Study Questions Power of Prayer to Heal (and therefore to extend life?)

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NYT account follows:

Mike

March 31, 2006

Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer

By BENEDICT CAREY

Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people

who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study

has found.

And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate

of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps

because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers

suggested.

Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of

whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade

ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the

subject of speculation.

The question has been a contentious one among researchers.

Proponents have argued that prayer is perhaps the most deeply human

response to disease, and that it may relieve suffering by some

mechanism that is not yet understood. Skeptics have contended that

studying prayer is a waste of money and that it presupposes

supernatural intervention, putting it by definition beyond the reach

of science.

At least 10 studies of the effects of prayer have been carried out

in the last six years, with mixed results. The new study was

intended to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations. The report

was scheduled to appear in The American Heart Journal next week, but

the journal's publisher released it online yesterday.

In a hurriedly convened news conference, the study's authors, led by

Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body

Medical Institute near Boston, said that the findings were not the

last word on the effects of so-called intercessory prayer. But the

results, they said, raised questions about how and whether patients

should be told that prayers were being offered for them.

" One conclusion from this is that the role of awareness of prayer

should be studied further, " said Dr. Bethea, a cardiologist

at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and a co-author

of the study.

Other experts said the study underscored the question of whether

prayer was an appropriate subject for scientific study.

" The problem with studying religion scientifically is that you do

violence to the phenomenon by reducing it to basic elements that can

be quantified, and that makes for bad science and bad religion, "

said Dr. Sloan, a professor of behavioral medicine at

Columbia and author of a forthcoming book, " Blind Faith: The Unholy

Alliance of Religion and Medicine. "

The study cost $2.4 million, and most of the money came from the

Templeton Foundation, which supports research into

spirituality. The government has spent more than $2.3 million on

prayer research since 2000.

Dean Marek, a chaplain at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and a

co-author of the report, said the study said nothing about the power

of personal prayer or about prayers for family members and friends.

Working in a large medical center like Mayo, Mr. Marek said, " You

hear tons of stories about the power of prayer, and I don't doubt

them. "

In the study, the researchers monitored 1,802 patients at six

hospitals who received coronary bypass surgery, in which doctors

reroute circulation around a clogged vein or artery.

The patients were broken into three groups. Two were prayed for; the

third was not. Half the patients who received the prayers were told

that they were being prayed for; half were told that they might or

might not receive prayers.

The researchers asked the members of three congregations — St.

's Monastery in St. ; the Community of Teresian Carmelites

in Worcester, Mass.; and Silent Unity, a Missouri prayer ministry

near Kansas City — to deliver the prayers, using the patients' first

names and the first initials of their last names.

The congregations were told that they could pray in their own ways,

but they were instructed to include the phrase, " for a successful

surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications. "

Analyzing complications in the 30 days after the operations, the

researchers found no differences between those patients who were

prayed for and those who were not.

In another of the study's findings, a significantly higher number of

the patients who knew that they were being prayed for — 59 percent —

suffered complications, compared with 51 percent of those who were

uncertain. The authors left open the possibility that this was a

chance finding. But they said that being aware of the strangers'

prayers also may have caused some of the patients a kind of

performance anxiety.

" It may have made them uncertain, wondering am I so sick they had to

call in their prayer team? " Dr. Bethea said.

The study also found that more patients in the uninformed prayer

group — 18 percent — suffered major complications, like heart attack

or stroke, compared with 13 percent in the group that did not

receive prayers. In their report, the researchers suggested that

this finding might also be a result of chance.

One reason the study was so widely anticipated was that it was led

by Dr. Benson, who in his work has emphasized the soothing power of

personal prayer and meditation.

At least one earlier study found lower complication rates in

patients who received intercessory prayers; others found no

difference. A 1997 study at the University of New Mexico, involving

40 alcoholics in rehabilitation, found that the men and women who

knew they were being prayed for actually fared worse.

The new study was rigorously designed to avoid problems like the

ones that came up in the earlier studies. But experts said the study

could not overcome perhaps the largest obstacle to prayer study: the

unknown amount of prayer each person received from friends,

families, and congregations around the world who pray daily for the

sick and dying.

Bob Barth, the spiritual director of Silent Unity, the Missouri

prayer ministry, said the findings would not affect the ministry's

mission.

" A person of faith would say that this study is interesting, " Mr.

Barth said, " but we've been praying a long time and we've seen

prayer work, we know it works, and the research on prayer and

spirituality is just getting started. "

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