If a religious person offers to pray for you next time you fall ill, you may wish to ask them politely not to bother. The largest scientific study into the health effects of prayer seems to suggest it may make matters worse.
Two-thirds of Americans and more than a quarter of British people say they pray regularly, but the study, which took almost a decade and cost $2,4-million, suggested that they may be wasting their time.
It found that patients undergoing heart surgery did no better when they were prayed for by people unknown to them than those who received no prayers. But 59% of those patients who were told they were definitely being prayed for developed complications, compared with 52% of those who had been told it was just a possibility.
”Here they are, facing the biggest challenge of their lives, just about to go into the operating suite, and don’t know whether they’re coming back or not,” said Charles Bethea, of the Integris Baptist medical centre in Oklahoma City, a co-author of the study. ”And then we have someone come in and introduce themselves as a study coordinator.”
The arrival of the ”prayer team” may have convinced those patients that their situation was particularly dire, heightening their anxiety, Bethea speculated.
The study, which will be published in the American Heart Journal next week, drew criticisms from religious groups, who argued that science cannot illuminate questions of faith, and from other medical scientists, who said it was a waste of money.
”It represents bad science, poor medical care, and it trivialises religion,” said Richard Sloan, a professor of behavioural medicine at Columbia University.
He argued that the study was not properly constructed because it was impossible to control for how much prayer any of the 1 800 patients might or might not be receiving from other sources.
Bethea and his colleague, Harvard professor Herbert Benson, emphasised that their investigations had been restricted to ”intercessory prayer” by strangers — excluding prayer from family members and oneself.
Praying for oneself has been shown in many studies to be effective. — Guardian Unlimited Â