Trudeau points out that his settlements were not admissions of wrongdoing. His attorney, David Bradford, suggests that the terms of the most recent settlement weren't terribly punitive -- indeed, this was a direction Trudeau wanted to take anyway.
"Trudeau had made an independent decision that he really wanted to focus on being an author and consumer advocate," Bradford says.
Still, in his book, Trudeau claims repeatedly that he's the victim of censorship. He likens the government to the Gestapo. He compares himself to Rosa Parks and Gandhi. He says because of "this FTC suppression" he can't recommend specific products to cure his readers' illnesses.
However, he says, readers can join his Web site. For just $9.99 a month or $499 for a lifetime, they can gain access to the special members-only section, and there they can e-mail him and he'll reveal his secrets.
'They Know That I Know'
Trudeau says he has considerable proof of the conspiracy working against the health of the citizens of this nation, but the nation will have to take it on faith. He says there are "government agencies" and "entire industries" that are spending "billions of dollars" to keep people sick so they can continue to make money. He says he has Nobel Prize winners as informants.
"I can't mention their names," he says. "There's a lot of insiders that I know, that are friends of mine, but I can't mention their names because one of the reasons why I was capable of writing this book was I have so many insiders that give me the information. . . . And this is why everyone in Washington is frightened to death, and that's why the government is trying to shut me up. Because they know that I know. They know I've been in the meetings. You know what it's like? It's kind of like I've got the black book with everyone's names. And they know: This guy starts naming names, it's going to be out of control."
Readers will have to trust that Trudeau knows of a doctor who found a cure for AIDS, and that another doctor "discovered a serum that virtually made cancer tumors vanish in 90 minutes" but "was completely shut down by the FDA." Trudeau never names these doctors. He says "researchers have concluded that speaking the correct form of words and thinking the correct thoughts actually changes a person's DNA," but he never reveals who these researchers are.
Readers will have to take it on faith that Trudeau will soon be putting proceeds from the book and the Web site into nonprofit groups dedicated to teaching natural remedies and suing the government. They'll have to trust that they don't really need medications their doctors have prescribed and that the supplements they're ordering over the Internet will work.
They'll also have to ignore the places where Trudeau stretches the truth: What appears to be a back cover endorsement from a former FDA commissioner is actually a 35-year-old quote. Quotes inside are purportedly from Bill Gates in a television interview, but Trudeau puts more words in Gates's mouth. ("I paraphrased," Trudeau says.)
Trudeau's book appeals to a nation that has been disillusioned by managed health care, by rushed and impersonal doctors, by diseases that didn't use to be diseases except these days everything has a name and a pill to go with it. Ask your doctor if it's right for you.
Those who report success with Trudeau's book say they're discovering that they've been overmedicated. They've cut down on this or that drug for this or that minor problem and discovered they never needed it. They've tried the book's most conservative recommendations -- eating organic foods, taking supplements, cutting out sodas -- and write in to say they've lost weight. Few appear to be curing their muscular dystrophy, or reporting success with magnetic toe rings.
Some people post angry reviews on Amazon.com, saying they feel "ripped off" and "gullible" for buying "Natural Cures."
Some vacillate.
"It's a scary step to take," says Joyce Nuuhiwa, 61, who lives in Honolulu and has Type 2 diabetes. Nuuhiwa has read Trudeau's book, and she's considering quitting both her medications and trying a combination of herbs that Trudeau advises. (He writes in the book that this diabetes "cure" was discovered at the University of Calgary, but officials there say they've never discovered any such thing.)
Nuuhiwa is disappointed by what her doctor said -- that the disease is progressive, that eventually she'll have to be on insulin. She wants to believe the diabetes is reversible, and frankly, she doesn't trust everything doctors tell her. She suspects, for example, that there's already a cure for cancer, that Trudeau is right about the conspiracy. But she's not sure if he's right about her diabetes.
She says there's something "slick" about him that makes her uneasy.
"If I could be assured that he's totally honest I would be diving into this, but this is my life I'm talking about," she says.
He is slick, but somehow likable, too. He curses and does voice imitations. He is attractive, if not handsome, and people say he's popular with the ladies. He says he has a girlfriend who's almost 20 years younger; she's a student and part-time model.
He says he lives out his healthy living convictions. He says he recently got back from an ashram. He says he carries a shower filter with him wherever he goes, to eliminate the fluoride and chlorine he considers poisonous. After a few hours with Trudeau, you think maybe it's not all just a show. Maybe he really believes he's offering cures. Then he says this about that funny-looking necklace he wears, the electromagnetic chaos eliminator:
"If it doesn't work, what's the harm?"
He reveals that when he was young he used to perform magic tricks at kids' birthday parties.
Watch the hands.
"Kevin wouldn't allow us to have Equal in the office," says Janine Contursi, who briefly dated Trudeau in the 1980s and then worked for him in the '90s. She remembers that once, when she worked for him, she threw out her back, and Trudeau spent "thousands of dollars" to send her to an alternative health clinic. There, she was offered tips on positive thinking.
Her back did get better, she says. But it could have been because of the chiropractors.
Libby Copeland will discuss this article at noon tomorrow athttp://www.washingtonpost.com/liveonline
