Vernon Coleman

Vernon Edward Coleman (born 1946) is an English conspiracy theorist and writer, who writes on topics related to human health, politics and animal welfare. He was formerly a general practitioner (GP) and newspaper columnist. Coleman's medical claims have been widely discredited and described as pseudoscientific conspiracy theories.

Coleman was born in 1946, the only child of an electrical engineer. He was raised in Walsall, Staffordshire, in the West Midlands of England, where he attended Queen Mary's Grammar School and a medical school in Birmingham.

Coleman qualified as a physician in 1970 and worked as a GP. In 1981, the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) fined him for refusing to write the diagnoses on sick notes, which he considered a breach of patient confidentiality.

After publishing his first book, The Medicine Men, in 1976, which accused the National Health Service of being controlled by pharmaceutical companies, Coleman left the NHS.

Coleman has since written under multiple pen names; in the late 1970s, he published three novels about life as a GP under the name Edward Vernon.

In 1987 Coleman appeared on the Central Weekend Programme as a sceptic against jogging for fitness. An anti-vivisectionist, Coleman provided a supplementary memorandum for the House of Lords on the topic of vivisection in 1993.

In 1994 Coleman was ordered to pay damages for threatening scientist Colin Blakemore, who had been targeted by anti-vivisection activists after a letter bomb sent by animal rights group calling itself 'The Justice Department' was sent to Blakemore's home, with another exploding and injuring three people. Blakemore was later granted a temporary injunction by a High Court judge after Coleman had said he would publish a pamphlet with Blakemore's home address and telephone number to encourage the public to 'get in touch with you to discuss your work'. Coleman was ordered not to publish anything that might jeopardize Colin Blakemore's safety and to give solicitors the names of anyone to whom he might already have given the information.

In 1995, Coleman published the book How to Stop Your Doctor Killing You, which the Advertising Standards Authority later subjected to an advertisement ban.