Here’s an imponderable: The largest effort so far to measure the power of distant prayer to heal the sick found it didn’t appear to help – and in one curious respect, prayer was associated with poorer outcomes, researchers said Thursday.
Doctors who followed 1,800 heart bypass patients at six medical centers found that those who knew they were being prayed for suffered higher rates of complications than others who weren’t sure.
Cautioning that they don’t know what, if anything, to make of the finding, some doctors speculated that telling patients on the eve of surgery that people were praying for them might not be a good idea. It could put them under increased pressure to heal, raising their blood pressure.
“Our study design does not allow us to draw firm conclusions,” said Jeffery Dusek, a Harvard University psychologist who directed the study. “Is it random or real? We don’t know, but any significant findings beg for more explanations.”
But for some faithful who regularly pray for people they don’t necessarily know, there is no scientific inquiry that can prove their efforts fruitless.
“This is a very hard thing to measure,” said Sister Patricia Scanlon, one of many Carmelite nuns at a monastery in Towson, Md., who regularly beseech God to heal strangers.
“We pray for complete healing, and sometimes that takes different forms. It could be spiritual healing, or sometimes an attitude, an acceptance, a preparedness, maybe not being physically healed. Many are being prepared for whatever the next stage of that person’s life may be,” she said.
The $2.8 million study, which appears todayin the American Heart Journal, is the latest and most ambitious to examine the thorny question of whether distant prayer is beneficial.
It was funded largely by the John Templeton Foundation, whose philanthropist founder has poured millions into attempts to apply principles of scientific research to the spiritual realm.
“Our study was never intended to address the existence of God or the presence or absence of intelligent design in the universe,” said the Rev. Dean Marek, head chaplain at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and one of the study’s investigators.
“The study did not endeavor, either, to compare the efficacy of one prayer form over another to assess participants’ understanding of the nature or purpose of prayer.”
In the study, doctors randomly assigned patients to three groups. People in one group were told they might or might not be the object of distant prayer, and they were. Another group was told the same thing, but no one was assigned to pray for its members. And the third was promised it would receive prayer, and it did.
The first two groups had nearly the same complication rates of about 50 percent. But the people in the third group – who knew others were praying for them – suffered complications in 59 percent of cases.
Marek of the Mayo Clinic said he doesn’t put much stock in so-called “intercessory prayers,” in which strangers ask God to heal the sick. Better to place the patient’s care in God’s hand, and leave it at that, he said.
“Anything beyond that, and I’m trying to control the outcome of your life, your surgery,” Marek said. “I don’t think that works.”
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