Praying for a “miracle”? Don’t expect one!

As a writer, I spend about 1 hour per day wading through e-mails, press releases, online journals and other such creations of the electronic media in order to learn if something within these communications is actually worth passing on to the reader. And while the following essay may not be considered as news to the casual reader, I found its topic quite interesting.

Gil Gaudia, Professor Emeritus, State University of New York at Fredonia, published an essay entitled “About Intercessory Prayer: the Scientific Study of Miracles,” ¹ which deals with the efforts to scientifically evaluate the ability of prayer to favorably influence the clinical course of a properly diagnosed and well-documented physical illness.

Gaudia first takes issue with the occasional reports in the medical literature that claim to have documented the effectiveness of prayer within a supposedly unbiased and scientifically valid clinical study. His concern, as well as mine, is that some researchers seem to have forgotten that it is practically impossible to evaluate a subjective topic (such as whether prayer works) using the objective techniques of clinical and scientific research.

The potential beneficial effects of both on-site (in the patient’s sight or within hearing range) and remote (outside the patient’s immediate vicinity) prayer were the subject of a meta-analysis involving 14 previously published studies devoted to the subject of intercessory prayer. The findings of this study were:

There is no scientifically discernible effect for IP (Intercessory Prayer) 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 [Emphasis Added].²

Surprisingly, there has been one study that found a detrimental effect on patients awaiting cardiac surgery that were aware that they were being prayed for (59%) versus those who were unaware of such efforts on their behalf (51%). One of the investigators, with tongue in cheek, offered a possible explanation for the study’s findings: … 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?’ [Emphasis added]” ³

The faithful, when confronted with evidence that prayer is ineffectual, will almost invariably respond with one of two responses. The first response will be something similar to “if prayer doesn’t work at least it doesn’t harm anyone.”

This opinion is refuted by Benson, et al as well as by Flamm in “Inherent dangers of faith-healing studies.” ⁴

In this article Flamm lists 12 potential shortcomings of faith healing studies. Among these are:

1. Faith healing can cause patients to shun effective medical care.

An example: A patient diagnosed with in the early stage of an aggressive type of breast cancer would turn to a prayer group rather than follow the surgery and chemotherapy advice of her physician

4. Faith-healing studies raise informed consent issues.

Since the available data indicates that prayer is, at best, ineffectual; would informing the patient of that finding be deemed essential in obtaining a valid informed consent?

7. Faith healing studies encourage acceptance of magical and irrational thinking.

This point is obvious in that reliance on prayer or other such ritualistic interventions is in itself de facto proof that such ideation is present.

9. Positive faith-healing studies could affect public policy.

Although the Bush administration’s push for faith-based programs and other such interventions have yet to demonstrate any positive benefits, this has failed to deter the Religious Right from demanding more such (and just as ineffective) taxpayer-funded “interventions.”

Let’s face it; the effect of prayer on any endeavor cannot be objectively quantified. Since there is no way to evaluate, under controlled experimental conditions, the contentions of those insisting that prayer is effective; I propose that such studies be abandoned. If any group wishes to investigate the role of prayer, let them use their own money.

Based on Dr.Gaudia’s commentary and the results of above mentioned studies, I have but one request: the next time that I wind up in a hospital, don’t pray for me.

A Personal Note

My purpose in writing the above essay is to first call attention to the fact that, regardless of the reader’s beliefs in matters spiritual and the powers attributed to Supreme Beings, the has never been a documented case reported in the medical literature of anyone emerging directly from a coma into “wide awake and talking” consciousness. Such events are found only in the movies and in paperback novels.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is my firm belief that when prayer fails to produce the desired results the family members, friends or whoever else making the plea for supernatural intervention will promptly blame themselves for the prayer’s failure.

Such thinking is indeed tragic in that, given the amount of guilty thinking and self-blame that surrounds the loved ones of a brain injury victim, what is needed isn’t prayer but an honest attempt to “work through” the grief process that invariably engulfs family and friends. When the family and friends of the brain injury patient move past the self-blame and other finger pointing, they begin to heal along with the patient.

That’s my opinion.

I’m Wayne McDonald and I’m a brain injury survivor.

References

1. Gil Gaudia, PhD: “Commentary – About Intercessory Prayer: the Scientific Study of Miracles.” March, 20 2007, http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/552742?src=mp.

2. S. Masters, G.I. Spielmans, and J.T. Goodson: Are there demonstrable effects of distant intercessory prayer? a meta-analytic review. Ann Behav Med 2006; 32:21-26

3. J. Benson, J. Dusek, and P. Sherwood, et al. Study of the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: a multi-center randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer. Am Heart J 151:934-942.

4. B.L. Flamm: Inherent dangers of faith-healing studies. Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine 2004-05. Available at: http://www.sram.org/0802/faith-healing.html