About Intercessory Prayer: The Scientific Study of Miracles

1
About Intercessory Prayer The Scientific Study
of Miracles
2
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. 19991592273-2278

3
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.

4
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.

5
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.

6
Fig. 1 Overall distribution of patients.
7
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.

8
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.

9
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.

10
Effects of Intercessory Prayer on Individual
Components of the Mid America Heart
InstituteCardiac Care Unit (MAHI-CCU) Score
11
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.

12
Results - PATIENTS

• A total of 1019 patients were admitted to the
  CCU1013 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.

13
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
  (6.350.26) compared with the usual care group
  (7.130.27) (P.04).

14
Effects of Intercessory Prayer on Mid America
Heart InstituteCardiac Care Unit (MAHI-CCU)
Scores and Length of Stay in the CCU and in the
Hospital
15
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

16
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).

17
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."

18

• 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.

19

• 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.

20

• 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.

21

• 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.

22

• 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?

23

• 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?

24
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.

25
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.

26
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

27
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.

28

• If we were speaking of magic or sorcery, or any
  belief systems outside of Western Judeo-Christian
  tradition, most investigators would agree that
  these ideas (of intercessory prayer's
  effectiveness) are ridiculous and consist of
  superstition at best.

29
Altern Ther Health Med. 2006 Nov-Dec12(6)42-8.T
he 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). Prayer-group 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.

30
Perspect Biol Med. 2006 Autumn49(4)504-14.Scien
ce, 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.