A- Healing Research

Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Healing Research: What We Know andDon’t Know

“Something unknown is doing we don’tknow what.”—Sir Arthur Eddington

1

“Not everything that counts can becounted, and not everything that can becounted counts.”—Albert Einstein, attributed“No directions camewith this idea.”—William Maxwell

2

O

ur ignorance about healing vastlyexceeds our understanding. Somepeople see this mystery as a goodthing. For example, when I pub-lished a book in 1993—

Healing Words: The PowerofPrayerandthePracticeofMedicine

3

—that attempted to clarify these questions, areviewer wrote, “Life, ultimately, is a mys-tery . . . . In the past year, I have foundmyself yearning for the mystery, faith, andrapture to be restored to my spirit. I wantmore prayer and less analysis.”

4

This point of view that some thingsshould not be subjected to dissection,analysis, and the empirical methods of sci-ence has a long history. Benjamin Jowett(1817-1893), the great 19th-century Platoscholar, theologian, and master of BalliolCollege at Oxford, felt this way. He grum-bled, “Research! Research! A mere excuseforidleness;ithasneverachieved,andwillnever achieve any results of the slightestvalue.”

5

Even Einstein occasionally emphasizedthe limitations of science. He is reportedto have said (although it may be apocry-phal), “If we knew what we were doing, itwould not be called research, would it?”

6

HEALING RESEARCH: THE BEGINNING

We’ve been bumping into the mysteriesand paradoxes of healing intentions andprayer since the ﬁrst published prayer study, an 1872 survey by Sir Francis Gal-ton, the cousin of Charles Darwin. Galtonreasoned that, since monarchs and highlyplaced clergy were regularly prayed for (God save the queen!), their health andlongevity should exceed that of ordinarypeople if prayer is effective. He discoveredthe opposite—that sovereign heads of statelivedtheshortestlives“ofallwhohavetheadvantage of afﬂuence.”

7

Skeptics love to quote Galton’s study,but it was a dreadful exercise, a retrospec-tive stab in the dark that was, one mightsay, too cute by half. Galton failed to takeinto account a host of confounding fac-tors,oneofwhichhasbeenpointedoutbytheologian John Polkinghorne, a physicistand fellow of the Royal Society. He sug-gests that one of the main reasons sover-eigns lived shorter lives was because theywere exposed to one of the greatest healthhazards of the day—the continual minis-trations of the medical profession.

8

If youwereaEuropeanmonarchinthe19thcen-tury,theresimplywasnoescapingthebru-talities of physicians and the often lethaleffects of their leeching, bleeding, andpurging.The classic American example of thisphenomenon involved the death of George Washington, our ﬁrst head of state. Some historians believe he was es-sentially bled to death by his team of well-meaning physicians.

9

MODERNPRAYER-AND-HEALING STUDIES

Paradoxes abound in prayer research. For example, if prayer is effective, many peo-ple say “the more the better.” Perhaps not.Rupert Sheldrake, the British biologistwho spent years in India, was intrigued bythefactthatmostmarriedcouplesinIndiapreferhavingsons,andthattheyroutinelyask holy men to bless their marriage. To-wardthisend,Indianholymenprayinces-santly. With roughly one fourth theearth’s population in India, that’s a lot of prayer for male babies. But when Shel-drake compared the incidence of malebirths in India and England, where thepreference for sons is not as strong, hefound the same statistic: 106 male birthsto 100 female births, which is the same innearly all countries.

Modern prayer-and-healing researchwas launched around the midpoint of the20th century. From 1951 through 1965,three studies explored the correlation of intercessory prayer with psychologicalwell-being,childhoodleukemia,andrheu-matoid arthritis, respectively.

Although one study claimed statistical sig-niﬁcance, the other two did not. Thesestudies were not well designed and werepoorly reported. They contribute little toour understanding of healing intentions.

This essay is based on an address to the Inter-national Society for the Study of Subtle Ener-gies and Energy Medicine, June 22, 2008, Boul-der, CO.

341

Explorations EXPLORE November/December 2008, Vol. 4, No. 6

EXPLORATIONS

We can, however, give these researchers anod of appreciation for getting the ballrolling.The most famous prayer study is that of cardiologist Randolph Byrd, published in1988.

Thiscontrolledclinicalstudytook place at University of California, SanFrancisco, School of Medicine and SanFrancisco General Hospital. It involved393 patients admitted to the coronary careunit for heart attack or chest pain. Al-though there was no statistically signifi-cant difference in mortality between thegroups, those receiving assigned prayer did better clinically on several outcomes.Areas of statistical significance includedless need for cardiopulmonary resuscita-tion,lessneedforpotentmedications,anda lower incidence of pulmonary edemaand pneumonia in the group receivingintercessory prayer from prayer groupsaround the United States. These differ-ences, although statistically significant,were not earthshaking: a 5% to 7% advan-tage for the prayed-for group.Although it was the first major prayer experiment, the Byrd study is not the best;it could have been improved in many ways,as I’ve described elsewhere.

Byrddeserves great credit, however, for this cou-rageouseffort,whichcouldhardlyhaveem-bellishedhiscareerasanacademiccardiolo-gist at one of the nation’s best medicalschools. His great contribution was estab-lishing a principle that came as a shock tomost physicians, including me—one canstudyprayerinaclinicalsettingmuchasonestudiesaphysicalinterventionsuchasanewmedication.If we fast-forward to present time, wecanidentifyaroundtwodozenmajor-con-trolled studies in humans, approximatelyhalf of which show statistically signiﬁcantresults favoring the intervention grouptoward whom healing intentions wereextended.

Approximately eight systematic or meta-analyses of studies involving healing in-tentions and prayer have been publishedin peer-reviewed journals.

Allbut one arrived at positive conclusions.The most thorough analysis is that of Wayne B. Jonas, MD, the former director of the NIH National Center for Comple-mentary and Alternative Medicine, andCindy C. Crawford. In their 2003 review,they state:We found over 2,200 publishedreports, including books, articles, dis-sertations, abstracts and other writ-ingsonspiritualhealing,energymed-icine, and mental intention effects.

This included 122 laboratory studies, 80 randomized controlled trials,

128 sum-mariesorreviews,95reportsofobser-vational studies and nonrandomizedtrials, 271 descriptive studies, casereports, and surveys, 1,286 other writings including opinions, claims,anecdotes, letters to editors,commen-taries, critiques and meeting reports,and 259 selectedbooks [emphasisadded].

Thefollowingcategoriesareincludedinthe data analyzed by Jonas and Crawford:

●

religious practice

●

prayer

●

“energy” healing

●

Qigong (laboratory research)

●

Qigong (clinical research)

●

laboratory research on bioenergy

●

DMILS (direct mental interaction withliving systems; remote inﬂuence onelectrodermal activity)

●

DMILS (direct mental interaction withliving systems, such as remote staring)

●

MMI (mind-matter interaction, such asthe remote inﬂuence of individuals onrandom event generators)

●

MMI (mind-matter interaction, such asthe remote inﬂuence of a group withrandomeventgenerators,so-calledﬁeld-REG experiments)

●

healing in a group settingIn assessing the quality of healing stud-ies by using strict Consolidated Standardsof Reporting Trials (CONSORT) criteria, JonasandCrawfordgivethehighestgrade,an

A,

to lab-based, mind-matter interactionstudies, and a

B

to the prayer-and-healingstudies. Religion-and-health studies get a

D

because they are epidemiological-observa-tional studies and are not blinded andcontrolled.This context does not permit us to re-view even the main healing studies, whichI have done elsewhere.

So toohas Daniel Benor, MD, whose pioneeringcontributions in this ﬁeld deserve specialrecognition.

Neither can we examine the main skep-tical responses to prayer-and-healing stud-ies in general. David Hufford, of PennState College of Medicine, and I have dis-cussed these elsewhere.

What do these studies tell us? In their assessment of this ﬁeld, Jonas and Craw-ford conservatively conclude:There is evidence to suggest thatmind and matter interact in a waythat is consistent with the assump-tions of distant healing. Mental in-tention has effects on nonlivingrandom systems (such as randomnumber generators) and may have ef-fects on living systems. While con-clusive evidence that these mental in-teractions result in healing of speciﬁcillness is lacking, further quality re-search should be pursued.

This conclusion is so cautious manyhealers insist that it does not go far enough.Idisagree.Thekeyquestionisnothow large the effects are, but whether theyexist at all. In fact, the Jonas and Crawfordconclusion is radical because it suggestswhat conventional science considers un-thinkable: that human consciousness canact

nonlocally

to affect the so-called mate-rial world at a distance, beyond the reachof the senses. This involves a fundamen-tally new way of thinking about the natureof human consciousness and its place inthe world.These findings represent more than anew tool in the physician’s black bag. Al-thoughit’struethatintentionality,includ-ing prayer, has been used throughout his-torytohealillness,thispracticalsideisnotthe primary contribution of the emergingevidence. The key significance is the non-local nature of consciousness that is sug-gested by these studies. This implicationdwarfs whatever pragmatic benefits thesestudies convey.Many skeptics realize what’s at stakehere. If only a single one of these studies isvalid, then a nonlocal dimension of con-sciousness exists. In this case, the universeis different than we have supposed, andthe game changes. Therefore,

all

theseﬁndings must be rejected, or the conven-tional,cherishedviewsofconsciousnessasa completely local phenomenon will besubverted. That is why many critics seemto consider skepticism a blood sport andwhy they pursue a scorched-earth policyin which

all

studies in the ﬁeld of healingarecategoricallycondemned,oftenfortheﬂimsiest reasons.

342

EXPLORE November/December 2008, Vol. 4, No. 6 Explorations

What about the hundreds of studiesdealing with nonhuman, inanimate sys-tems? Overall, these studies demonstratethe highest quality of the various catego-ries of intentionality experiments. Manyof these studies, such as those done at thePrinceton Engineering Anomalies Re-search lab, have demonstrated astronomi-cally high levels of statistical signiﬁcanceand have been consistently positive acrossdecades.

Healing studies involving inan-imate systems, therefore, buttress thehuman studies and are potent evidencesupporting the remote effects of healingintentions.We need to take all the studies in inten-tionality into consideration because, whentaken together, they affirm a principle thatis highly prized in science—the concatena-tion or interconnectedness of things thatappear unrelated. If we examine the arrayof categories analyzed by Jonas and Craw-ford, we find intentionality effects at themacroscopic level, as in healing studies in-volving whole persons; at the tissue level,as in studies involving populations of var-ioustypesofcells;atthemicrobiallevel,asin studies involving growth rates of bacte-ria, yeasts, and fungi; at the molecular level,asinstudiesinvolvingenzymekinet-ics and biochemical reactions; and at thesubatomic level, as in random event gen-erators where people attempt to influencethe distribution of ones and zeroes. Thefact that intentionality effects are demon-strated across this enormous spectrum of nature, from the macroworld to the me-soworld to the microworld, suggests thatwe have discovered a general, pervasiveprinciple in nature—the ability of inten-tionality to change the world. This unityof knowledge from disparate domains iscalled

consilience

by sociobiologist E. O.Wilson.

STUDY OF THE THERAPEUTIC EFFECTSOF INTERCESSORY PRAYER

The second, best-known prayer-and-heal-ing experiment is the Harvard MedicalSchoolStudyoftheTherapeuticEffectsof Intercessory Prayer (STEP), published in2006 by physician Herbert Benson et al.

The purpose of STEP was to assess theimpactofcertaintyand uncertaintyon thepossible effectiveness of intercessoryprayer in patients undergoing coronarybypass surgery.Many proponents of prayer and healinghave called STEP a “STEP backward” or a“misSTEP.” The impact of STEP, how-ever, has been significant. Because of itsnegative outcome, it has become the dar-ling healing experiment of skeptics. Manycritics consider “the Harvard study” as thefinal nail in the coffin of remote healingresearch. To the great glee of critics of thisarea, it has had a chilling effect on futureresearch in this field because of the gravi-tas associated with Harvard-based science.Unfortunately, few critics take the time toask whether the study was well conceivedand whether its conclusions are valid. Butthere is another side to STEP. It has actu-ally contributed to healing research, be-cause some of the most instructive exper-iments are those that fail.

Methods

The STEP experiment involved 1,802 pa-tients undergoing coronary-artery bypasssurgery in six different US hospitals. Theywere assigned to three groups: (1) 604 pa-tients were told they might or might notbe prayed for, and were (which we’ll callgroup A), (2) 597 patients were told theymight or might not be prayed for, andwere not (which we’ll designate as groupB, and (3) 601 patients were told theywould deﬁnitely be prayed for, and were(which we’ll call group C).Two Catholic groups and one Protestantgroup were chosen to be intercessors. Theyprayed for the subjects for two weeks, be-ginning on the eve or day of surgery. Theintercessors were given a prescribedprayer, following which they were permit-ted to pray their customary way. Theywere also given the ﬁrst name and the ini-tial of the last name of those for whomthey were praying.

Results

In group A—the 604 patients who weretold they might or might not be prayedfor, and were—52% had postoperativecomplications. In group B—the 597 pa-tients who were told they might or mightnot be prayed for, and were not—51% hadpostoperative complications, not statisti-cally different from group A. In groupC—the 601 who were told they would beprayed for, and were—59% had postopera-tive complications, a statistically signiﬁ-cant difference from groups A and B.In other words, the group that receivedprayer and was certain they would do sohad the worst clinical outcome of all, im-plying that prayer might be harmful.Theresponseofthemediatotheseﬁnd-ings was enthusiastic and often playful. Abanner in

Newsweek

magazine, April 10,2006, read, “Don’t Pray for Me! Please!”

Analysis

Let’simaginewhattheresultsoftheexper-iment might have been under three condi-tions: (1) if prayer is effective, (2) if prayer is ineffective, or (3) if prayer is harmful.1. If prayer is effective, groups A and Cshould have benefited equally from it,withChavingtheaddedbenefitoftheplacebo response owing to the cer-tainty of receiving prayer. Group C,then, should have had the best clinicaloutcome of the three groups. This wasnot the case; C had the worst out-come. So “effective prayer” is unableto explain the outcome of STEP.2. If prayer is ineffective, it should nothave exerted any effect on any of thethreegroups,butgroupCshouldhavedone better because of the certainty of receiving prayer, thus benefiting fromthe placebo effect. But group C didthe worst of all the groups, so “ineffec-tive prayer” is unable to explain theoutcome of the experiment.3. If prayer harms, both A and C shouldhave demonstrated worse outcomesthanB(sparedprayer),inwhichcaseBwould have done better than the other two groups. But B responded equallywithA.Therefore,harmfulornegativeprayer cannot explain the results of STEP.The STEP researchers essentially ig-nored in their report the possibility thatprayer might be harmful, simply sayingthat the worst outcome in group C “mayhave been a chance finding.” They weretaken to task for this in a scathing rebukein the

American Heart Journal.

The criti-cism is appropriate in view of the anthro-pological evidence that negative beliefsandintentionscanbelethal(curses,hexes,spells), as well as the controlled laboratorystudies showing that negative intentionscan retard or harm living, nonhumansystems.

What other possible explanations arethere for STEP’s outcome?

343

Explorations EXPLORE November/December 2008, Vol. 4, No. 6

of 00

Leave a Comment