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				Scientists Find Evidence Prayer Can Heal

Tuesday, June 13, 2000

NEW YORK -- Prayer may help heal the sick, according to a new review of studies on "distance healing," which encompasses prayer and other mental activities that can't be explained by contemporary science.

Researchers at the University of Maryland looked at 23 clinical trials involving more than 2,700 patients, 57 percent of which found that prayer had a positive effect on health. Each of the studies was placebo-controlled -- for example, half the patients were randomly assigned people who prayed for them, the other half received no prayer.

"Absolutely, the evidence suggests that something may be going on," said lead author Dr. John Astin, an expert on alternative and complimentary medicine. "I'm open-minded to possibilities of things we don't understand."

But because the research combined "apples and oranges," -- studies of different techniques, with different methodologies -- his findings were not conclusive, Astin said.

The study, which appeared in this month's Annals of Internal Medicine, defines distance healing as "a conscious, dedicated act of mentation attempting to benefit another person's physical or emotional well being at a distance." It "does not necessarily imply any particular belief in or referral to a deity or higher power."

Some of the largest effects came from "therapeutic touch," in which practitioners do not actually come into contact with their patients but move their hands through the "energy fields" that surround them.

Science vs. Religion

In one of the studies included in Astin's analysis, researchers at San Francisco General Medical Center found prayer "to the Judeo-Christian God" helped heart patients. They required less assistance breathing, and needed fewer antibiotics and diuretics than a control group.

"Intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God has a beneficial therapeutic effect," the study concluded.

Other studies included in the Maryland researchers' so-called "meta-analysis" weren't as optimistic. Working with a similar group of heart patients, British researchers determined that "data ... are too inconclusive to guide those wishing to uphold or refute the effect of intercessory prayer on health."

The British study authors questioned whether science could ever determine the efficacy of prayer. "If any benefit derives from God's response to prayer," they wrote, "it may be beyond any such trials to prove or disprove."

Nevertheless, Astin is convinced researchers can successfully measure spiritual effects with the secular tools of science.

"People want a simple answer, something that's black and white, our results were inconsistent, but that's true of most medical interventions. ... These are matters of faith, but anything can be examined systemically, and that's all science does."

But Dr. Richard Sloan of Columbia University, a critic of efforts to integrate prayer into organized medicine, said such efforts are bound to fail.

"Medicine and religion are fundamentally different," he said. "Prayer can't be studied empirically."