Under the Microscope: Prof William Reville A businesswoman got into deep financial trouble and decided to pray to God for help. The only solution she could see to her problems was to win the lottery. She dropped to her knees and prayed: "Please God, let me win the lottery. I really need to win or I'll lose my business and even my house and car."
The weekly draw arrived and she didn't win. Her problems escalated. Again she prayed: "Please, please God, let me win the lottery or I'm ruined." The draw came around again, and she didn't win. Desperate now, she dropped to her knees once more. Suddenly, she is startled to hear God address her in a booming voice: "Work with me here, darlin' - buy a ticket!"
I tell this joke because I believe that prayer can only work if the person on whose behalf God's help is requested is either independently trying to help himself/herself or has a history of independent effort. If you lose something and make no effort to find it except to pray it will turn up, I expect you are wasting your time.
Prayer is probably the most widely practised form of alternative medicine. An article in the April 26, 2004, edition of the Achives of Internal Medicine estimates that one-third of American adults use prayer in addition to conventional medical care. Also, a survey reported (by W Laurimore) in the American Family Physician, Vol 63(1), p36 (2001), reports that 99 per cent of family physicians believe that religious beliefs can heal, while 75 per cent believe that other people's prayers (intercessory prayer) can promote healing.
The earliest recorded study of the efficacy of prayer was carried out by Francis Galton (1822-1911). Noting that prayers requesting a long life for the monarch were constantly said by large numbers of people - every official function raised the toast of "God Save the King/Queen" - he reckoned that, if prayer was effective, monarchs should live significantly longer than their subjects. He gathered extensive life-span data on past monarchs but found they didn't live significantly longer than the average subject. Thumbs down for prayer.
Health authorities internationally now take the possibility seriously that intercessory prayer can promote healing and many scientific studies have been funded in this area. A literature search turned up more than 250 peer-reviewed references related to prayer and medicine published between 1999 and 2002. The majority of studies report a significant positive correlation between prayer and health, but a significant number of studies find no correlation.
A typical study that positively correlated intercessory prayer (IP) with enhanced recovery in a coronary care unit (CCU) was published by Randolph C Byrd in the Southern Medical Journal, Vol 81, No 7 (July, 1988). Over 10 months, 393 patients admitted to CCU were randomly assigned to an IP group (192 patients) or to a control group (201 patients). The IP group, while hospitalised, was prayed for by participating Christians praying outside the hospital; the control group was not prayed for by this outside group. This was a doubled-blind study, ie the patients did not know in which group they resided and neither did the doctors.
The results clearly showed that the IP group of patients fared better than the control group, ie had less congestive heart failure, required less diuretic and antibiotic therapy, suffered less from pneumonia, had fewer cardiac arrests and were less frequently intubated and ventilated. The data suggests that intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God has a beneficial therapeutic effect in patients admitted to CCU.
A new large-scale Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (Step) has just been published online by the American Heart Journal. This study showed no positive effect from the use of third-party intercessory prayer on behalf of patients undergoing heart surgery at six medical centres around America when compared with a control group that was not prayed for as part of the study.
One particularly interesting result here was that the group of patients who knew they were being prayed for did less well than the group that was prayed for but was unsure whether prayers were being offered.
Many studies that investigated the effect of prayer on healing were poorly designed. The new Step investigation was designed to avoid flaws in previous studies but the investigators cannot explain the unexpected result of patients who knew they were prayed for doing less well than those who were unsure whether they were prayed for.
I don't have much faith (no pun intended) that "scientific" studies to-date tell us anything reliable about the effect of prayer. I think they are inadequately controlled and designed. Anyway, how could you control for "quality" of prayer or "dose" of prayer or for input of independent effort as noted at the beginning of this article? There are also theological objections to the notion of scientifically testing the efficacy of prayer. Some theologians say that a scientific trial is doomed to failure because it "puts God to the test", and there are clear instructions in the Bible not to do this.
Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims believe in the power of prayer. The Christian New Testament invites people to pray to God and advises Christians how to pray - the Lord's Prayer. Many people are personally convinced of the effectiveness of prayer and, as a Christian myself, I would be very happy to be remembered in the prayers of those who care about me.
• William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and public awareness of science officer at UCC - http://understandingscience.ucc.ie