About Intercessory Prayer: The Scientific Study of Miracles

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. 1999;159:2273-2278

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.

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.

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.

Fig. 1 Overall distribution of patients.

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.

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.

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.

Effects of Intercessory Prayer on Individual Components of the Mid

America Heart Institute–Cardiac Care Unit (MAHI-CCU) Score*

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.

Results - PATIENTS

• A total of 1019 patients were admitted to the CCU;1013 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.

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 (6.35±0.26) compared with the usual care group (7.13±0.27) (P=.04).

Effects of Intercessory Prayer on Mid America Heart Institute–Cardiac Care Unit (MAHI-CCU) Scores and Length of Stay in the

CCU and in the Hospital*

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

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).

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."

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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?”

• 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?

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.

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.

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

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.

• 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.

Altern Ther Health Med. 2006 Nov-Dec;12(6):42-8.The 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.

Perspect Biol Med. 2006 Autumn;49(4):504-14.Science, 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.