The doctor who almost single-handedly legitimized the study of prayer in medicine now talks about prayer's surprising shadow side.
I grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt--the fundamentalist county of Limestone, Texas, where a lot of praying went all the time. I remember once when I was six years old, a young preacher was discoursing on the fires of hell in a tiny, country church, on a cold, wintry night--perhaps to warm up the room. There were about 12 folks in attendance.
For nearly 30 minutes he described Satan and the flames of eternal damnation, and began to beat on the pulpit to simulate the drums of hell. At the climax of his sermon he had someone turn off all the lights as he lapsed into prayer for lost sinners. My six-year-old mind was utterly hypnotized by fear, and when the invitation for salvation was offered, I numbly stumbled forward--only half-conscious-to be saved.
I learned early on that there could be a raw, brutal edge to religion and prayer. Even though I moved beyond this spiritual territory as I grew older, I carried with me a legacy I consider very important--an enduring interest in prayer. It's impossible to grow up in a fundamentalist environment and not be fascinated by the capacity of prayer to catalyze change in people's lives. For me, prayer remains one of the most effective methods of finding meaning, because it is a way of contacting a dimension of experience that seems wiser, deeper, and more real than an individual sense of self.
Claims that people can actually influence the health and well-being of others through prayer are often met with skepticism and derision. As one of my colleagues remarked, "This is the kind of thing I would not believe even if it existed." Yet it does exist. I've written at length about the astonishing capacity of prayer to heal, even over long distances and when the recipient does not know they are being prayed for. It's unclear how any form of energy currently known to modern physics can account for the distant influence of prayer, but abundant anecdotal and experimental evidence supports this phenomenon.
I stumbled onto the research about prayer and healing in 1988, when I read a study by Randolph Byrd, M.D., a cardiologist at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine. Dr. Byrd tested the impact of distant prayer much like a new medication, recording its effects on 393 patients who all had severe chest pains and/or heart attacks; half were prayed for, and half were not. The prayed-for group required fewer antibiotics (three in the prayed-for group, compared to 17 in the group not prayed for), had less need for mechanical respirators (zero compared to 12), required fewer diuretics (five compared to 15), suffered less congestive heart failure (eight compared to 20), experienced less cardiopulmonary arrest (three compared to 14), and fell ill with pneumonia less often (three compared to 13).
This study does not stand alone. David Larson, M.D., formerly at the National Institutes of Health, and now director of the National Institute for Healthcare Research, a private research organization in Rockville, Maryland, which explores the role of religious practice in health, has reviewed over 200 studies examining the role of faith and religion on health. In the majority of cases, faith is beneficial.
In 1995, a pilot study on the use of distant healing and prayer for AIDS patients was initiated by psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ, M.D., clinical director of psychosocial oncology research at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. Twenty patients with advanced AIDS were randomly selected, and half received 10 weeks of distant healing from 20 professional healers across the country. Blood and psychological tests were administered before and after the study, as well as three months later. Results were encouraging, and Dr. Targ is now conducting a larger study involving 60 AIDS patients and healers. She's also seeking funds for a similar study with breast cancer. It is studies such shed light on the way that prayer can be alongside conventional medicine.
SCIENCE AND SUPPLICATION
Prayer, when studied, usually has positive results. But what about prayer's capacity to harm? Most people choose to believe that thoughts and prayers work positively or not at all. But we cannot hide from the mind's power to harm. Everyone is aware of the placebo response--the impact of positive belief. But the flip side of this phenomenon is the nocebo effect, the ability of negative beliefs and expectations to cause harm. For example, in a provocative British study of patients with stomach cancer, patients thought they were taking a chemotherapy drug, but were actually receiving a placebo. One-third developed nausea, one-fifth developed vomiting, and almost one-third lost their hair. (This study was conducted with the patients' consent, and they were ultimately given the proper drugs.)
Tags:
30 minutes,
climax,
derision,
doctor who,
fires of hell,
flames,
invitation,
long distances,
medicine,
prayer,
preacher,
pulpit,
religion,
sermon,
shadow side,
skepticism,
tiny country,
violence
