CHRIS SEGAL
News Editor
The power of prayer proved not to be helpful to heart patients recovering from cardiac bypass surgery. The largest scientific study to date, lead by the Harvard Medical School, on the effectiveness of intercessory prayer, shows that prayer had no benefit on healing. This study doesn’t mean that prayer is neither helpful nor unproductive.
Prayer serves an important function in our lives. Even if our prayers can’t heal strangers, it is still a worth-while endeavor. Taking the time to reflect on life and our surroundings and thank God is a constructive use of energy.
The most shocking statistics of the study are that the patients who received prayers and knew they were receiving them had more complications than those who did not know if they were prayed for. The Harvard Medical School study determined 51 percent of the patients who did not receive prayers had complications, compared to 59 percent of patients who knew they were being prayed for.
The $2.5 million study funded by the John Templeton Foundation, a Pennsylvania based group that promotes the study of spirituality and science, was designed to overcome the flaws of past studies. According to the Associated Press, this is the best-designed study to examine the power of prayer to heal strangers.
The 1,800 patients underwent heart surgery and were part of the study consisted of many religious backgrounds including Catholics, Jews, Protestants and people not of faith. The participants were randomly divided into three groups at six different hospitals. Each group had about 600 patients. One group was told they may or may not receive prayers and did not receive them, another group that was told they were being prayed for and there was a control group that was told they may or may not receive prayer and did receive them.
About 95 percent of the participants said they expected family members, friends and their own religious institutions to be praying for them and two-thirds agreed with the statement, “I believe in spiritual healing.”
The success was measured by how many complications each group had after the surgery.
The most common complication was atrial fibrillation, or the irregular beating of the heart that can be caused by stress. Researchers speculate that the group that knew they were receiving prayers may have been under more stress.
Two Catholic churches and one Protestant church offered the prayers. They prayed for the patients by first name and last initial starting the day before the surgery and ending two weeks after. Members were asked to pray between one and four times a day. The members of the church that prayed were asked to all say the same intercession, praying for a “successful surgery and a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.”
A blinded nurse auditor reviewed the medical records against the patient’s data before the study was released. The study is being published by the American Heart Journal and is receiving mixed reviews. Compared to four previous studies, this study is the first step in applying scientific principles to the realm of intercessory prayer.
Christians can simply dismiss this study and say that this study is like comparing apples to oranges. Prayer is not a measurable thing and trying to find correlations between health and spirituality, is not possible. Instead of rejecting any scientific study on spirituality Christians must look at the 300 studies collected by The Office of Prayer Research on the subject of prayer and healing and this new study and find more areas were research should be done.
Theologians from both sides of the argument are sounding off in the media. The best explanation for the results of the study comes from the Rev. Dean Marek, a Catholic priest who was part of the research. Marek told the Los Angeles Times on March 31, that he wasn’t surprised by the findings because what we have in mind for people may not be what they have in mind for themselves. It goes against divine action and choice.
Praying helps the person praying probably more than it helps those being prayed for. A person who prays for another person’s health, which is something they cannot control, at least gives them the chance to act. Praying gives us an opportunity to not feel helpless during times of need. Christians can feel good and continue to pray for things they cannot control and might not help as long as they don’t expect to see evidence of their actions.
04-06-2006