Magic pills story for weight loss is fake

A false story about a doctor from AIIMS with a fake image is going viral on the internet. We fact check and find that the claim of “AIIMS doctor discovers magic pill” is absolutely wrong.

A blogging website named steemit.com published a story in 2017 claiming “AIIMS Doctor Discovers Shockingly Simple Way to Lose 1Kg per Day without Diet or Exercise”.

The blogger has 292 followers and the story has been shared widely on social media. It first appeared three years ago and since then it is appearing again and again on social media and Whatsapp.

The story claims that a biomedicine-doctor, Siddharth Kumail from India’s prestigious hospital, AIIMS, New Delhi, has found a weight loss remedy after his brother died due to a heart attack caused by obesity.

(Screenshot share from Steemit)

Further the story expands on how Dr. Siddharth Kumail is credited with creating this trick and has a picture of Dr. Kumail working in his lab.

It seems a great medical achievement but the only problem with the story is that it is fake.

This story advertises a product named “Nutralyfe Garcinia” manufactured by Nutravo Lifecare Pvt Ltd. to attract naive people in the name of a prestigious institute.

We did a Google Reverse Image search and found that this person is not Dr. Siddharth Kumail but an environmental engineer named Kartik Chandran, an Associate Professor at the Columbia University.

This photo is a screen grab of his video from Macarthur Fellows Program website.

India’s leading English daily also published about Dr. Kartik Chandra’s achievements in 2015 saying, “Indian-American Professor wins genius grant” giving us all the more reasons to authenticate that he is Dr. Kartik Chandran and not Siddharth Kumail.

(Screenshot of The Hindu article)

We further authenticated the image via other photo verifications tools like Yandex and Tineye.

(Screenshot of Reverse image search on Yandex)

We searched the PubMed for his research paper mentioned in the story and found none.

The story mentions about a clinical trial but has not given the reference of the trial that he claims to have conducted with MIT scientist, named Peter Molnar. He hasn’t mentioned what MIT stands for; we searched the websites of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Manipal Institute of Technology and even Madras Institute of Technology, and found no one named Peter Molnar.

Reputed Indian magazine India Today has also fact-checked the story debunking the myth about this magical slimming  pill.

This product claims to contain the extract of Garcinia Cambogia, a small, pumpkin-shaped fruit also known as Malabar Tamarind. Its extract, hydroxycitric acid, is used to make the slimming pills which the doctor mentions in his story. But clinical trials conducted to check the plant extract for the potential treatment of obesity, did not show any significant weight or fat loss in the subjects as compared to those who were given placebo.

Still, the company on its website promotes “Nutralyfe Garcinia” by saying that Garcinia Cambogia is clinically proven to aid in weight loss.

(With inputs from Sahil Bali)

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