Power of prayer

November 14, 1999

The Sunday Times

A NEW American study claims that illness can be cured by the power of prayer, even if patients do not know people are praying for them.

William Harris, of St Lukes hospital in Kansas City, organised 12 months of tests on patients at the hospital’s coronary care centre.

He gave a Christian prayer group the first names of any patient whose medical record number was even. Those patients with odd numbers were kept as a control. As a further precaution, patients and doctors on the unit were not told of the experiment.

Volunteers then prayed for the patient every day for four weeks, and results were examined by 10 doctors assessing a number of symptoms. The 466 patients who were prayed for had a significantly better outcome than the 524 patients who received no prayers.

The result reflects a similar experiment in 1988, but Harris felt the previous study was flawed since both doctors and patients knew a study was in progress, although patients did not know if they were being prayed for. Harris says his study is as rigorous as any drug trial.