Prayer Does Not Help Heart Patients

mu22le writes "A recent study conducted by the Duke University Medical Center on 700 patients, found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. Researchers emphasized their work does not address whether God exists or answers prayers made on another's behalf. This result seems to contradict a previous study by the same authors that reported "cardiac patients who received intercessory prayer in addition to coronary stenting appeared to have better clinical outcomes than those treated with standard stenting therapy alone"."

Comments

Re:No point to this study

[deong]

I could have written that myself maybe five years ago. To some extent, I still feel that way today. My problem (and presumably that of many others) is not with the faithful person praying for their loved ones. It's with the growing proportion of the population who takes their faith to the next step and decides that faith is not just good for them, but good for everyone and should be mandated. Then we get intelligent design in science classes, laws against gay marriage, laws against assisted suicide, the Terry Schiavo debacle, and numerous other effects that *do* cause problems for quite a number of people -- and that's just in the US. Worldwide, we have protestants killing catholics, muslims killing christians, jews and muslims killing each other indiscriminantly...you get the idea.

Richard Dawkins claims that the biggest problem with religious faith is that it rewards the suspension of critical thought. I agree, and it is one of the major causes of the ills mentioned above. So on a personal level, religious faith doesn't bother me. I have no desire to confront my grandmother about it. However, I don't believe that it is harmless, either. Does the good outweight the bad? I don't know, but we do currently seem to be in the midst of a spell of the "bad".

I prayed for gramps, and he died

[alucinor]

I remember praying with my grandpa the night he died. It was actually the last thing anyone but doctors got to say to him. I prayed, "God, give grandpa the strength of your Son."

He died that night. But I actually felt as if the prayer had been answered, in a weird way: just as Christ had to let go of life in order to live, my grandpa did too. He had been in pain that night from not being able to pee -- which I'm sure must really suck! He finally had the strength to let go. When the world is remade, he'll have a new body.