**
But gosh, I really feel awful that I am somehow responsible for Lenny not being able to "write" his new books, especially that one about "Going Home to Mayberry." I am sure the Andy Griffith Show copyright holders will be interested in seeing that one if it ever gets published. I also find it interesting that after The Only Answer To Cancer, he feels the need to write a book called The ONLY Answer to the Cure for Cancer. Did he find another "only answer?"
Update, 15 October 2014: When manic defensiveness, rabble-rousing and lawsuit threats don't work, there's always the time honored death threat. Here's Bernie writing about some of Coldwell's lunacy in that regard.
Strategy number 2: Ignoring the critics (or claiming to do so)
Strategy number 1 seems to be Coldwell's favorite, but he has actually employed strategy number 2 -- ignoring the question -- more than may seem apparent. Or at least he has claimed to employ that strategy, which I suppose is not necessarily the same thing. I was privy to an early ghostwritten draft, completed in 2005, of the aforementioned 2008 book, Instinct Based Medicine. (And as I've mentioned before, Coldwell does indeed use ghostwriters for his English language books. Nothing wrong with that, especially since his written English is so awful, but I think he tends to get a little defensive when it is suggested that someone else has to write his books for him.)
There's a passage early in that draft in which Coldwell writes about defending himself against the critics. I do not know if this passage made it into the final published form of Instinct Based Medicine (or for that matter, into The Only Answer to Cancer). Extended previews of both books are available online for free, and as you can see on this post, I have availed myself of those previews. However, I have not attempted to purchase them, nor to obtain any free/illegal copies that may be available. (Not only is the latter a good way to get a virus or other malware, but I do not believe in using torrents or doing anything that would otherwise deprive even the most objectionable author of potential sales. So if you want to read Coldwell's books for yourself, I suggest you take advantage of the free previews or purchase them.) [Update January 2015: I have since purchased both books, on the legitimate secondhand market at the cheapest prices available. But I have not yet had the chance to read them from cover to cover. ~CC]
In the passage I read, Coldwell noted that he had wasted a lot of time and energy defending himself. He quoted his beloved grandmother as saying, "When you make excuses or defend yourself, you often implicate yourself.” Coldwell wrote that he agreed, adding that the more you defend yourself, the more your critics will play the “blame and doubt game” with you. "That’s how they try to wear you out," he wrote. He added that he would never defend himself or his "system" ever again; he would explain and teach it, but never again defend it. (In that context he made reference to his U-Cure system (or the system that he claimed was his), which was apparently his state-of-the-art scheme back in 2005.)
Again, I do not know if his vow to never again defend himself was in the final published version of Instinct Based Medicine, nor do I know how much of the tale made it into his subsequent work, The Only Answer to Cancer, which has apparently been through several editions and revisions. The links to purchase those books are in the previous sentence and several other places on this post. You can also read much of Instinct Based Medicine here on Google Books. (Blame Google, Lenny -- not me.) [As noted above, even though I've since bought both books I haven't yet had the chance to carefully peruse them. ~CC]
In any case I have seen some version of this story in several places so it is reasonable to suppose that it made the final cut in one or both books. If I am wrong, somebody tell me and I will correct this post accordingly. In any case it appears that Lenny has broken his vow to "never defend myself ever again." But I guess he felt that he had little choice but to resort to defending himself, because people have continued to hammer him with questions about his credentials. This often happens to people who repeatedly make extraordinary claims.
Even so, he still tends to ignore questions when asked about specific details. For instance, a reader of The Only Answer to Cancer Facebook page recently asked Coldwell to provide details to substantiate his claim that "they" had spent $42 million last year to defame and discredit him. The question has yet to be answered, as of October 13, 2014 (here is the permalink to the thread).
Strategy number 3: the garbled explanation of licensure and credentials
On the "official biography" page on his new Bio site, Coldwell has clearly adopted strategy number 3: the garbled explanation about licensure in the U.S. versus Europe.
Dr. Leonard Coldwell retired from the work with Patients when he immigrated into the USA about 12 years ago. He did never and will never work with patients in the US. His focus is on educating the interested public. Dr Coldwell was a naturopathic physician in Europe: Translation from German Law:
Regulatory situation In Germany, there is no legal monopoly on the practice of medicine. Non-allopathic physicians may practice medicine. Naturopathic Physicians may practice medicine. To qualify, a candidate has sufficient knowledge and ability to practice as a Naturopathic Physician and that the candidate's treatments do not negatively affect public health. The exam verifies the candidate's basic knowledge of anatomy, physiology, hygiene, pathology, sterilization, disinfecting, diagnosis, and health regulations, particularly the epidemic law. )
Most of the rest of that page is
page is taken up with blurbs about Louisiana Baptist University,
where Coldwell got that toy "Doctor of Humanity" degree
he's so proud of. That seems sort of odd for an "Official
Biography" page, particularly since Coldwell brags about
being such an accomplished human being. Are we to believe that a
play doctorate in humanities is the crowning achievement of his
illustrious career?
But back to the question of was-he-or-wasn't-he-a-doctor-in-Germany. That 2007 Mt. Pleasant, SC police report* contains an interesting snippet from someone who knew Coldwell very well.
But back to the question of was-he-or-wasn't-he-a-doctor-in-Germany. That 2007 Mt. Pleasant, SC police report* contains an interesting snippet from someone who knew Coldwell very well.
When I first met Leonard [in December 1999] he presented himself as an MD, then as an NMD (which he explained that in Germany, it meant a medical doctor with a naturopath degree), along with a PhD in psychology, and many other degrees. He also confided later that he had given back his medical degree because he was disgusted with the medical doctors. Now, I have no idea what is true or not true. At the end of 2001, Doctor Thomas Hohn, a supposed student of Leonard, bought all the furniture and the business [Leonard and I] owned called Time Out. Dr. Hohn was visiting, staying with my friend [NAME REDACTED], where he told [name] that he had been surprised that Leonard was able to call himself a doctor because he wasn't a doctor in Germany, but he said Leonard explained that as a Psychologist in the US, you could call yourself a doctor.
If this witness's recall is
correct, and assuming that the witness's friend also quoted Hohn
correctly, Coldwell's own long-time buddy and colleague said
Coldwell wasn't a doctor in Germany. I have heard other buzz
about snarky things Hohn has supposedly said about Coldwell, but
it seems impossible to substantiate at this point so we'll just
let that one ride for now.
In defending his credentials, Coldwell has often emphasized the differences between the U.S. and Germany, recently writing to a reporter who had been making queries that clearly made Lenny uncomfortable, "Do you know there is no such thing as a medical license in Germany?"
Well, this site would beg to differ.
After reading the rationalization on Coldwell's new bio page, I went a-Googlin' and looked up "Regulations for medical doctors in Germany." And one of the top results was this little PDF, which provides a capsule history of alt-med in Europe. This is from pp. 16-17 of that PDF:
In defending his credentials, Coldwell has often emphasized the differences between the U.S. and Germany, recently writing to a reporter who had been making queries that clearly made Lenny uncomfortable, "Do you know there is no such thing as a medical license in Germany?"
Well, this site would beg to differ.
After reading the rationalization on Coldwell's new bio page, I went a-Googlin' and looked up "Regulations for medical doctors in Germany." And one of the top results was this little PDF, which provides a capsule history of alt-med in Europe. This is from pp. 16-17 of that PDF:
About 15,000 doctors in Germany have been trained in naturopathic medicine. Naturopathic medicine is used in many rehabilitation clinics and at eight acute care hospitals in so-called ‘naturopathy departments’ and even in regular hospitals in Germany.
Doctors with a background in naturopathy and about 70 percent of the German GPs prefer to prescribe herbal medicines/phytopharmaceuticals. A few hundred doctors in other EU Member States have taken training and education in naturopathic medicine.
National laws regulating naturopathic medicine as a distinct therapeutic system
In 1998 the Code of Social Law recognised naturopathic medicine as a distinct therapeutic system
Regulation of the profession of naturopathic doctors by the medical association/council/chamber There is a specific naturopathic curriculum for medical doctors in Germany recognised by the Medical Chamber leading to an official additional medical qualification.
Diplomas of naturopathic doctors
Various associations provide postgraduate training courses in the diverse therapeutic elements of naturopathic medicine and have developed quality standards.
But notice that I said that Coldwell's decision to leave Germany just at the time naturopathic practice gained new legitimacy was puzzling on the surface. You don't have to dig very deeply to discern another story there. I've discussed this here before, but now that we're on the topic, it's worthy of noting again that Coldwell has been as cagey about his reasons for leaving Germany as he has been about his creds.
I suspect that the two issues are intertwined in ways that we may never fully know. My purpose here is simply to raise questions. And here I'm going to digress a little bit, as I am wont to do, but I promise to get back to the main point in a little while.
A couple of years ago someone with whom I had been corresponding told me about asking Coldwell why he left Germany. Reportedly Coldwell framed his reply in only the most positive and patriotic terms, explaining that he had wanted to come to America for a long time, ever since the Berlin Wall came down (in 1989) and filled him with a desire to come to a country where freedom rings so brave and true. Or something to that effect.
Update 4 December 2014: Either my correspondent misunderstood or had faulty recall, or Lenny really did frame his American-dream story around the fall of the Wall. I don't know. But I do now know that he has also told a heartwarming story of himself as a small boy who sat on the shoulders of a male relative, listening live to U.S. President John F. Kennedy's June 26, 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, and it was then, according to the former little Bernd and current little Lenny, that Bernd/Lenny decided, "I am an American!" And he tells us he is an American, again and again, in this rare video of his much-boasted about but little-seen "Rally for the Troops" speech some years ago. Though this video was uploaded in 2010, I only just discovered it by accident the other day, even though for more than two years I had been searching for information on this speech, which Coldwell had bragged about repeatedly on his many web sites.
I found this video because I typed in "Lee Fredrickson Leonard Coldwell." Lee is Lenny's current book publisher, owner of the cooperative publishing group of imprints that includes 21stCentury Press, 21c Publishers ("formed to publish the books of Dr. Leonard Coldwell and other well known authors in the field of health and holistic medicine" -- though so far Lenny seems to be the only "author" under that imprint), and Sonship Books. Lee has also uploaded several other cheesy Lenny vids to Vimeo. He seems to be quite enamored of his Godly, ultra-patriotic client/author. Oh, Lee, if only you knew...
 |
| Is that Rep. Joe Wilson to Loony's right? Could be; the two are as thick as thieves, according to Loony, anyway. |
Whatever the truth about his back story may be, today Coldwell is quite the ostentatious patriot (when he isn't expressing his contempt for his adopted country, that is), and almost as much as he hates the "criminals and Treasonists" who are running the country, he hates those filthy illegals who are dirtying up "our" culture and language, and he is so proud to have become an American the right way: by buying his way to naturalization. Here's his proud, patriotic anti-illegal immig-rant from July 4, 2014:
A reliable source (i.e., someone who actually attended Coldwell's naturalization ceremony) told me that Coldwell became a citizen some time around 2006, which means that if he really did spend 12 years trying to become a 'Merkin, he actually started the process in 1994 when he was still living in Germany and still legally known as Bernd Klein aka Bernd Witchner -- but apparently using the name "Leonard Coldwell" as an artist's name (unless that Berlin Dentist's Day 1994 Zertifikat of which he is so proud that he put it on his new Credentials page was doctored a little. And come to think of it, it kind of looks like it might have been.).
Just saying. Or maybe his maths are off again. It wouldn't be the first time.
While Coldwell may very well have harbored a longing to be an American, some of the stories he has told about his reasons for coming to the Land of the Free are more negative. In my archives I have snippets of a Facebook exchange that occurred in 2012, a couple of months after my first long post about Coldwell, "Bernd bridges," was published. On that thread, which has probably long since been deleted, a few people were discussing Lenny’s name change, and a former Coldwell fan told of confronting Lenny on Facebook, apparently via private message. This person wrote:
I asked him directly on Facebook, I sent him a link to the Bernd Bridges [Whirled Musings blog post] and asked if he has seen it, then asked if he did change his name if it was ok to ask why, and he sent this reply:
"My dear friend I was accused of setting the fire or [sic] Rome and putting Jesus on the Cross The german government and the pharmaceutical industry created groups of people to defame me in anyway they could - one thing I learned along the way you never ever comment on any of the defamation because that makes them achieve what they want. Love you..."
Well, there are some typical
Loony histrionics for you (and there's that pretense at
"Number 2" in the list of deflection strategies: claim
that you don't engage with critics and just ignore the
"defamation"). Contextually it appears that Coldwell
was explaining his name change to that person, but perhaps he was
also (or instead) explaining his reason for leaving Germany; it's
hard to tell. Someone else told me that he once explained that he
changed his name because "Klein" is German for
"little," and he didn't feel that was a very inspiring
name for a motivational leader. But he is little, in the
sense of short, as well as small-minded -- and no name change can
alter those facts.
The person I quoted above also told of asking Coldwell to comment on the infamous late 1990s German lawsuit -- which actually seems to have been initiated by Coldwell after he had moved to the U.S. -- but Coldwell never replied to that inquiry. (Again, I'll have more about that lawsuit below.) And in case you are wondering, despite Coldwell's expression of "love" in his reply, this person is no longer anything remotely resembling a Coldwell fan, and has moved on.
But let's get back to Lenny's strategies for dealing with critics.
Strategy number 4: Lame SEO tricks
I first became aware of a host of new-ish Coldwell blogs thanks to an alert reader who mentioned, in a comment to one of my posts, that Coldwell had claimed to be a Nobel Prize winner. Well, that was a new one on me, but here it is in black and white. However, since I hadn't actually seen this claim anywhere else before or since, I'm thinking that perhaps the obviously English-challenged person handling Coldwell's SEO just decided to throw that in as a bonus.
A little Googling led me to numerous other new blogs about Coldwell, most of them launched in August of 2014. Oddly enough, most of the posts on these blogs bear irrelevant tags such as "sexual predator" and "glancingweb." This indicates to me that having failed at his stupid lawsuit against Omri Shabat of Glancingweb (see below), Coldwell is impotently trying to fight Omri via SEO. He is clearly also trying to bury any posts about allegations that Leonard Coldwell is a sexual predator. Here's a list of the newer Lenny Coldwell dumblogs and social media/hub pages I've found so far; the list seems to be growing on a fairly regular basis:
Wordpress blogs:
The person I quoted above also told of asking Coldwell to comment on the infamous late 1990s German lawsuit -- which actually seems to have been initiated by Coldwell after he had moved to the U.S. -- but Coldwell never replied to that inquiry. (Again, I'll have more about that lawsuit below.) And in case you are wondering, despite Coldwell's expression of "love" in his reply, this person is no longer anything remotely resembling a Coldwell fan, and has moved on.
But let's get back to Lenny's strategies for dealing with critics.
Strategy number 4: Lame SEO tricks
I first became aware of a host of new-ish Coldwell blogs thanks to an alert reader who mentioned, in a comment to one of my posts, that Coldwell had claimed to be a Nobel Prize winner. Well, that was a new one on me, but here it is in black and white. However, since I hadn't actually seen this claim anywhere else before or since, I'm thinking that perhaps the obviously English-challenged person handling Coldwell's SEO just decided to throw that in as a bonus.
A little Googling led me to numerous other new blogs about Coldwell, most of them launched in August of 2014. Oddly enough, most of the posts on these blogs bear irrelevant tags such as "sexual predator" and "glancingweb." This indicates to me that having failed at his stupid lawsuit against Omri Shabat of Glancingweb (see below), Coldwell is impotently trying to fight Omri via SEO. He is clearly also trying to bury any posts about allegations that Leonard Coldwell is a sexual predator. Here's a list of the newer Lenny Coldwell dumblogs and social media/hub pages I've found so far; the list seems to be growing on a fairly regular basis:
Wordpress blogs:
- https://drleonardcoldwell.wordpress.com/
- http://drleonardcoldwell2.wordpress.com/
- http://drleonardcoldwell12.wordpress.com/
[again, this is the one containing the post that claims Coldwell is a Nobel Prize winner] - http://leonardcoldwell.wordpress.com/
- https://drleonardcoldwellevents.wordpress.com
- https://instinctbasedmedicinestore.wordpress.com/
(I found this post to be particularly amusing; Coldwell is described as a "physician you can trust.") - http://ibmsmasterssociety.wordpress.com/author/drleonardcoldwell/
- http://drleonardcoldwellbiography.wordpress.com/
- http://drleonardcoldwellreviewssg.wordpress.com
The following are "powered by Wordpress" (and broken English), and do not seem to contain "sexual predator" and "glancingweb" tags: - http://www.drleonardcoldwellblog.com/
- http://www.drleonardcoldwellcancercure.com
- http://www.drcoldwellnetwork.com
- http://drcoldwellbio.blogspot.com/
http://drcoldwellbio.blogspot.in/ (same blog, but with India suffix, which somehow doesn't surprise me) - http://drleonardcoldwellbiography.blogspot.com
And THIS POST seems to be saying that Coldwell endorses the very cancer treatments he has spent his "career" reviling. Very strange. Is this an attempt to placate the medical establishment that he fancies is after him, or do his SEO idiots just plaster stuff on the Web without getting his approval? - http://drleonardcoldwellbooks.blogspot.com -- This blog appears to have only one post so far, but it's a good one: it says Coldwell is an MD.
Then there's this newer Twitter page; he has several others, but this one seems to be reflective of the content in the new blogs so I think it's part of the whole package. https://twitter.com/DrColdwell
And he has a SlideShare presence: http://www.slideshare.net/drleonardco.../tag/sexual-predator
And here he is on Flickr MindHive: http://flickrhivemind.net/.../dr.leonardcoldwell/Interesting
And FotoLog: http://www.fotolog.com/drleonard/mosaic/
A few notables from that album...
He's still milking the Katie connection for all it's worth: http://www.fotolog.com/drleonard/238000000000032855/
As is the case with the drleonardcoldwellbiography blog on Blogger, this entry seems to be touting mainstream cancer therapies -- or at least not vehemently criticizing them the way Coldwell usually does: http://www.fotolog.com/drleonard/238000000000032430/
And here's an example of what happens when bad SEO happens to bad people. The little robot was NOT in the original content; obviously the SEO idiot just got it off of Google images. There are three separate posts using the same image; here are the links:
http://www.fotolog.com/drleonard/238000000000032467/
http://www.fotolog.com/drleonard/238000000000032856/
http://www.fotolog.com/drleonard/238000000000032857/
And here is a screen shot of one of the posts:
Looks like the joke's on you, Lenny.
It seems that more and more aggregation/curation sites are showing up all the time as well, and all of this points to a fairly serious effort (serious in a Grey-Hat, low-budget sense) to game Google and bury any legitimate critical content about Coldwell. Despite these efforts, however, the legit-crit posts still seem to pop up first on the search engines -- at least on still-number-one search engine Google, which has made the most dedicated effort over the past few years to improve the integrity of search.
As of this writing, Bing and Yahoo seem to be more susceptible to the stoopid SEO tricks, but I have a feeling that won't last. [You're welcome to test various search engines yourself, of course; here are the top 15 as of November 2014. Just for grins, I did a search on DuckDuckGo, "the search engine that doesn't track you," and the search engine that Coldwell himself recommended (or, rather, he posted someone else's recommendation on his blog). Top results as of 5 November are below. ~CC, 5 November 2014]
"I will not start the fight... but I will forfeit it with my own stupidity!"
One of Coldwell's favorite slogans is, "I will not start the fight... but I will finish it!" Apparently that is his way of insinuating that he is just a peace-lovin' guy who wants to be left alone to do his work and write those best selling books and make those healing videos, but gosh, those enemies just keep on coming at him, so he has no choice but to finish them off. Or something like that. I don't actually know what he means. Maybe he can explain it to you.
But let's momentarily revisit that Leonard Coldwell "Defamation page," which as I noted is no longer on the site at all and is not reachable even by typing in the direct link. Here, try it for yourself, and you will see: http://www.drleonardcoldwellbio.com/#!defamation/cmke
Even so, the copy on that page is worth revisiting yet again because so much of it is congruent with Coldwell's ongoing narrative. That page, which Coldwell pretended was written by his brother "Nicolas Coldwell" (usually spelled Nicholas Coldwell, though his real name is Jens Wilhelm Anskohl -- see more about Jens here), began with this dramatic flourish:
Defamation, Libel, Slander and massive Media Assaults against Dr. Leonard Coldwell (“Dr. C”)
For over 40 years now, my brother, Dr. Leonard Coldwell, gets assaulted and threatened, shot at, and his car bombed, simply because he can cure every cancer in 2 to 16 weeks. The moment he could prove that he cured our mother from Hepatitis C, Liver Cirrhosis, and terminal liver cancer, with the prognosis of only 6 months to live, all hell broke loose! After he cured our sister from cervical cancer it got even worse. Daily death threats are something we are all living with since then.
Very reliable sources tell us that the Medical and Pharmaceutical industry (300 Billon dollar per year cancer industry) spent over 42 million dollars to discredit Dr. Leonard Coldwell and to destroy his reputation. They hired a gay Jewish guy that is a known child molester, living in Israel, to set a defamation website up to discredit and destroy my brothers reputation and destroy his grounds of business. (Without any success as you may know.) These criminals’ posts are so over the top stupid, primitive, and absurd that no one ever bought into these over the top, outrageous lies.
Wow... "$42 million
dollars." As is the case with most of his numbers, Coldwell
does not say where he got that figure -- maybe his buddy Tommy Hohn dug it
out of his own a$$ and handed it to Lenny, or perhaps Lenny's ace
"legal research team" suggested it to him, or maybe one
of the voices in Lenny's head gave it to him. It appears to me
that Lenny is fixated on the number 42, as he also recently wrote
that he has spent $42,000 suing a group of "crazy
criminal" bloggers, including me, Bernie O'Mahony, Salty
Droid, and Omri Shabat. What is it with "42," Lenny?
Are you a Douglas Adams fan?
About a month and a half before Armza's attempt pictured above, I had asked Lenny where he got that $42 million figure, but I don't believe he answered the question before I was blocked from ever again conversing there.
If Coldwell really did spend $42,000 in legal bills to fight Bernie and Salty and Omri and me -- as he also claimed -- he totally wasted his cash, gold (or gold-foil-wrapped candy coins), and horsey statue. If you followed the link in the previous sentence you will see a pic from this May 2013 blog post regarding Coldwell's constant boasting about how much cash and gold and whatnot he keeps around his house. So maybe he really does have a lot of money to blow and 42 grand is really nothing. After all, he has said that he is "rich like sh-t," and deals in numbers that we losers and paupers can only dream about.
In the second paragraph of the quoted text above Coldwell mentions a "gay Jewish child molester in Israel." That's more nonsense and false accusations. Omri Shabat of GlancingWeb.com is no doubt Jewish and yes, he does live in Israel. I have no idea about his sexual orientation and don't care. It is simply not relevant to anyone but Coldwell, who, for reasons we can only guess at, is a reported homophobe. The "known child molester" accusation, however, seems to be a standard Lenny lie these days.
He appears be as fixated on child molesting as he is on prostitution or the number 42, leading me to believe that he was either a victim of molestation himself as a little Bernd, or that he has perhaps been accused of child molesting as an adult, or both. I don't know, and I am not saying for sure that Leonard Coldwell is a molester of little boys, nor am I saying for sure that Leonard Coldwell was molested by men when he was a little boy, nor am I saying that Leonard Coldwell is a child rapist and is simply displaying a form of written echolalia again when he falsely accuses other men of being the same... but you have to wonder.
Or maybe he is just pulling out random accusations in a clumsy attempt to discredit his critics, just as he originally called me an AIDS-infected ex-prostitute, and, more recently, claimed that I am sexually obsessed with him. He appears to betray his disturbing fantasy life every time he makes an utterance about his critics.
Accusing someone of being a child molester is a very serious thing, though. Perhaps Coldwell continues to do it with Bernie and Omri because he is in the United States and they are overseas; maybe he thinks they are not as likely to be able to pursue legal action against him as someone in the United States might be.
In light of all of the above, the claim on the defunct "Defamation" page that the "attacks" against Coldwell are "over the top, stupid, primitive, and absurd" is another one of those pot-and-kettle situations. Moreover, if no one ever bought into those "lies," it seems that Coldwell wouldn't have bothered with his mis-infotaining new site, nor would he have been threatening critics with lawsuits and physical harm, nor, for that matter, would he have bothered with that recent epic fail of a "defamation" lawsuit against one of his critics (Salty Droid). That effort turned out to be an impotent rant against two different people (Salty and Omri) -- a fact that would have invalidated his lawsuit even if the personal-injury attorney he hired to handle the suit hadn't withdrawn, and even if Coldwell hadn't failed to show up for his own hearing.
Going further back, there is a good summary of the aforementioned German lawsuit on the Rational Wiki page about Coldwell, which I stumbled across by accident a few weeks ago. I've mentioned this before but will say again that I had nothing to do with this page, though Coldwell will no doubt get around to blaming me (and/or Bernie) for it, and in fact the author got a few minor details wrong.
For instance, although Coldwell famously and hilariously hates the excellent urban mythbusting site Snopes.com with a passion, contrary to the Rational Wiki piece he did not claim to have reported them to the U.S. Justice Department. He simply reported, on an August 2010 blog post, that someone else had supposedly reported Snopes to the Justice Department "for not telling the truth about aspartame."
When searching for more information about this meme I happened to stumble upon a hilarious series of letters, circa 2001-2004, from one of Coldwell's buddies and endorsers, "Dr." Betty Martini (who is also quite the glamour gal, and like Lenny has an "honorary Doctor of Humanities" degree). In that old 2004 correspondence, Betty accuses Snopes of being part of a front group to defend aspartame, in violation, sniffs Betty in righteous indignation, of Title 18, Section 1001 of the Criminal Code "for stumbling the people." You have to read this stuff. I'll wait.
My main issue with RationalWiki is that the articles have a strongly snarky/editorial (snarkatorial?) tone and for the most part there isn't even any pretense at objectivity. Call me stuffy and old-school, but for the most part I think snarking is for blogs and opinion pieces. People complain about Wikipedia, but Wikipedia does strive to maintain standards of objectivity.
(On the other hand, if you read the "About" page, RationalWiki clearly states that even though it strives to be an information source, it is not an encyclopedia. The page also acknowledges the criticisms against RationalWiki, which can be roughly divided into two groups that often overlap: those who take issue with the content and those who grouse about the style. All in all, RationalWiki seems to be very good-natured about the whole thing, even writing a RationalWiki-ish article about itself. There's more about this on the "What Is a Rational Wiki Article?" page.)
In any case I found myself laughing out loud -- literally -- at the RationalWiki article about Lenny, and silently congratulating the puckish author, who goes by the name "Longdog" and who actually did seem to get most things correct, such as the account of that much-discussed lawsuit that Coldwell brought against one of his critics in Germany, cult expert Karin Paetow-Froese. (The author includes a link to a Google translation of information about the original lawsuit. I also have a link and discussion on my Bernd bridges blog post.)
For all practical purposes, Coldwell lost the German lawsuit. The original amount in damages that he asked for was drastically lowered and sent to a lower court, and what was left of the lawsuit was dismissed by that court. There were several other comical things about the suit, and the only thing Coldwell accomplished was to make himself look like a fool, and to have certain facts about himself (e.g., his name change -- which most of us probably never would have known about otherwise) become part of a very public and permanent record. Judging from some of his responses whenever this topic is brought up, that German lawsuit is almost as much of a sore spot as that 2007 police report* in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. Also noteworthy (and noted previously on this blog) is that Coldwell railed about Ms. Paetow-Froese, accusing her of being mentally ill and uneducated -- and this was more than 15 years ago. These of course are the very same types of accusations he has leveled against his current crop of critics.
Some things never change.
About a month and a half before Armza's attempt pictured above, I had asked Lenny where he got that $42 million figure, but I don't believe he answered the question before I was blocked from ever again conversing there.
If Coldwell really did spend $42,000 in legal bills to fight Bernie and Salty and Omri and me -- as he also claimed -- he totally wasted his cash, gold (or gold-foil-wrapped candy coins), and horsey statue. If you followed the link in the previous sentence you will see a pic from this May 2013 blog post regarding Coldwell's constant boasting about how much cash and gold and whatnot he keeps around his house. So maybe he really does have a lot of money to blow and 42 grand is really nothing. After all, he has said that he is "rich like sh-t," and deals in numbers that we losers and paupers can only dream about.
In the second paragraph of the quoted text above Coldwell mentions a "gay Jewish child molester in Israel." That's more nonsense and false accusations. Omri Shabat of GlancingWeb.com is no doubt Jewish and yes, he does live in Israel. I have no idea about his sexual orientation and don't care. It is simply not relevant to anyone but Coldwell, who, for reasons we can only guess at, is a reported homophobe. The "known child molester" accusation, however, seems to be a standard Lenny lie these days.
He appears be as fixated on child molesting as he is on prostitution or the number 42, leading me to believe that he was either a victim of molestation himself as a little Bernd, or that he has perhaps been accused of child molesting as an adult, or both. I don't know, and I am not saying for sure that Leonard Coldwell is a molester of little boys, nor am I saying for sure that Leonard Coldwell was molested by men when he was a little boy, nor am I saying that Leonard Coldwell is a child rapist and is simply displaying a form of written echolalia again when he falsely accuses other men of being the same... but you have to wonder.
Or maybe he is just pulling out random accusations in a clumsy attempt to discredit his critics, just as he originally called me an AIDS-infected ex-prostitute, and, more recently, claimed that I am sexually obsessed with him. He appears to betray his disturbing fantasy life every time he makes an utterance about his critics.
Accusing someone of being a child molester is a very serious thing, though. Perhaps Coldwell continues to do it with Bernie and Omri because he is in the United States and they are overseas; maybe he thinks they are not as likely to be able to pursue legal action against him as someone in the United States might be.
In light of all of the above, the claim on the defunct "Defamation" page that the "attacks" against Coldwell are "over the top, stupid, primitive, and absurd" is another one of those pot-and-kettle situations. Moreover, if no one ever bought into those "lies," it seems that Coldwell wouldn't have bothered with his mis-infotaining new site, nor would he have been threatening critics with lawsuits and physical harm, nor, for that matter, would he have bothered with that recent epic fail of a "defamation" lawsuit against one of his critics (Salty Droid). That effort turned out to be an impotent rant against two different people (Salty and Omri) -- a fact that would have invalidated his lawsuit even if the personal-injury attorney he hired to handle the suit hadn't withdrawn, and even if Coldwell hadn't failed to show up for his own hearing.
Going further back, there is a good summary of the aforementioned German lawsuit on the Rational Wiki page about Coldwell, which I stumbled across by accident a few weeks ago. I've mentioned this before but will say again that I had nothing to do with this page, though Coldwell will no doubt get around to blaming me (and/or Bernie) for it, and in fact the author got a few minor details wrong.
For instance, although Coldwell famously and hilariously hates the excellent urban mythbusting site Snopes.com with a passion, contrary to the Rational Wiki piece he did not claim to have reported them to the U.S. Justice Department. He simply reported, on an August 2010 blog post, that someone else had supposedly reported Snopes to the Justice Department "for not telling the truth about aspartame."
When searching for more information about this meme I happened to stumble upon a hilarious series of letters, circa 2001-2004, from one of Coldwell's buddies and endorsers, "Dr." Betty Martini (who is also quite the glamour gal, and like Lenny has an "honorary Doctor of Humanities" degree). In that old 2004 correspondence, Betty accuses Snopes of being part of a front group to defend aspartame, in violation, sniffs Betty in righteous indignation, of Title 18, Section 1001 of the Criminal Code "for stumbling the people." You have to read this stuff. I'll wait.
My main issue with RationalWiki is that the articles have a strongly snarky/editorial (snarkatorial?) tone and for the most part there isn't even any pretense at objectivity. Call me stuffy and old-school, but for the most part I think snarking is for blogs and opinion pieces. People complain about Wikipedia, but Wikipedia does strive to maintain standards of objectivity.
(On the other hand, if you read the "About" page, RationalWiki clearly states that even though it strives to be an information source, it is not an encyclopedia. The page also acknowledges the criticisms against RationalWiki, which can be roughly divided into two groups that often overlap: those who take issue with the content and those who grouse about the style. All in all, RationalWiki seems to be very good-natured about the whole thing, even writing a RationalWiki-ish article about itself. There's more about this on the "What Is a Rational Wiki Article?" page.)
In any case I found myself laughing out loud -- literally -- at the RationalWiki article about Lenny, and silently congratulating the puckish author, who goes by the name "Longdog" and who actually did seem to get most things correct, such as the account of that much-discussed lawsuit that Coldwell brought against one of his critics in Germany, cult expert Karin Paetow-Froese. (The author includes a link to a Google translation of information about the original lawsuit. I also have a link and discussion on my Bernd bridges blog post.)
For all practical purposes, Coldwell lost the German lawsuit. The original amount in damages that he asked for was drastically lowered and sent to a lower court, and what was left of the lawsuit was dismissed by that court. There were several other comical things about the suit, and the only thing Coldwell accomplished was to make himself look like a fool, and to have certain facts about himself (e.g., his name change -- which most of us probably never would have known about otherwise) become part of a very public and permanent record. Judging from some of his responses whenever this topic is brought up, that German lawsuit is almost as much of a sore spot as that 2007 police report* in Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. Also noteworthy (and noted previously on this blog) is that Coldwell railed about Ms. Paetow-Froese, accusing her of being mentally ill and uneducated -- and this was more than 15 years ago. These of course are the very same types of accusations he has leveled against his current crop of critics.
Some things never change.
A history of histrionics
Here is Coldwell protesting too much again on that disappeared "Defamation" page -- and again, though the page has been removed, I cite it only because Coldwell continues to tell this story in some form on Facebook. This was in the context of Coldwell's claim that the sex accusations (on the police report*) were his enemies' original strategy to ruin him, but that didn't work, so those darned enemies had to make up something new.
Here is Coldwell protesting too much again on that disappeared "Defamation" page -- and again, though the page has been removed, I cite it only because Coldwell continues to tell this story in some form on Facebook. This was in the context of Coldwell's claim that the sex accusations (on the police report*) were his enemies' original strategy to ruin him, but that didn't work, so those darned enemies had to make up something new.
Because the truth always prevails and they did not achieve what they wanted to destroy grounds of work and business and income for Dr. Leonard Coldwell, now they had to find a new attack and new accusations.
Now all of them turned into a new lie and false accusation that Dr. Leonard Coldwell has no health degrees! …Which is so absurd that Dr. C never even cared to bother about these absurd accusations! Plus, since Dr. Coldwell has retired from the work with patients over a decade ago, and never worked in the US with patients, it seemed to be a moot issue anyway.
Just in case, here are just some of the many achievements, certifications, and degrees Dr. Leonard Coldwell holds, for you [sic] inner peace of mind...
And then he proceeded to share
pictures of his spurious degrees and credentials, which we have already explored.
The passage above is rife with inaccuracies. To begin with, and as I hope to have made abundantly clear on this long post and the previous one, questions about Coldwell's credentials are not new. Contrary to his claims, this isn't just a recent tactic that the "defamers" dreamed up because the sexual accusations against Coldwell failed to bring him down. People have been wondering his credentials for years; it was one of the first things I wrote about on my first long post about him, back in May 2012. There's also a big discussion about it on Salty Droid's late August 2012 post about him. And more than two years before I'd ever written about him, there was this discussion, which was initiated on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe forum in January 2010.
Coldwell's claim on the defunct "Defamation" web page that he "never even cared to bother about these absurd accusations" is also blatantly false. He has obviously been very bothered by this issue for years, and as demonstrated above he even made a big deal of rationalizing his lack of conventional creds in a couple of his books. But in recent years, as also noted, he has mostly dealt with the issue by threatening to sue the questioners, or simply blocking them on Facebook and making up lies that they are shills for Big Pharma, that they are child molesters, that they are AIDS-infected hookers, or (more recently, in my case) are sexually obsessed with him.
Finally, his claim that his so-called retirement from work with patients makes all credential questions moot is clearly absurd. It most certainly is not a moot issue, for, patients or no patients, he cites those credentials all the time to lend the weight of authority to the health "advice" he is constantly doling out.
You can't have it both ways, Lenny. Not that Lenny hasn't tried in several ways to have his cake and eat it too, credential-wise, over the years. Following Salty Droid's first blog post about Coldwell (August 2012), there's quite a good extended discussion about the significance of his credentials (or lack thereof). This actually brings us to another point: Oddly enough, Coldwell's lack of accepted medical credentials actually works in his favor regarding allegations that he abused or preyed on "patients" in his capacity as a "doctor." He isn't governed by any legitimate medical board, so there's one avenue of sanctions that is completely closed.
In fact one of the witnesses contributing to the 2007 police report* -- the one who quoted Dr. Thomas Hohn as saying Coldwell was not a doctor in Germany -- was also asked if anybody ever paid for the "sessions" with Coldwell that were the focus of some of the complaints. The witness responded, "Leonard would never accept money. He knows that is against the law because he doesn't have a license. He did have everyone sign confidentiality statements, and he thought that made him safe."
Interestingly (and disturbingly), Coldwell made a brief announcement in September of 2012 that he was going to start "seeing patients" again in 2013.
A Facebook friend of mine who still halfway believed in him at the time asked him if he could see her friend, who was apparently dying of cancer. She reported that without even asking for details, Coldwell brushed her off, saying he was already booked well into 2013 and besides, he said, his fees would be well beyond her friend's price range. (I am not posting links or shots because this was private correspondence.) I think that at this point, the last of my friend's illusions about Coldwell crumbled.
The plan to "see patients again" apparently did not pan out, although in April of 2013 Coldwell caused a brief flurry on Facebook when he announced that he had purchased 130-plus acres of rural land in South Carolina, near the Georgia border, to build the Coldwell health/treatment resort and sovereign city. I haven't heard much about that either in the time since then.
In any case, from his own narratives, it's pretty clear that Coldwell's history of having to 'splain himself and his creds dates back before his U.S. publishing debut, to his Germany days. And therein lies a problem for anyone who wants to actually substantiate what he says: most of the stories about his fights with the medical establishment, as well as his healing miracles, concern his activities in Germany, most of which would have taken place before the Internet became a thing, so it's almost impossible to verify the details. The added challenge is that much of the information would presumably be in German. This is from Instinct Based Medicine:
The passage above is rife with inaccuracies. To begin with, and as I hope to have made abundantly clear on this long post and the previous one, questions about Coldwell's credentials are not new. Contrary to his claims, this isn't just a recent tactic that the "defamers" dreamed up because the sexual accusations against Coldwell failed to bring him down. People have been wondering his credentials for years; it was one of the first things I wrote about on my first long post about him, back in May 2012. There's also a big discussion about it on Salty Droid's late August 2012 post about him. And more than two years before I'd ever written about him, there was this discussion, which was initiated on the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe forum in January 2010.
Coldwell's claim on the defunct "Defamation" web page that he "never even cared to bother about these absurd accusations" is also blatantly false. He has obviously been very bothered by this issue for years, and as demonstrated above he even made a big deal of rationalizing his lack of conventional creds in a couple of his books. But in recent years, as also noted, he has mostly dealt with the issue by threatening to sue the questioners, or simply blocking them on Facebook and making up lies that they are shills for Big Pharma, that they are child molesters, that they are AIDS-infected hookers, or (more recently, in my case) are sexually obsessed with him.
Finally, his claim that his so-called retirement from work with patients makes all credential questions moot is clearly absurd. It most certainly is not a moot issue, for, patients or no patients, he cites those credentials all the time to lend the weight of authority to the health "advice" he is constantly doling out.
You can't have it both ways, Lenny. Not that Lenny hasn't tried in several ways to have his cake and eat it too, credential-wise, over the years. Following Salty Droid's first blog post about Coldwell (August 2012), there's quite a good extended discussion about the significance of his credentials (or lack thereof). This actually brings us to another point: Oddly enough, Coldwell's lack of accepted medical credentials actually works in his favor regarding allegations that he abused or preyed on "patients" in his capacity as a "doctor." He isn't governed by any legitimate medical board, so there's one avenue of sanctions that is completely closed.
In fact one of the witnesses contributing to the 2007 police report* -- the one who quoted Dr. Thomas Hohn as saying Coldwell was not a doctor in Germany -- was also asked if anybody ever paid for the "sessions" with Coldwell that were the focus of some of the complaints. The witness responded, "Leonard would never accept money. He knows that is against the law because he doesn't have a license. He did have everyone sign confidentiality statements, and he thought that made him safe."
Interestingly (and disturbingly), Coldwell made a brief announcement in September of 2012 that he was going to start "seeing patients" again in 2013.
A Facebook friend of mine who still halfway believed in him at the time asked him if he could see her friend, who was apparently dying of cancer. She reported that without even asking for details, Coldwell brushed her off, saying he was already booked well into 2013 and besides, he said, his fees would be well beyond her friend's price range. (I am not posting links or shots because this was private correspondence.) I think that at this point, the last of my friend's illusions about Coldwell crumbled.
The plan to "see patients again" apparently did not pan out, although in April of 2013 Coldwell caused a brief flurry on Facebook when he announced that he had purchased 130-plus acres of rural land in South Carolina, near the Georgia border, to build the Coldwell health/treatment resort and sovereign city. I haven't heard much about that either in the time since then.
In any case, from his own narratives, it's pretty clear that Coldwell's history of having to 'splain himself and his creds dates back before his U.S. publishing debut, to his Germany days. And therein lies a problem for anyone who wants to actually substantiate what he says: most of the stories about his fights with the medical establishment, as well as his healing miracles, concern his activities in Germany, most of which would have taken place before the Internet became a thing, so it's almost impossible to verify the details. The added challenge is that much of the information would presumably be in German. This is from Instinct Based Medicine:
In short...
- Coldwell is being untruthful when he suggests that the questions about his "medical" qualifications represent a new tactic. Even by his own account he has been wrestling with other people's doubts about his credentials and qualifications for many, many years -- since long before Bernie, Salty, Omri or I had ever heard of the little man.
- His most "legendary" tales took place in Germany years ago, long before the Internet, and are all but impossible to verify. For now they must be taken on faith. And how much faith can one reasonably have in a volatile little man who tells lies that we know are lies -- and can't even keep those lies straight?
There's a bit
more I want to say, not only about Coldwell's lies and
inconsistencies but also about the larger themes of dubious
alt-health "heroes" (and other smarmy "public
figures" in Scamworld) and the lengths to which their fans
will go to defend them. So I'll wrap it all up in Parts 4 and 5.
* As noted on this blog numerous times: For various reasons (you don't have to read between the lines to speculate intimidation of witnesses in at least some of the cases), the 2007 Mount Pleasant, South Carolina Police Department report did not result in any charges being filed against Coldwell. Nevertheless it is not a "false report," and to my knowledge only one woman recanted her accusation -- more than seven years after she made it. There's probably an interesting story behind that (I recently heard from someone I consider to be a reliable source that Coldwell paid the woman to recant). More information about the original allegations can be found here.
** The point about Coldwell's dog's nearly complete recovery became moot at the end of August 2014, when he announced that Blue had died, and redoubled his attacks on me, this time publishing my private phone number.
* As noted on this blog numerous times: For various reasons (you don't have to read between the lines to speculate intimidation of witnesses in at least some of the cases), the 2007 Mount Pleasant, South Carolina Police Department report did not result in any charges being filed against Coldwell. Nevertheless it is not a "false report," and to my knowledge only one woman recanted her accusation -- more than seven years after she made it. There's probably an interesting story behind that (I recently heard from someone I consider to be a reliable source that Coldwell paid the woman to recant). More information about the original allegations can be found here.
** The point about Coldwell's dog's nearly complete recovery became moot at the end of August 2014, when he announced that Blue had died, and redoubled his attacks on me, this time publishing my private phone number.
The rest of the
story...
- Part 1 -- Coldwell rolls out hilarious new bio site, tightens rope around his own neck (published 30 June 2014)
- Part 2 -- Leonard Coldwell's medical lackground and other hilarities from his new Bio website (published 4 August 2014)
- Part 4 -- Leonard Coldwell: The facts don't matter if the story is good (published 16 August 2014)
- Part 5 -- Leonard Coldwell: stupid and dangerous, or simply stupid? (published 19 August 2014)
- Not part of the series but pertinent -- Leonard Coldwell goes too far: lies about me poisoning his dog (originally published 16 July, 2014, with several updates)
- Update post: Dog dies, Coldwell resumes attacks on me (published 5 September 2014)
9 comments:
Hi Connie... Not that Loony will believe this post but I can assure him and his coterie of conspiracy cranks that neither you nor Bernie wrote the rationalwiki article... I know this for a fact because I did.
Keep up the good work.
longdog.
Thank you, Longdog... and likewise! :-)
Thought I'd check out his video. One minute in and he's proposing that an alkaline diet will cure cancer. As far as I can discover --
1) cancer produces an acidic environment, not the other way round.
2) the body's ph is tightly controlled, you'll only see major ph change due to diet in urine and saliva.
Testing the ph of a body fluid is one of the most trivially easy things in science, so if diet could alkalinise the body it would be obvious and would have been obvious for a long time.
http://chriskresser.com/the-ph-myth-part-1
The next claim he makes is about chlorophyll bringing more oxygen into the body. I've not heard this before and I'm going to look into it because it sounds like Eine Kliene Nachtbullshit to me.
...tippety tappety.... tippety tappety....
yup
http://www.badscience.net/2004/08/gillian-mckeith-round-2/
" It’s very dark in your bowels. There is no light there. Nor are there gills in your bowels. Even fish do not have gills in their bowels. Consequently the chlorophyll will not create oxygen, and even if it did, even if Dr Gillian McKeith PhD stuck a searchlight up your bum to prove a point, you would not absorb any even slightly significant amount of oxygen with your bowel. "
I think chlorophyll is probably absolutely brilliant for your health if you are a carrot, or maybe a fern or perhaps even a geranium. As far as I know people aren't geraniums, carrots or ferns so I'm guessing chlorophyll's health benefits are somewhat less than radical.
Two minutes was enough I won't be watching any more of that.
LOL, Anon, and thanks! Now if you really want to get nauseated, watch this little gem, which is from an interview between Daniel Ott and Loony C, ca. September 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYAkr_0GZfk
I'm going to pass on your nausea offer, but I will ask - did you ever get in touch with Ben Goldacre ? He's an enthusiastic twitterrer I believe.
Actually I haven't gotten in touch with Ben Goldacre, but thanks for the suggestion. I keep forgetting Twitter is still there; maybe I need to follow Ben.
"Dr" Creepy C couldn't help himself... had to add a photo of some random woman he was creeping on at the beach. Yeah... he's totally not a creep.
You should definitely follow Mr Goldacre, I'm sure he's got great chums for a spat like this too.
In fact, let's see what he's doing...
https://twitter.com/bengoldacre
...actually he's babbling trivia - but that's twitter isn't it ? He's got a lively mind.
Pssst, Longdog: Lenny is really, really, really, really angry about that article you wrote about him for Rational Wiki. He even named Rational Wiki and its admin in a recent lawsuit.
And he's really, really, REALLY mad that you jokingly insinuated that Dr. Thomas Hohn is imaginary. So irate is he that he recently decided to confirm Hohn's existence on his newly redesigned Bio web site. The hilarious "Enemies" page has been replaced by a "Facts" page. There are not one but two Hohn items so far.
http://www.drleonardcoldwellbio.com/facts
I of course have never said that Hohn is a figment of Lenny's fevered imagination. However, I have written, because I believe (and others who know Coldwell better than I do have confirmed) that Lenny has co-opted and misappropriated Dr. Hohn's name numerous times in numerous ways over the past... lord knows how many years.
I guess he felt that he had to confirm Hohn's existence, since he used a single heavily redacted 2010 letter from Hohn to "verify" Coldwell's supposed 92.3 percent cancer cure rate.
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