What is your opinion on this? I have seen several other studies with similar results.?

Question

"Praying for a sick heart patient may feel right to people of faith, but it doesn't appear to improve the patient's health, according to a new study that is the largest ever done on the healing powers of prayer.
Indeed, researchers at the Harvard Medical School and five other U.S. medical centers found, to their bewilderment, that coronary-bypass patients who knew strangers were praying for them fared significantly worse than people who got no prayers."
On the other hand, I've seen studies that showed people who had others visit and talk (general topics) faired much better than those who had others praying for them, or those who were left alone (other than family). I've also noticed (in my own experience working in surgery) that patients tend to take more comfort in a smile than a prayer. I can hardly wait to read the answers.

This time I must violate my own rule: James W.: You, sir, are a complete moron. In every post you have made that I've had the misfortune to read, you have done nothing but spew delusional verbal diahrea. If you are too ignorant to give a proper answer, do not waste others time with nonsense.

Answer 1

Oh, you're going to get answers about how prayer can heal. And the minute you get one with proof that prayer healed an amputated limb, that it brought it back, then I'll believe it. There was a doctor (Cousins, maybe?) who wrote about his own illness and how he felt better when he watched Marx Brothers movies, so I am sure you are right that a smile does people more good than a prayer.

Answer 2

If that person who is being prayed for is fearful and not having any faith in the prayer knowing that God will heal them it is not going to work prayer without faith and action is dead. and i mean Lord i know that there is nothing that i can do about my situation on my own but i have faith in you and so i am surrendering myself into your hands to do your will. There is too much study this and study that science is all good but sometimes you have to incorporate it with Gods way after all He is the Greatest Physician and Scientist and no matter how many certificates one might have hanging on the wall God still holds the key.

i know i am going to get a lot of criticism for this but that is OK.

Answer 3

I've heard of "prayer studies" that showed that prayer showed a NEGATIVE effect on those prayed for. They think maybe the patients were stressed out by "performance anxiety"... needing to show "healing" made them stress out and sicker to boot!

Answer 4

I've heard of this.

The theory is the patients morale has a marginal, but measurable affect, and that the ones who heard they were the object of prayers concluded that they were in worse condition.

I don't thing this whole idea makes sense, even for a theist. We could imagine a god who doesn't submit to being measured.

Answer 5

Very interesting. I think I am going to look into that study a bit more. Human contact is much better medicine that invisible prayer waves. Jesus did not heal anyone because he "prayed" for them; he touched them. Quite interesting indeed.

Answer 6

I think that if a PATIENT is religious and the PATIENT finds comfort in the prayer of their own or of others, then anything that helps offer comfort and solace - and relieves some of the stress that they are undergoing - is a good thing.

And it really sucks that there are people out there who would want to take that away from them, even if it is just a placebo effect.

Answer 7

When I was in fifth grade my family hadn't heard from my grandmother in a week, so we drove over to her house to check on her. We found her lying unconscious in her bathtub. She had apparently had a stroke and been stuck in the bathtub for five days. The ambulance came and took her to the hospital and told my mom that they were going to do a brain scan of some kind to see if she still ahd any brain activity to see if she even had a slim chance of living. My mom was so upset she hit hurt knees and prayed that God would saved her, and as soon as she finished praying and the doctors began to lift her onto the stretcher thing for the scan, they apparently hit a bedsore that she had developed in the bathtub and she sat up and shouted, "Owww! That hurts!" It took a few weeks to recover, but she lived another eight years.

My grandmother past away at age 86 in August. Someone hit her with a motorized scooter at her assisted living place and she could no longer walk after that. She developed severe sores on her bottom from her wheel chair and cuz she was so thin. The sores were so bad that her bones were almost sticking out and all her skin was infected. The doctors said that she needed surgery or the infection would eventually kill her, but then they said she was too feeble to undergo surgery. This left me heartbroken, so I continuely visited her everyday and prayed that God would heal her. About a week after I started doing this, we got a call from my mother's nurse saying that they had changed her bandages on her wounds, and the dead, infected skin that needed to be surgically removed had just fallen off and fresh skin was underneath!?! My grandmother lived another two months to die of heart failure, but I know our God is real and very capable of healing. I guess His ways are just mysterious.

Answer 8

What WILL help however, is if that patient thinks he is going to get better for whatever reason. Likewise, if he thinks he is going to get worse, there is also a correlation. Our mental health affects our physical health.

Answer 9

Why would we expect anything else. It could only be a placebo effect and I'm sure some studies would show that such an effect might exist.

Answer 10

Its the same as a placebo,give some one a sugar pill tell them it will cure them and pow there better,,its more the power of the mind