The Improbable Story of Alcides Moreno
Alcides Moreno
The Amazing Val Thomas
Faith and Medicine:
“Many studies done over the years indicate that the devout tend to be healthier. But the reasons remain far from clear. . . .(T)he most controversial research focuses on ‘intercessory’ or ‘distant’ prayer, which involves people trying to heal others through their intentions, thoughts or prayers, sometimes without the recipients knowing it. . . .
San Francisco cardiologist Randolph Byrd, for example, conducted an experiment in which he asked born-again Christians to pray for 192 people hospitalized for heart problems, comparing them with 201 not targeted for prayer. No one knew which group they were in. He reported in 1988 that those who were prayed for needed fewer drugs and less help breathing.
William Harris of St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City and colleagues published similar results in 1999 from a study involving nearly 1,000 hear patients, about half of whom were prayed for without their knowledge. . . .
‘I don’t see how you could quantify prayer - - either the results of it or the substance of it,’ said the Rev. Raymond Lawrence of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. ‘God is beyond the reach of science. It’s absurd to think you could use it to examine God’s play.’. . .
‘There’s nothing we know about the physical universe that could account for how the prayers of someone in Washington, D.C., could influence the health of a group of people in Iowa - - nothing whatsoever,’ Mr. Sloan (Richard Sloan, behavioral researcher at Columbia University).”
Rob Stein, Sunday, March 26, 2006
