Transcript About Intercessory Prayer: The Scientific Study of Miracles

About Intercessory Prayer: The
Scientific Study of Miracles
A Randomized, Controlled Trial of
the Effects of Remote, Intercessory
Prayer on Outcomes in Patients
Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit
William S. Harris, PhD; Manohar Gowda, MD; Jerry W.
Kolb, MDiv; Christopher P. Strychacz, PhD; James L.
Vacek, MD; Philip G. Jones, MS; Alan Forker, MD;
James H. O'Keefe, MD; Ben D. McCallister, MD
Arch Intern Med. 1999;159:2273-2278
Prayer
• FROM TIME immemorial, prayer for the sick
has been a common response to the illness of
a loved one.
• In some societies and among certain religious
groups, prayer is believed to be the most
important therapy that can be offered to a sick
person, superseding even medical
intervention.
Previous research
• In 1988, Byrd published the results of a blinded,
controlled trial of 393 patients who had been admitted
to a coronary care unit (CCU) at San Francisco General
Hospital, San Francisco, Calif.
• Patients were randomly assigned to either a usual care
group, which received no organized prayer, or to an
experimental, intercessory prayer group, which
received remote (from outside of the hospital) prayer
from persons unknown to them.
• Byrd reported a statistically significant beneficial effect
of intercessory prayer as assessed by a summary
"hospital course" score.
PATIENTS AND PROTOCOL
• All patients admitted to the CCU at the Mid
America Heart Institute (MAHI), Kansas City, Mo,
over a 12-month period were eligible for the trial
• New admissions were identified in the chaplain's
office on a daily basis via computer. The
chaplain's secretary randomly assigned all new
patients to either the usual care or prayer group
based on the last digit of the medical record
number; even numbers were assigned to the
prayer group and odd numbers to the usual care
group.
Fig. 1 Overall distribution of patients.
Intercessory prayer team
• Once assigned, the secretary called an
intercessory prayer team leader and gave
him/her the first name of the patient to be
prayed for.
• No other information (eg, diagnosis,
prognosis, age, race, socioeconomic status, or
family situation) was available to the
secretary; thus, it was not passed on to the
intercessors.
Team activity
• After receiving the call from the secretary, the
prayer team leader called the other 4 persons
on his/her team and directed that the name of
the new patient be entered on a log sheet
provided.
• The intercessors were asked to pray daily for
the next 28 days for "a speedy recovery with
no complications" and anything else that
seemed appropriate to them.
INTERCESSORS
• The intercessors were recruited by the investigators via
contacts in the local community.
• In order to be an intercessor, an individual did not need
to be of any particular denomination, but he/she did
need to agree with the following statements: "I believe
in God. I believe that He is personal and is concerned
with individual lives. I further believe that He is
responsive to prayers for healing made on behalf of the
sick.”
• Once identified, the intercessors were organized into
15 teams of 5 members (a total of 75), each with 1
person designated as the team leader.
Effects of Intercessory Prayer on
Individual Components of the Mid
America Heart Institute–Cardiac Care
Unit (MAHI-CCU) Score*
RESULTS - INTERCESSORS
• The intercessors represented a variety of
Christian traditions, with 35% listing their
affiliations as nondenominational, 27% as
Episcopalian, and the remainder as other
Protestant groups or Roman Catholic.
• The intercessors were predominantly women
(87%), and their mean age was 56 years.
Results - PATIENTS
• A total of 1019 patients were admitted to the
CCU;1013 were randomized 484 (48%) to the
prayer group and 529 (52%) to the usual care
group
• Comorbid conditions upon admission were
similar for each group Men and women were
equally represented in the usual care and prayer
groups (66% vs 61% men, respectively; P=.10),
and the mean age was 66 years for both groups.
OUTCOMES
• The primary predefined end point in this trial
was the weighted MAHI-CCU score. We found
an 11% reduction in scores in the prayer group
(6.35±0.26) compared with the usual care
group (7.13±0.27) (P=.04).
Effects of Intercessory Prayer on Mid America Heart Institute–
Cardiac Care Unit (MAHI-CCU) Scores and Length of Stay in the
CCU and in the Hospital*
OUTCOMES
• Using the unweighted MAHI-CCU score, which
simply counted elements in the original
scoring system without assigning point values,
the prayer group had 10% fewer elements
(P=.04) than the usual care group
Other more sceptic reports
• O'Laoire examined the effects of intercessory prayer on
self-esteem, anxiety, and depression in 406 subjects (who
received either no prayer, directed prayer, or nondirected
prayer) and in the 90 intercessors. There were no specific
benefits detected for the prayer groups.
• A pilot study of the effects of intercessory prayer on 40
recovering alcoholics likewise reported no clinical benefit.
• 6-month trial of "distant healing" in patients with acquired
immune deficiency syndrome, Sicher et al found statistically
significant benefits for the intervention group (fewer new
illnesses, physician visits, hospitalizations, and days of
hospitalization; lower illness severity scores; and improved
mood scores).
Natural or supernatural explanations
• to "real" but currently unknown physical forces
that are "generated" by the intercessors and
"received" by the patients
• beyond the ken of science
• By analogy, when James Lind, by clinical trial,
determined that lemons and limes cured scurvy
aboard the HMS Salisbury in 1753, he not only
did not know about ascorbic acid, he did not even
understand the concept of a "nutrient."
• Faith is an effective means of stress reduction,
which has itself been shown to reduce cardiac
morbidity.
• Some of these benefits may derive from
favorable hormonal, autonomic, and
immunologic responses to the emotional
reassurance that belief can provide.
• By carrying out research into the effects of
“intercessory prayer” medical researchers are,
in effect, attempting to study the existence of
miracles, defined as an extraordinary event
manifesting divine intervention in human
affairs.
• The issue is about prayer to a deity or his
representative beings that do not exist within
the known physical universe, a qualification
acknowledged by most educated religious
believers, which should include medical
researchers who engage in the scientific
investigation of natural phenomena.
• There is no scientifically discernable effect for
Intercessory Prayer (IP) as assessed in
controlled studies.
• Given that the IP literature lacks a theoretical
or theological base and has failed to produce
significant findings in controlled trials, we
recommend that further resources not be
allocated to this line of research.
• American Heart Journal
• “a significantly higher number of the patients
who knew that they were being prayed for (59%)
suffered complications, compared with 51% of
those who were uncertain.”
• “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?”
• So not only do some “scientists” seem to believe
that intercessory prayer can be helpful, they are
also concerned that it could be harmful.
• But more importantly, if the concept of
intercessory prayer has any meaning whatsoever,
in the metaphysical sense, would that mean that
the deity was not only ignoring the request, but
in some instances, also punishing the supplicant
as well?
An Experiment
• To carry out a confirmatory experiment one that would
leave no possibility of an alternative explanation the
investigators would have to produce evidence of an effect
that could only be explainable by a force unknown to
science, such as the intervention of a deity or its agent.
• There are some outcomes that could eliminate most doubt
about experimental artifacts and they would have to
involve dependent variables that could not occur except by
divine intervention.
• Investigators would have to identify a dependent variable
that could withstand the lemon test, one that would yield
clearcut results.
Regeneration of an amputated limb
• Any amputee who wants to be included in the
experimental group would be examined
beforehand by a panel of physicians to ascertain
that he or she is indeed an amputee.
• DNA samples on the subjects would be taken
before and after the study to ascertain that the
amputee identified at the beginning would
indeed actually be the person who was examined
a year later.
• There would be no limit on the sample size. No
need for randomization.
Regeneration of an amputated limb
• The subjects would present themselves at the
end of the year and be examined to see if a single
missing limb had been restored.
• Any priest, minister, rabbi, or lay person would be
permitted to recommend subjects for the
experiment, and any could observe the
examination for the regenerated limbs.
• There should be no limitation on the number of
amputees, people who pray for them, and
observers to keep everything organized and
uncontaminated
Opinion
• Intercessory prayer is a request to God to
change his or her mind about the already
established plan for the universe and make it
go another way.
• Of course, this implies that a perfect deity's
plans, which would (by definition) have to be
perfect, should now be altered at the urging of
an imperfect being.
• If we were speaking of magic or sorcery, or
any belief systems outside of Western JudeoChristian tradition, most investigators would
agree that these ideas (of intercessory
prayer's effectiveness) are ridiculous and
consist of superstition at best.
Altern Ther Health Med. 2006 Nov-Dec;12(6):42-8.
The effect of intercessory prayer on wound healing in nonhuman
primates.
Lesniak KT.
•
OBJECTIVES: This study was performed to examine the effects of intercessory prayer (IP) on
wound healing and related physiological and behavioral factors in nonhuman primates.
DESIGN: Twenty-two bush babies (Otolemur garnettii) with chronic self-injurious behavior
(SIB) were stratified by wound severity and matched by total wound area. The animals were
then randomized to IP and L-tryptophan or L-tryptophan only for treatment of SIB and
related wounds. The IP intervention was conducted in a double-blind, randomized manner.
Prayer was conducted daily for 4 weeks. Initiation of prayer was coincident with the first day
of L-tryptophan administration. Physiological and behavioral variables were assessed at
baseline and end of study. RESULTS: Following IP/L-tryptophan treatment, prayer-group
animals had a reduction in wound size compared to non-prayer animals (P=.028). Prayergroup animals had a greater increase in red blood cells (P=.006), hemoglobin (P=.01), and
hematocrit (P=.018); a greater reduction in both mean corpuscular hemoglobin (P=.023) and
corpuscular volume (P=.008); and a reduction in wound grooming (P=.01) and total grooming
behaviors (P=.04) than non-prayer-group animals. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study
are consistent with prior human trials of IP effectiveness, but suggest IP-induced health
improvements may be independent of confounds associated with human participants.
Findings may provide direction for study of the mechanisms of IP-induced health
improvements in both human and animal models.
Perspect Biol Med. 2006 Autumn;49(4):504-14.
Science, medicine, and intercessory prayer.
Sloan RP, Ramakrishnan R.
•
Among the many recent attempts to demonstrate the medical benefits of religious
activity, the methodologically strongest seem to be studies of the effects of distant
intercessory prayer (IP). In these studies, patients are randomly assigned to receive
standard care or standard care plus the prayers or "healing intentions" of distant
intercessors. Most of the scientific community has dismissed such research, but
cavalier rejection of studies of IP is unwise, because IP studies appear to conform
to the standards of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and, as such, would have a
significant advantage over observational investigations of associations between
religious variables and health outcomes. As we demonstrate, however, studies of
IP fail to meet the standards of RCTs in several critical respects. They fail to
adequately measure and control exposure to prayer from others, which is likely to
exceed IP and to vary widely from subject to subject, and whose magnitude is
unknown. This supplemental prayer so greatly attenuates the differences between
the treatment and control groups that sample sizes are too large to justify studies
of IP. Further, IP studies generally do not specify the outcome variables, raising
problems of multiple comparisons and Type 1 errors. Finally, these studies claim
findings incompatible with current views of the physical universe and
consciousness. Unless these problems are solved, studies of IP should not be
conducted.