Large scale study of the effectiveness of prayer
- From: "Lance" <LanceGary@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 31 Mar 2006 04:20:07 -0800
NYT
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. Charles 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.
Richard 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 John
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. Paul's
Monastery in St. Paul; 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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