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.
(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.
Let's look at some examples.
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!
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!
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.
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.
“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!
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.
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:
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 )
"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.
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.
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:
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.
Here's what is so puzzling -- on the surface, anyway -- about
Coldwell's decision to leave Germany. Had he been legit there, it
seems he could have practiced as a naturopathic physician with no
problems. While naturopathic practice is still for the most part
ridiculed or ignored by the U.S. medical establishment, it seems
to have gained a certain legitimacy in Germany over the past
fifteen years or so. Is it just a coincidence that 1998 -- the
year that Germany's Code of Social Law recognized naturopathic
medicine as a distinct therapeutic system -- was also the year that Bernd Klein legally changed his
name to Leonard Coldwell, and was also
apparently around the time that he permanently moved to the U.S.?
(He had evidently been using the name Leonard Coldwell as an "artist's name" for a few years in Germany, but
legally changed it in Virginia in 1998.)
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:
- 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
Blogger:
- 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.
Tumblr:
- http://drleonardcoldwellreviewssg.tumblr.com/
- http://drleonardcoldwellbiography.tumblr.com/
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.
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.
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:
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.
The rest of the
story...
