Prayer Fails to Heal Heart Patients

In the largest study of its kind ever conducted, praying for heart-surgery patients failed to impact their outcomes. It turned out that patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher incidence of complications.

The work, which followed about 1,800 patients at six medical centers, was financed by the Templeton Foundation, which supports research into science and religion. It will appear in the American Heart Journal.

Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School and other scientists tested the effect of having three Christian groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before surgery and continuing for two weeks. The volunteers prayed for "a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications" for specific patients, for whom they were given the first name and first initial of the last name.

The patients, meanwhile, were split into three groups of about 600 apiece: those who knew they were being prayed for, those who were prayed for but only knew it was a possibility, and those who weren't prayed for but were told it was a possibility.

The researchers didn't ask patients or their families and friends to alter any plans they had for prayer, saying such a step would have been unethical and impractical.

The study looked for any complications within 30 days of the surgery. Results showed no effect of prayer on complication-free recovery. But 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for developed a complication, versus 52 percent of those who were told it was just a possibility.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig, director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at the Duke University Medical Center, who didn't take part in the study, said the results didn't surprise him.

"There are no scientific grounds to expect a result and there are no real theological grounds to expect a result either," he said.

"There is no god in either the Christian, Jewish or Moslem scriptures that can be constrained to the point that they can be predicted."

Within the Christian tradition, God would be expected to be concerned with a person's eternal salvation, he said, and "why would God change his plans for a particular person just because they're in a research study?"

Science, he said, "is not designed to study the supernatural."

Interesting study. The Institute for Noetic Sciences has had more promising results in similar studies, but their results haven't been accepted by the mainstream.

I don't think the question in this new study is whether or not God responds to prayers, but rather whether collective intent can influence the physical universe. This study would suggest that it can't.

One other consideration: In the IONS studies, they have had multiple faiths represented among the prayer groups, and these people were chosen for their proficiency in focused prayer. This may indicate that healing prayer, like so many things, is more effective when done by professionals and not by any random person off the street.