If you want to get better - don't say a little prayer

[Taxloss]

If a religious person offers to pray for you next time you fall ill, you may wish politely to ask them not to bother. The largest scientific study into the health effects of prayer seems to suggest it may make matters worse.

Two-thirds of Americans and more than a quarter of British people say they pray regularly, but the study, which took almost a decade and cost $2.4m (£1.4m) suggested that they may be wasting their time. It found that patients undergoing heart surgery did no better when they were prayed for by people unknown to them than those who received no prayers. But 59% of those patients who were told they were definitely being prayed for developed complications, compared with 52% of those who had been told it was just a possibility.

"Here they are, facing the biggest challenge of their lives, just about to go into the operating suite, and don't know whether they're coming back or not," said Charles Bethea, of the Integris Baptist medical centre in Oklahoma City, a co-author of the study. "And then we have someone come in and introduce themselves as a study coordinator."
The arrival of the "prayer team" may have convinced those patients that their situation was particularly dire, heightening their anxiety, Dr Bethea speculated.

More:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1744457,00.html

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Discuss.

Play nicely and I may tell you something I witnessed that consider to be at the very least an example of the power of prayer, possibly even a minor miracle.

:hide:

[PuraVidaDreamin]

1. I'm going to start praying constantly for bush&cheney

[goclark]

2. Huum, in our family we ask to have prayers

and have the Minister come to pray with us when we are facing a health challenge or a personal challenge.

We are not "Born Again" and we certainly know that the prayers will not make you well.

It has helped enormously just to know that someone cares enough to pray with us, to be there with us, to know that we are not alone.

By reading the Obituary Page,it doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that Prayers don't heal you, why spend millions of $$'s for a study?

[Warpy]

3. Prayers, like meditation and chanting, can work but you

have to be an active participant.

This study covered those who generally were not active participants but who passively received or did not receive the attention of otheres. The ones who knew they had a prayer team mumbling away are the ones who did very slightly worse, probably because their cortisol levels were raised by the stress of needing to live up to expectations.

The good news is that if you want to pray for somebody without their knowing it at the time, you won't make them any worse and you might make yourself feel a bit better.

The study was conducted because the believers on the study wanted to quantify the effect that remote prayers have on the sick. The outcome surprised them and they were honest enough to publish the results, anyway. It's the first such study conducted to rigorous medical standards instead of the sloppier religious standards, and that's why it's an important one.

[Pugee]

4. On the other hand,

I took several research classes in college. One of the main things that we were taught was that if 50 studies are done and 48 say one thing, the 2 that disagree will be published. Money wise it stirs controversy and the 48 are boring.

It takes lots of controlled studies before something becomes mainstream "knowledge"