Prayer does not heal the sick, and hurts heart surgery recovery!

[yesthattom]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2112892,00.html

Many years ago someone did a non-scientific, study that claimed that prayer helped sick people. Ever since then the Radical Religious Right has been quoting it and mis-quoting it claiming everything from "scientists have acknowledged that prayer cures people" to "scientists have proved that prayer can cure". It pisses me off, because the study wasn't double-blind nor done with any kind of reasonable scientific process.

So now someone has spent money to do the longest study of its kind, with more than a decade of research. The result? Prayer doesn't help people get well and, in fact, patients who know they are being prayed for suffer a noticeably higher rate of complications. Let me repeat that:

In fact, patients who know they are being prayed for suffer a noticeably higher rate of complications, according to the study, which monitored the recovery of 1,800 patients after heart bypass surgery in the US.

The findings of the decade-long study were due to be published in the American Heart Journal next week, but the journal published the report on its website yesterday as anticipation grew.

So what's happening now? The Radical Religious, Right is going nuts trying to put a positive spin on this. All their lingo has been encouraging reporters to put the emphasis on the study showed no harm, and ignore the fact that patients who know they are being prayed for suffer a noticeably higher rate of complications.

The study was done by a well-funded group that wanted to provide evidence that it did help people, so the fact that the study has backfired is driving them nuts. As part of their damage control, they are saying things like, "Intercessory prayer under our restricted format had a neutral effect." In other words, "Oh it didn't work because we had to restrict the way the prayers were done." Yeah right!

The only thing that makes me happy about this study is that every penny spent on it was a penny not spent on hate-tanks working out how to punish homosexuals, atheists, and liberals.

quietchris once pointed out to me that people consider it crazy to believe in aliens from another planet or the Easter Bunny but the same people believe in a person coming back from the dead after three days or turning water into wine. Oh please. Why aren't those people considered as insane as someone that believes they can talk to trees?

(Note: I'm not an atheist. I have a lot of spirituality. I just realize that the whole "water into wine" thing, the "grace of the goddess", the "miracle of Babylon 5 going all 5 seasons" and other such things aren't real... they're useful metaphors that teach us about living our lives.)

Comments

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Quick, everyone! Start praying for Dick Cheney!

[dariens-haircut.livejournal.com]

Heh. 8)

[airshipjones.livejournal.com]

Uh, Babylon 5 did go 5 seasons. Of course, I don't think prayer had anything to do with it....

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Oh now now. I've seen the so-called "season 5" and believe me, it wasn't real.

[airshipjones.livejournal.com]

What, just because Ivanova wasn't there? I rather liked the dark side of Kosh, and the opening shots of the Telepaths Wars (which were mostly hinted at) that were played out on B5. I admit the Tracy Scoggins wasn't a great replacement for Claudia Christian, but I didn't see her as a detriment to the show, she just did add much. I think the movie (River of Souls?) where the hologram of her gets taken over by an ancient alien technology was kinda cool.

Now, if you had watched the cheesy opening for the show about the Rangers on the haunted ship, you would know why I don't look at the 5th season in such a harsh light.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

There is also be the part where the scripts for at least the first half of the season were so painful I was tempted to watch it on fast-forward.

[grendelgongon.livejournal.com]

From the Abstract

"certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications" with a relative risk of 1.14 (95% confidence interval 1.02 - 1.28)

So it's just every so slightly better than significant at P=0.05

Unfortunately I can't get at the full text just now. I wonder if the folks being prayed for (known) vs others stratified in effect between believers and non-believers.

[logisticslad.livejournal.com]

Good point. If I remember correctly, belief of the patient didn't matter much in the original study, which contradicts the basis of the developing field of psychoneuroimmunology. That field would interpret the mind-body interaction that arose from belief as a translational mechanism to affect the body processes.

It's hard to translate this into testable hypotheses - should length of prayer matter? number of pray-ers? intensity of prayer? prayers from church vs bedside vs home?

I sure hope that they did not use NIH funding for this study...

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

Silly religionists. If they truly had faith, they wouldn't need proof. Since they don't really have faith, they seek proof, and what do they find? Proof that their faith is either ineffectual, or actually harmful.

Only Science offers proof.

[lilbjorn.livejournal.com]

Why aren't those people considered as insane as someone that believes they can talk to trees?

David Berkowitz hears voices telling him to kill people and he's locked up for life. Pat Robertson hears 'em and he gets to buy another Rolls. Is the difference only that Berkowitz wasn't rich and powerful enough to get the government to do the dirty work for him?

[pure-agnostic.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, Tom! I liked your wording so much that I reposted it on the LJ agnosticism forum.

[cpj.livejournal.com]

Since prayer is a process, and not a drug, how exactly could you even do a double blind study? I mean, you kind of need to know the name of the guy you're praying for. :)

[anselm23.livejournal.com]

Why aren't those people considered as insane as someone that believes they can talk to trees?

Sadly, it's easy to talk to trees. You don't even need to believe you can. Just walk up to a tree and say, "hi. My name is Andrew (or Tom, in your case). I live just over there. If you need me, just give a yell, and let me know what I can do for you."

And to some extent, trees talk back. There's a tree in the school parking lot here that got moved from a different location about five years ago. At first, this maple's outer edges turned a brilliant yellow while the rest of the tree was green, in September. It was saying, "I'm new here, and I'm a little freaked." The next year, its outer edges turned yellow in October, as if to say it was more comfortable where it was. The fourth year, the leaves of the whole tree began to change all at about the same time, in the first week of November. It had finished adjusting to its new location, rebuilt its root systems, and sorted out the bugs in its system. The local arborists, who initially worried about moving it, now think it's thriving, and doing even better than where it was originally.

Now it's saying, "Hey, this is a nice neighborhood... good earth... nice schools..." and so on. :-)

At least this tree answers when you ask how it's doing. You just have to ask it several times over the course of several years, and pay attention to the long-term answers.

Which is more than can be said for someone returning from the dead after three days.