Vernon Edward Coleman (born 1946) is an English conspiracy theorist and writer, who writes on topics related to human health, politics and animal welfare.

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.

[7] 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.

[15] Coleman went on to work as a newspaper columnist for a number of publications, including The Sun and The Sunday People,[4] where he was an agony uncle until he resigned in 2003.

Spencer-Thomas challenged Coleman to spend 24 hours caring for his son in the presence of fully trained carers who understood the effects of autism.

[33] On 17 November 1989, The Sun published an article under the headline "Straight sex cannot give you AIDS—official", claiming "the killer disease AIDS can only be caught by homosexuals, bisexuals, junkies or anyone who has received a tainted blood transfusion".

The following day, Coleman supported The Sun's claims with an article under the headline "AIDS—The hoax of the century", similarly claiming AIDS was not a significant risk to heterosexuals, that medical companies, doctors and condom manufacturers were conspiring to scare the public and had vested interests in profiteering from public service announcements, and that moral campaigners were attempting to frighten young people into celibacy to establish traditional family values.

Both claims were similarly debunked as inaccurate, misleading and unsupported by the Poynter Institute due to a lack of evidence from the legitimate medical community.

[58][59] At an anti-lockdown protest in London on 24 July 2021, Coleman claimed that the wearing of face masks caused cancer, dementia, hypoxia and hypercapnia, bacterial pneumonia due to oxygen deficiency.

[63] In November 2021, Coleman made the false claim that "this [vaccination] jab was an experiment certain to kill and injure" which was debunked due to its lack of evidence and a reliance upon a discredited research report authored by Steven Gundry.

Police officers urged residents in Prestwich, Greater Manchester to dismiss anti-vaccination leaflets in May 2021 which had been distributed in the area and credited to Coleman.

In a statement, the local authority "requested the public to dismiss the message being sent out and is encouraging all relevant age groups to take up the offer of a vaccine".

[71][72][73] The Catholic Church has also urged parishioners to "read the Vatican document on vaccination morality" after Coleman's anti-vaccination videos and quotations were circulated in 2021 by a Franciscan priest in Gosport, Hampshire.

The ASA found Coleman's claims were lacking evidence, "irresponsible" and "likely to discourage vulnerable people from seeking essential medical treatment".

[80] In 2007, the ASA again found Coleman had made misleading claims in an advertisement promoting a supposed link between eating meat and contracting cancer.