Slashdot Mirror
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"."
What is the point of this study? Its not like it is going to convince the millions of people who don't like mixing science with their religion that they shouldn't waste time praying for their loved ones. Those people can trust science to make more fuel efficient SUVs, better bombs for Iraq and cure diseases. But when it proves that the earth is round, that the universe is 13-15 billion years old and that prayer doesn't really do anything, they think its hogwash.
And the people who scientifically minded already think that this fact is just plain obvious.
So while a study like this may be a amuzing anecdote, in the end its completely pointless.
In other news... wishing upon a star will not make dreams come true. Details at 11.
I could give a shit what this study says as any positive focused thoughts such as prayer & meditation absolutely do help. Does this mean its based on some godly force? Heck no, it is just the power of positive thinking.
Giving people a reason to think good thoughts about others is what we should be doing, not shooting down another avenue for people to feel good.
Now that they have two conflicting results they'll need a new grant to conduct another study so they can conclude which of their first two studies was correct. Yay! 5 more years of research funding.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
May Godwin help us.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Praying for loved ones may not physically help a loved one, but certainly helps the mental state of the patient and their family. I don't think anyone ever expects a miracle, but if it helps any one, in any manner, then more power to them.
btw, I dare ANY body who's watched a loved one suffer to deny that they said a few words to God 'Just in case'. It certainly can't hurt. I'm not religious, but I've been there.
As summed up on BoingBoing.. Maybe they were praying to the wrong god?
-- jimmycarter
Remember that there were different results when the patient was told they were being prayed for. Once that's done, it introduces an interesting twist:
They're praying for me? Oh, crap, I must be a goner.
Sure enough, those who were told they were being prayed for had more complications than those who weren't told.
On a more serious note, I think it's important to do this as a counter to the other "experiments" that showed that prayer helped people. Science is about reproducing results. If a scientist claims something is true, it's the obligation of others to prove them wrong or back up the findings.
From the article:
The prayer portion of the randomization was double-blinded, meaning that patients and their care team did not know which patients were receiving intercessory prayer. Per Institutional Review Board policies governing clinical research, all patients were aware that they might be prayed for by people they did not know, from a variety of faiths.
While double-blind tests are generally a good idea, perhaps another study should be carried out in which the patients themselves know whether people are praying for them (perhaps including people they know, as well as people of the faith they request). The increased optimism and placebo effect may produce something desireable (not saying it will, but it might be worth a study by the same people who expended their resources on this one).
Uttering logically derived and empirically supported truths to the disciples of the orthodox establishment.
As a heart patient myself, it always gave me a mental boost to know that others were taking time to pray for me when I had to go in for surgery. Even though prayer may not directly affect the outcome of a surgery, letting the patient know that there are people who care about them can make a big difference.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Prayer comes from the heart, and can't be done in a cold and scientific manner in the name of research. Or at least that's what I have come to think very religious people would probably think. This disregards what I consider to be the main way spirituality helps too. It gives people hope and strengthens them. Mind over matter isn't just a useless saying, it's a pretty significant tool in medical recovery as I understand.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
Marshall Brain of How Stuff Works fame wrote a little book called Why Won't God Heal Amputees? (The Most Important Question We Can Ask about God).
Chapter Five deals with the title question and is especially pertinent to this discussion. There are some minor flaws with the conclusions drawn, but I have written the author about these and he intends to address them; they don't really detract from the conclusion.
A highly recommended read. A little wordy at times, but that is because it is trying to be conversational with a potentially hostile audience (I think).
Recently when my sister-inlaw was diagnosed with lukemia my wife and I were left stunned. We had chosen to live half way around the world, too expensive to travel when most of our family was still there to comfort her.
We instead decided to take our prayers to the Wester Wall (HaKotell), as jews have done for thousands of years. It's one incedent, and no basis for a conclusive "Prayer Works" post. But it did at least let us do something, other than sit and worry.
What is the alternative of a loved one to prayer? Nothing, nadda, zilch. Prayer may help, it may not. But if it's a choice between possibly useless prayer and definetly useless worrying, prayer makes more sense. (Pascals wager) If nothing else it makes you feel better.
I would be curriuos to know if there is a difference in stress related illnesses between people who pray (in one form or another) and those who dont. I know for me the worst source of stress is to have a problem and no pragmatic way to affect it.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
I don't want to have to make this point, but I feel obligated in light of all the Smug that's about to enter the thread -- but this study isn't really useful for debunking anything except the previous "studies" that it did help patients. "Prayer is more about changing the person doing the praying, than about bringing changes to world events." "Even if all the things that people prayed for happened -- which they do not -- this would not prove what Christians mean by the efficacy of prayer. For prayer is request. The essence of request, as distinct from compulsion, is that it may or may not be granted. And if an infinitely wise Being listens to the requests of finite and foolish creatures, of course He will sometimes grant and sometimes refuse them. Invariable "success" in prayer would not prove the Christian doctrine at all. It would prove something more like magic -- a power in certain human beings to control, or compel, the course of nature." (C.S. Lewis) I'm not religious by any means, but I think Lewis has a fair point.
From the article:
"Patients treated with "two-tiered" prayer had absolute six-month death and re-hospitalization rates that were about 30 percent lower than control patients, statistically characterized as a suggestive trend."
"Six-month mortality was lower in patients assigned bedside MIT, with the lowest absolute death rates observed in patients treated with both prayer and bedside MIT."
So, prayer did have a statistically significant benefit, according to the study. Note that the entities prayed to were drawn from many religions, suggesting that the act of prayer is the important thing, not so much entity prayed to. So you should be fine praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
"I'm not, like, that smart. I, like, forget stuff all the time." -- Paris Hilton
Cthulhu was displeased with the family's offerings.
Unfortunatley since they awoken the great Ancient one with their pleas for mercy, the heart patients and their family (and next of kin and family pets) will be eaten first and slowly.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I don't know how many flamewars I'm going to have to go through before the message starts sinking in, but because I'm an obstinate fellow I always seem to be good for at least one more. There are two main points: 1 - You can be devoutly religious and also logical/rational/scientific. 2 - Some "scientific" and anti-religious people are just as bigotted, and illogical as the religious nuts.
1 - Devoutly Religious and Also Scientific
Where's the big surprise here? Take a look at the Jesuits. In other surveys, the level of activity a Mormon has in his or her religion is actually positively correlated to the level of education. There are tons of religious doctors, lawyers, physicists, etc. I'm a statistician moving into systems engineering - and I have no trouble at all distinguishing between religious beliefs and scientific beliefs. This point is so obvious I shouldn't even have to bother restating it.
2 - The "Scientific" Bigots
It's pretty simple. You can be religious and you can be bigot (or not). You can be a scientist and you can be a bigot (or not). Anyone that thinks that being a scientist somehow frees people from their biases and prejudices needs to do a little research into things like eugenice. Hell, even setting aside nasty racism and such there's the simple fact that scientists, mathematicians, etc. are people. They have egos. They like to be right. And a lot of the time they don't care whether they're stating their opinion based on research or based on personal bias. They should - but they don't.
Anyone that believes in "blind faith" - the type of faith that essentially amounts to wishful thinking - is a religious nut in my opinion. There's no logical basis for this type of theology, but it is nonetheless extremely prevalent in American society. But there are also those who believe that faith should be reasonable or who at least make an interesting case for blind faith. Existentalist philosophy, for example, was started by Christian theologians like Kierkegaard.
In short, I'm sick of this tired old bullshit: Those people can trust science to make more fuel efficient SUVs, better bombs for Iraq and cure diseases. But when it proves that the earth is round, that the universe is 13-15 billion years old and that prayer doesn't really do anything, they think its hogwash. Those nutjobs are a SUBSET of religious people. A proper subset, if you want to get technical.
Meanwhile: And the people who scientifically minded already think that this fact is just plain obvious. is just plain wrong. Plenty of scientifically minded people believe in the efficacy (under certain conditions) of prayer. The types of people who think it's "obvious" that prayer does nothing are (again) a proper subset of scientifically-minded people. And if they think it's obvious, I'm inclined to say they're not really any different, in terms of their fanatic dogmaticism, than the religious nuts they criticize.
It comes to this: I don't care if you're religious or an atheist. All I want to see is that you're not a knee-jerk adherent of whatever worldview you subscribe too. It's the reason that people believe - more than the object they believe in - that really matters. As long as you believe rationally and honestly - you're always in a position to be proved wrong, admit mistakes, and develop improvements to your own worldview. But if you are dogmatic in your belief system then you are doomed to perpetual, slavish obedicance to concepts you never question or challenge. I don't care of those concepts are Newtonian physics, Einsteinian physics, quantum physics, or the 10 Commandments. It's the slavish obediance itself that I find most reprehensible and dangerous.
-storrmin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Of course the real problem is that God is too busy helping rappers get their bling bling. This is obvious if you've ever watched a music awards show.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Science's task is to test hypotheses.
The belief that prayer has beneficial medical effects is a widlely-held hypothesis that can be tested.
The results of such a test could improve treatment and life in general. Therefore, it's a worthwhile pursuit.
That *you* think it's silly doesn't change anything. Much sillier theories have been put to the test -- and gotten unexpected results.
Tom Geller
Seems to me the summary doesn't match TFA (big surprise). Which makes me think all the smug "well, duh" respondents didn't RTFA. Another surprise.
"The researchers found no significant differences among the treatment groups in the primary composite endpoint. However, six-month mortality was lower in patients assigned bedside MIT, with the lowest absolute death rates observed in patients treated with both prayer and bedside MIT."
How is a decreased 6-month death rate not helpful?
A friend of ours has the ultimate rejoinder to telephone psychics:
"If they were really psychic, they'd call you!"
Several years back, when I knew this friend was coming over for dinner, I arranged with a female co-worker to call her at our house, and begin with, "Hello (name), I'm a psychic, and you're having a problem with..." (I filled the co-worker in with a not-too-personal problem.) Something came up, and the whole thing fell through. Darn.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Perhaps the real reason is that the people studied were not worthy of divine intervention? Did anyone check their level of evil before praying for them?
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Oh. You meant "CUE" the religious flamewar. Sorry, my bad.
In mathematics, this would be called "intuition", not "proof". (And in anthropology, I suppose, "intuition" - or an extension thereof - would be called "religion".) What the GP was probably implying - as an analogy, obviously - was that to "prove" that 2 + 2 = 4 you need to make deductions that are ultimately based on axioms. Without these, things as basic as "equality" are uncertain and undefined, and you can't actually prove that 2 + 2 = 4.
When you say that the King of the Potato People is just as likely to exist as any other God, you are basically regarding the world from an atheist perspective, making the assumption that the world is wholly explainable and that all people who claim to have had spiritual experiences are wrong. (If you were not making the latter assumption, you would have to admit that I could claim that the King of the Potato People would be more likely to exist if he had told me(directly or otherwise) that he did. The same argument, obviously, could apply - and is slightly more relevant - for the Christian God, or any other actively worshipped deity. Atheist mock-deities such as the IPU, the FSM, etc. and your (to my knowledge improvised) KotPP differ from the true religions in that nobody seriously claims to have any kind of divinely inspired faith in the former. (This is obviously an assumption made on a sociological basis, but one in which I feel fairly confident.) )
Now, an atheist perspective is a perfectly valid perspective from which to view the world. But don't start thinking that it is the only valid perspective, or that you have somehow "proved" that one god or another doesn't exist, or that belief in gods is somehow "objectively" absurd.
(By the way, knowing that this is Slashdot: I'm not saying that use of mathematical axioms is equivalent to religious beliefs. That was an analogy. (Oh, and I know you all know what "analogy" means. That was an attempt at a snide joke.))
I've been content for the past several years to just read /. and never participate, but I want to respond to this issue. My youngest son spent the first 3 years of his life undergoing a series of open heart operations at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. I am a christian, and I believe in prayer. We received emails, letters, phone calls from people we didn't know, all over the world, who were praying for my son. Belief in prayer requires a belief in God, something that many slashdotter's seem to think is naive, and pointless. In my time at CHOP, and the Ronald McDonald House, I saw several kids not make it. By our last visit, I felt like we were running a gauntlet. I really think that my own sanity was starting to fray. Maybe prayer didn't affect my son's survival, maybe it did. I don't understand how it works. I do know that it helped me survive: just knowing how many people cared about my son, and were asking God to spare him; I knew that there was nothing I could do for my son, that I was helpless in this situation. I had to give it to God, the surgeons, the cardiologists, the amazing nursing staff.
Does this make me weak-minded? Am I foolish to have faith?
The problem is that no Christian who is not completely theologically naive is going to suppose that their prayer can make God do something. God does what God chooses to do, according to his own logic. That's why the Lord's prayer opens with (my translation):
There is, right from the start, a recognition that the answer to prayer is at God's will (or whim if you prefer).In other words, prayer is not a deterministic process. You don't push a "pray" button and reliably expect a certain action from God. God's will is much more important than the will of the person praying. Because of this, prayer is not really susceptible to statistical analysis: God knows not just what you're praying, but why, and he has his own agenda that's perhaps rather different from yours. Worse, this sort of analysis generally cannot distinguish between "impossible" and "rare". Perhaps God only answers prayers for Anabaptists, or Pentecostals, or that truly dedicated fraction of the church that actually has better morals, lower divorce rates, and is what really keeps the church going. This sort of "fringe" reaction is going to be quite difficult to detect in the sort of study done.
Why pray then? Perhaps for the same reason that death row inmates keep petitioning the governor, even though clemency is rare indeed: ultimately, there are circumstances in which only God has the power to do something, and once in a great while he does, for reasons that we find inscrutable. More importantly, for we Christians, Jesus told us to. Of course, just like that death row inmate, we don't /only/ pray. We pray and pursue every other option that we believe can help. But neither do we give up prayer just because it rarely "works" according to our agenda.
One effect, incidentally, is that of maintaining hope. When a person loses hope, they've lost everything.
Now this, of course, leads to a much more complicated problem (viz. theodicy, the study of why God allows suffering and evil.) But I'm certainly not going to tackle that in a slashdot post.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I don't understand the mechanism by which prayer could help. I cannot conceive how G-d could care more about a person prayed about than a person not prayed about. So I can't easily come up with any method, either scientifically or "religiously," where prayer would improve outcomes, (Disclaimer: I'm just a confused citizen of the world, not a theologin) but I pray anyways. If I hear somebody I care about is terribly ill, there's no usually no logical action I can take. Prayer makes me feel a little better about the situation.
I can come up with a way their control group could've been badly polluted. Some, perhaps many, "prayers" may have felt that it would be unethical or uncaring to not pray for the control group. So if every person in the study gets a prayer or two, but the anonymous control is getting the combined prayers of many, well, the control group would get more prayer. "Anonymous" means nothing to an omnipotent, omnipresent G-d.
Now, praying may not help the patients. Actually, it won't. Provided that God exists (if he doesn't, the whole thing is moot anyway), he could have avoided the harm in the first place, so why should he change his mind? After all, according to all records he's supposedly omniscient and able to transcend space and time, so he knows things before they happen, and thus he would know whether the person repents or not without the need to resort to cheap tricks like that.
It helps the patient's friend and relatives, though. They feel useless. Helpless. Unable to help their friend/relative. Hell, how do YOU, ordinary person, want to help a human in a serious medical condition when trained specialists, i.e. docs, can't do much? So praying might not help the patient, but it sure as hell helps his peers, giving them a way to deal with it and feel less helpless. Whether God exists or not doesn't even matter. It's something they can do to feel less useless and helpless.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This study does at least show that, if whatever pertinent deity exists, it cares more about its ego than the needs of people who may die as the result of an illness. (Which, because the fact of existence remains hidden, ensures that more people will suffer eternal damnation.) In otherwords, “God” cares les about human life and than about being worshipped by those with superstition. (Which is ironic because if we were created, we were created with logical, thinking minds which drive us to discover cause and effect rather than pursue blind faith.) So whether or not such a supernatural entity exists, we must find ways to advance and rely upon our science rather begging for help from invisible men in the sky.
Join Tor today!
What about religious choice - was that also cotrolled? Did they have Christians praying for Jews, Buddhists praying for Born agains?
Maybe it was a bandwidth problem - i.e. God only has allocated 50 PPS (prayers per second) for cardiac patients, and God got Slashdotted by the study.
..........FULL STOP.
Obviously the One True God got pissed off that the researchers couldn't even decide which one of them He was, so He sat this one out.
Assuming God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omni theater, what good is Prayer?
If I truly need something, God most likley already knows about it, and it's up to Him if he does anything about it.
If I truly am thankful, God will know.
Moreover, saying Grace always seemed like a cruel joke: Thanks God for making me dependent upon a scarce resource. Sure, food isn't scarce in the U.S. (for unto us was given Agribiz, and it was deemed good by the markets...) but it is scarce elsewhere.
The biggest failure is the prayer for peace. Every Sunday Charlantan says "Pray for Peace," but it never comes. And, based upon the ministerial world view, the Peace they want is completely different than the peace a different faith wants.
Prayer as a meditation? Now, that sounds a good thing. Reflect on the days events. Question if I'm really doing the right thing. Probably not a bad thing. But asking the Holy Game Show Host for stuff? Well, seems like a waste of everyone's time.
Do not est the Lord your God.... for then ye shall now I'm a sham.
Meh.
Just to be sure, I be sure to hit most of the major Greek gods, the major Roman gods, Yahweh (old and new testament variants), Allah, Quetzalcoatl, Ra, Vishnu, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Don't forget Cthulhu!!
The study in this article didn't account for normal friends-and-family prayers, it only varied the presence of arranged prayers from strangers (who probably had ulterior motives). At most this study might show that "prayer bulletins" and praying for complete strangers isn't particularly useful. The study says nothing about prayers from loved-ones, which many people would say are the most sincere and thus the most useful.
Practically speaking, it's impossible to do a scientific test that would clear up this issue for everyone. You're never going to convince loved-ones to *not* pray for the patient, so double-blind studies are out. And post-analysis of outcomes for religious vs. non-religious patients/families would be contaminated by the differences in the patients' own beliefs and attitudes.
"The hands that help are better than the lips that pray."
A sentiment that remains unaffected by the outcome of such a study, IMO...
This reminds me of a great bash.org quote that I'd like to share with you all:
Fractured Element
Prayer did affect six month mortality.
"...six-month mortality was lower in patients assigned bedside MIT, with the lowest absolute death rates observed in patients treated with both prayer and bedside MIT..."
So the death rate is the same right away but six months later, if you were prayed for, you have a much better chance of being alive. You will also have less of a chance to be re-hospitalized.
As a physician myself, I find it interesting that the authors chose to pitch this as a failure for prayer rather than a success.
The King of the Potato People was an entity born of Arnold J. Rimmer's feverish delusions, in the episode 'Quarantine' from the fifth series of Red Dwarf. The rest of the crew are in quarantine enforced by Rimmer, ostensibly to avoid infecting the ship with a dangerous insanity virus, but really out of spite. Rimmer himself has managed to contract the virus anyway. The crew are trying to talk Rimmer into letting them out, and it becomes increasingly clear that he is insane, and so they attempt to humour him... leading to the immortal line:
"So let me get this straight. You have a magic carpet and you want to fly on it to see the King of the Potato People and plead with him for your freedom... and you're telling me you are completely sane?"
I went with the King of the Potato People because, since I was arguing that asking for favours from such entities is subject to a strange double standard, I thought the Red Dwarf association might work rather well, especially with a geek audience. The Invisible Pink Unicorn and the Flying Spaghetti Monster have rather different symbolic meaning.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Silly people -- did they really believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster would allow his plans to be unraveled by such a blatent manipulation? Hasn't he said, "Thou shalt not tempt thy FSM, except it be with grated cheese?" These silly mortals have no idea who they're messing with. Beware the noodly appendage filled with wrath!
See? God wins!