Ramanand Jhingade

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'''Ramanand Rao V. Jhingadé''' is a Bangalore-based [[naturopathy|naturopath]] and [[hypnotherapist]] specialising in [[quack medicine|quack medical]] "cures". According to his website, he is an "M.D.(Nat.), Incurable<ref>Yes, that actually means he claims to ''cure'' things that are ''incurable''.</ref>  Healer, [[Hypnotherapy|Hypnotherapist]], Qualified Doctor and [[Naturopath]]."<ref><capture>[http://cure4incurables.com/contact.htm The good "doctor's" website]</capture></ref>  Jhingade has a marginal presence on the internet, running a [[webshite]] that promotes [[pseudoscience]] and [[quack medicine|extraordinary medical claims]].  
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'''Ramanand Rao V. Jhingadé''' is a Bangalore-based [[naturopathy|naturopath]] and [[hypnotherapist]] specialising in [[quack medicine|quack medical]] "cures". According to his website, he is an "M.D.(Nat.), Incurable<ref>Yes, that actually means he claims to ''cure'' things that are ''incurable''.</ref>  Healer, [[Hypnotherapy|Hypnotherapist]], Qualified Doctor and [[Naturopath]]."<ref><capture>[http://cure4incurables.com/contact.htm The good "doctor's" website]</capture></ref>  Jhingade has a marginal presence on the internet, running a [[webshite]] that promotes [[pseudoscience]] and [[quack medicine|extraordinary medical claims]].
  
 
==Website claims==
 
==Website claims==

Revision as of 02:57, 9 January 2011

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Ramanand Rao V. Jhingadé is a Bangalore-based naturopath and hypnotherapist specialising in quack medical "cures". According to his website, he is an "M.D.(Nat.), Incurable[1] Healer, Hypnotherapist, Qualified Doctor and Naturopath."[2] Jhingade has a marginal presence on the internet, running a webshite that promotes pseudoscience and extraordinary medical claims.

Contents

Website claims

Jhingade argues, among other things, that by following his treatments patients can be "cured of any 'incurable' disease." While some of his shtick is the same tired woo seen across the internet such as stress reduction and weight loss, Jhingade has taken it to a new level.

Generalised woo

His non-medical woo seems to be largely based on hypnosis though with a liberal mixture of other insane pseudoscientific ideas. Some of the more bizarre include:[3]

  • "Find a most satisfying job without much effort"
  • "Learn remote viewing"
  • "Learn telepathy and ESP"
  • "Get whatever through guided visualization (a car, a house, money etc.)"
  • " Regress to a past life"
  • "Get answers for the unsolvable" (Though what the hell this is actually supposed to mean is anybody's guess.)

Medical woo and incredible claims

While the idea that people can gain superhero-like psychic powers is laughable, Jhingade also pushes a darker brand of woo and quack medicine. He makes dangerous farcical claims about being able to cure a range of incurable and/or lethal diseases, including cancer, cirrhosis, heart problems, diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases, and kidney failure, mostly through the administration of homeopathy distilled water.[3]

AIDS

While Mr. Jhingade is not shy about making extravagant claims of being able to cure a wide range of incurable diseases, his stance on AIDS is a little more ambiguous. The relevant page,[4] while attempting to give readers the impression that he can treat the illness, nowhere actually seems to carry the explicit claim that he can cure the disease using distilled water. There is an open question about this matter on the talk page of this article and it would be interesting if he were to respond.

Results

Although his generalised woo will do no more than harm the wallets of his clients, his claims of being able to cure life-threatening illnesses with worthless treatments may delay standard, proven treatment and thereby cause significant harm or even loss of life. Should this happen Jhingade would cross the line from being a harmless crank to something far worse.

Ramanand Jhingade vs. the Internet

While his website is a good source for discredited and patently absurd medical and psychic treatments, Jhingade's primary claim to fame is his tireless crusade to defend homeopathy and other alternative medicine on the internet, primarily through blogs and wikis.

He first showed up at Wikipedia putting links to random homeopathic sites and "on-line books" all over talk pages.[5] He was quickly banned for sockpuppetry[6] and spamming.[7]

After failing at Wikipedia, he turned to the blogs where he ranted about his ill treatment by the conspiracy of skeptics, and spammed links to his website calling for a general uprising and imploring people to buy his products.[8]

Currently Jhingade's venue of choice appears to be Citizendium, where he and Dana Ullman have taken up the banner for homeopathy, much to the chagrin of the few remaining rational members. Dana Ullman has been relatively inactive at Citizendium, and there is a one-year moratorium on edits to the homeopathy article. Mr. Jhingade has also called out RationalWiki, in general for unfavorable coverage of Citizendium and in particular for analysis of the "expert" crank magnet it has become.[9] Those amused by unsubstantiated, outraged ranting may also like to peruse the comments someone claiming to be Jhingade left on the talk page of this article.

He is not restricting himself to homeopathy alone at CZ, having posted an article about Pranic Healing, for which deletion has been requested as spam. [1]img For those amused by inane, meaningless, new-age blather here is an extract from his attempted CZ article:

Master Choa Kok Sui developed Arhatic Yoga®, a system of practices to help seekers on the spiritual path expand their consciousness and work toward achieving soul-realization. Arhatic Yoga is a scientific synthesis of yogic practices to safely accelerate the spiritual development of practitioners. The practice of Arhatic Yoga is said to balance aspects of Universal Love, Intelligence and Will. Practitioners aim to develop higher intuition, advanced mental faculties, qualities of good character and progress towards realizing their true potential as Beings of Divine Love, Light and Power.

Quackery, homeopathy and qualifications

Homeopathy itself is an archetypal quack treatment. Our article Homeopathy explains in detail why this is so, but in brief there are two general reasons for it being quackery and an additional one in the case of Ramanand Jhingade:

  • Mechanism. The idea behind homeopathy is that the more dilute a "medicine" is the more powerful it becomes. Modern science suggests that this is an absurdity.
  • Effectiveness. Homoeopathic medicines do not work. [10](See our Homeopathy article for more details.)
  • Grandiose claims. Jhingade takes all this to another level by making grandiose, unbelievable claims of being able to "cure" diseases which he himself describes as "incurable".

Given that the theory behind the treatment is implausible, that the treatment does not work and the additional implausible grandiose claims made for it it is reasonable to regard it as quack medicine. Nevertheless, homoeopaths do award each other qualifications in this pseudoscience and we do not doubt that Mr Jhingade holds such a quack pseudoscientific qualification. But the holding of a quack qualification does not mean that he does not practice quackery - on the contrary, it confirms it.

See also

  • As alluded to above several times, this article's talk page.

External links

Footnotes

  1. Yes, that actually means he claims to cure things that are incurable.
  2. The good "doctor's" websiteimg
  3. 3.0 3.1 Ramanand Jhingade's websiteimg
  4. Jhingade on aidsimg
  5. Jhingade spamming wikipedia
  6. Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Dr.Jhingaadey
  7. Jhingade's Wikipedia user talk page with discussion of block for spamming
  8. See comments section for Jhingade's spam
  9. Jhingade calling out RationalWiki at CZ
  10. Impartial UK government repost which confirms homeopathy does not work
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