Controversial speaker coming

People keep giving Kevin Trudeau money.

Despite being convicted of fraud, despite being banned by the federal government from ever selling another product or service on television again, people keep buying the infomercial king’s books and turning out in droves to hear him speak.

Perhaps it’s because people want to believe his message: that there are natural ways to cure what ails them if only the government and the drug companies weren’t conspiring to keep that information from them.

Trudeau is bringing that message to Spokane today during two appearances at the annual Conscious Living Body, Mind, Spirit Expo at the Spokane Convention Center.

“I will be sharing research from around the world and what doctors are using around the world to cure disease,” Trudeau said in a recent interview – natural remedies for illnesses like flu, arthritis and herpes, he explained.

In 2004, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Trudeau that bans him from “appearing in, producing, or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service or program to the public, except for truthful infomercials for informational publications.”

Trudeau also had to pay the FTC $2 million to settle charges that he falsely claimed a product called coral calcium could cure cancer, among other diseases, and that a purported analgesic called Biotape could cure severe pain.

The $2 million was refunded to some of the customers who purchased more than $80 million worth of his products, said Heather Hippsley, an FTC attorney.

It was the second time Trudeau had a run-in with the feds. In 1998, there was an FTC order against his “Megamemory system,” a baldness cure and a couple of other things, Hippsley said.

Trudeau has filed two countersuits against the FTC over its media release detailing terms of the 2004 settlement. Both were dismissed in federal court, Hippsley said. Trudeau appealed, and an appellate court decision is due sometime this year.

In 1991, Trudeau, now in his early 40s, pleaded guilty to credit card fraud and spent two years in prison. “I made a mistake in my 20s,” he once told USA Today. “So what?”

Banned from hawking his cures on television or radio, Trudeau turned to a new enterprise, one protected by the First Amendment. His book, “Natural Cures ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About,” remained on the New York Times best-seller list for weeks last year. Now there is a sequel, “More Natural Cures Revealed,” which undoubtedly will be brought up at today’s event.

Why would anybody believe Trudeau after the FTC ban? “Why would anybody believe the FTC?” Trudeau said.

In fact, not trusting the government is what this incredibly successful and resilient salesman is all about these days as he touts his books on new TV infomercials, including some with former televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker Messner.

“They tried to ban me from speaking and exercising my First Amendment rights, and they failed,” Trudeau said. “I’m on the air now more than ever.”

Far from admitting to ripping off consumers with bogus cures, Trudeau now fancies himself something of a consumer advocate. He insists that he is not selling cures, merely letting people know they exist.

As far as the whole coral calcium thing is concerned, he maintains that supplementing your diet with any form of calcium is “generally considered good for cancer, not just osteoporosis.” It’s all about the pH level in the human body, he said. Trudeau’s contention that acidic blood increases your risk of cancer and alkaline blood eliminates your risk is one of the claims the FTC made him stop saying on the air.

The acid-alkaline theory of disease is nonsense, according to Quackwatch.com, a Web site dedicated to combating health-related frauds, myths and fads.

“No foods change the acidity of anything in your body except urine,” Dr. Gabe Mirkin, a clinical professor of pediatrics at Georgetown University who specializes in sports medicine, said in a Quackwatch article. “If you hear someone say that your body is too acidic and you should use their product to make it more alkaline, you would be wise not to believe anything else the person tells you.”

Pharmaceutical companies and the Food and Drug Administration are Trudeau’s favorite targets. “Drug companies are financially traded and have no interest in making you healthy,” he said. “They want young people to take drugs and continue taking them throughout life.”

Asked for evidence of this, he cites federal law that requires publicly traded companies to act in the interest of shareholders. “How can they do that if sales go down? Do healthy people use drugs?”

Drug companies influence government in many different ways, he said, and the FDA exists not to protect consumers, but to protect drug profits.

“If the FDA is protecting us, how could they say Vioxx is safe and then 150,000 people wind up dead?” Trudeau asked.

The prescription painkiller, which was taken off the market in September 2004, is believed to be responsible for between 150,000 and 200,000 deaths worldwide, according to adrugrecall.com, a Web site that provides legal information about defective drugs.

Trudeau often sprinkles verifiable facts amid some of his more outrageous claims to enhance his credibility among audiences yearning for explanations.

He cites, for example, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s financial interest in Gilead Sciences, which owns the rights to the influenza remedy Tamiflu, as evidence of government collusion with drug companies.

In fact, Rumsfeld worked for Gilead until joining the Bush administration in 2001 and still holds a $5 million to $25 million interest in the biotech company, Fortune magazine reported in October.

Trudeau has sold more than 6 million copies of “Natural Remedies” at about $30 a book, which goes a long way toward explaining why he’s in demand at events like this weekend’s expo in Spokane.

It was Trudeau who contacted expo organizer AnneMarie Lewis, founder of Spokane’s Conscious Living. Trudeau had heard about the event, which draws as many as 10,000 people each year to the Convention Center, from alternative medicine advocate Deepak Chopra, who has spoken in Spokane three times.

“I had seen a couple of TV shows that really put Kevin down,” said Lewis, who will split the proceeds from Trudeau’s appearance 50-50. “I wasn’t a big fan when I first talked to him. But I felt what he said made a lot of sense.”

Once she heard his story, she said, she decided to give him a chance.

“I felt I could make my own judgments, and I felt our audience could do the same,” Lewis said. “I trust people’s common sense and intuition to know what is right for them.”