Re: OT!! Power of Prayer--It may not be helping patients

[Guest guest]

Dear group, Dont you think God is to awesome to be put in anyfrom of study? If we were to understand His ways we would probably not be very mindful of Him. But as human beings we are always searching and perhaps that is why prayer in many ways remains powerful. Have a peaceful weekend. Love, FAITH. Strecker wrote: Dear Group,Many of us ask for prayers when we are especially ill or facing healthchallenges. I have read the articles that showed how powerful prayercan be. So I, and many others I am sure, will be surprised

at thislatest study showing that those cardiac patients who knew they werebeing prayed for actually had more complications than others. Thisgoes contrary to logic where one would think that knowing you werebeing prayed for would lead to relaxaton and let the body heal betterand without complications.If you want to ask for prayers, and feel it helps, please continue todo so, but if you are uncomfortable asking for prayers, this studysomewhat backs up your decision. *******http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/healthscience/healthfitness/article_1081208.phpFriday, March 31, 2006Prayer may not be helping patients$2.4 million study of 1,802 bypass surgery recipients even found morecomplications among those aware of the prayers.By JEREMY MANIERThe Chicago TribuneCHICAGO – Praying for a sick cardiac

patient may feel right to peopleof faith, but it doesn't appear to improve the patient's health,according to a new study that is the largest ever done on the healingpowers of prayer.In fact, the researchers from Harvard Medical School and five otherU.S. medical centers found - to their bewilderment - that coronarybypass patients who knew strangers were praying for them faredsignificantly worse than people who got no prayers. The teamspeculated that telling the patients about the prayers may have caused"performance anxiety," or perhaps a fear that doctors expected the worst."Obviously, my colleagues were surprised by the unexpected andcounterintuitive outcome," said the Rev. Dean Marek, director ofchaplain services at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and aco-investigator for the project.It was a strange end for the mammoth prayer study, which cost$2.4million and enrolled 1,802 patients who had

bypass surgery. Themajority of funding came from the British-based TempletonFoundation, which supports research at the intersection of science andreligion.Previous studies had examined the power of prayer for medicalpatients, with mixed results.In 2001, the Journal of Reproductive Medicine published a study thatsuggested women undergoing in-vitro fertilization in Korea who wereprayed for by Christians in the United States, Canada and Australiawere twice as likely to become pregnant as those who were not.But that story eventually was debunked, largely due to the efforts ofUC Irvine physician Dr. Bruce Flamm.In May 2004, two authors of the article pleaded guilty to charges ofconspiracy and theft.The new study, which appears in the April issue of the American HeartJournal, was designed to be large enough to see if patients who knewthey were being prayed for had better

recoveries.The people who prayed for the patients were strangers - either RomanCatholic monks or believers belonging to other Christiandenominations. Those who prayed were given the patients' first namesand last initials, and instructed to give a simple prayer for a quickrecovery with no complications. The researchers said they could notfind a non-Christian group that could work with the scheduling demandsof their study.Bypass patients who consented to take part in the experiment weredivided randomly into three groups. Some patients received prayers butwere not informed of that. In the second group the patients got noprayers, and also were not informed one way or the other. The thirdgroup got prayers and were told so.There was virtually no difference in complication rates betweenpatients in the first two groups. But the third group, in whichpatients knew they were receiving prayers, had a complication

rate of59 percent - significantly more than the rate of 52 percent in theno-prayer group.Researchers said the study was never intended to prove or disprove theexistence of God or to settle theological questions. But they hadexpected that knowing someone was praying for the patients might helpthose patients relax and bring about a state of well-being, which canreduce strain on the heart."In this study, we did not find that was the case," said Dr. HerbertBenson of Harvard Medical School, a principal investigator of the study.Any attempt to study the power of prayer objectively runs the risk ofscientific and theological problems, said Dr. Sulmasy, directorof ethics at St. 's Hospital and New York Medical College."God is not just another therapeutic nostrum in a doctor's black bag,"said Sulmasy, who is also a Franciscan friar. "It seems fundamentallysinful to conceive of God as our

instrument."Marek, a Catholic priest, conceded that it may be an unfair test ofGod to measure whether detailed prayers are granted."The best prayer probably is, 'Thy will be done,'" he said.

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