Fingerprints of God_ The Search for the Science of Spirituality - Barbara Bradley Hagerty [138]
15 L. Leibovici, “Effects of Remote, Retroactive Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients with Bloodstream Infection: Randomized, Controlled Trial,” British Medical Journal 323: 1450-51.
16 J. M. Aviles and colleagues monitored 799 coronary care unit patients between 1997 and 1999. Half were prayed for by five different intercessors once a week for twenty-six weeks. At the end, the group receiving prayer scored slightly better (but not in a statistically significant measure) in areas such as death, cardiac arrest, rehospitalization for cardiovascular disease, coronary revascularization, and emergency department visits for cardiovascular disease. J. M. Aviles et al., “Intercessory Prayer and Cardiovascular Disease Progression in a Coronary Care Unit Population: A Randomized, Controlled Trial,” Mayo Clinic Proceedings 76 (2001): 1192-98.
17 The researchers measured not just prayer among the 748 patients but also an alternative therapy of music, imagery, and touch. Neither prayer nor the alternative therapies seemed to affect the outcomes as measured by death or major cardiovascular events. M. W. Krukoff et al., “Music, Imagery, Touch, and Prayer as Adjuncts to Interventional Cardiac Care: The Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II Randomized Study,” The Lancet 366 (2005): 211-17.
18 Researchers at California Pacific Medical Center split 156 patients into roughly three categories: those who received prayer or distant healing from professional healers for ten weeks; those who received prayer or distant healing from nurses who had no prior training in healing (also ten weeks); and those who received nothing. No significant effects were observed for those who received prayer from trained healers or nurses. J. A. Astin et al., “The Efficacy of Distant Healing for Human Immunodeficiency Virus: Results of a Randomized Trial,” Alternative Therapies in Health & Medicine 12 (2006): 36-41. However, there was what I consider a fatal flaw in this study, something the authors called a “limitation.” Namely, they lost much of their data: 40 percent of the prayer groups and 24 percent of the control group never showed up at the end of the ten-week period to be analyzed. This made me wonder about the robust nature of other studies. And it prompted Dr. Larry Dossey, who sent me the article, to note: “I don’t know why people publish stuff like this. It just pollutes the literature. Now people will cite this study as evidence that prayer is worthless in HIV/AIDS, a wholly unjustified conclusion based on this experiment.”
19 Researchers studied forty (mostly female) patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Some received in-person intercessory prayer; others received prayer from people far away as well as in person. Patients who received prayer in person were found to improve significantly, but the distant prayer did not add any benefit. D. A. Matthews, S. M. Marlowe, and F. S. Mac-Nutt, “Effects of Intercessory Prayer on Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis,” Southern Medical Journal 93 (2000): 1177-86.
20 The study looked at ninety-five patients with end-stage renal disease. The upshot was that the people who expected to be prayed for said they felt significantly better than did those who expected to receive another mental treatment (positive visualization). But on every other measure, prayer made no difference. W. J. Matthew, J. M. Conti, and S. G. Sireci, “The Effects of Intercessory Prayer, Positive Visualization, and Expectancy on the Well-being of Kidney Dialysis Patients,” Alternative Therapies in Health & Medicine 7 (2001):