It looks like laughter has some competition as the best medicine. More evidence is emerging that prayer can play an important role in medical treatment and recovery. Two recent studies found that patients who suffered from infertility or heart disease were significantly helped by the prayers of strangers from places as far away as Australia.
One of the prayer experiments was conducted on women at an in vitro fertilization clinic in Korea. Half of the women were randomly selected to have believers from the United States, Canada, or Australia praying for them. Those interceding were given photographs of the hopeful mothers, though neither they nor their caregivers knew about the study.
The author of the study, Dr. Rogerio Lobo, chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University's School of Medicine, admitted that he did not expect to find that prayer has a measurable impact. The experiment indicated, however, that women who were prayed for were twice as likely to become pregnant as the women in the control group who were not prayed for. The findings were published in the September issue of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. "I'm the first to say we don't know what this means," Lobo told MSN.com.
A separate study, led by Dr. Mitchell Krucoff of Duke University, was conducted on a group of 150 cardiac patients scheduled for angioplasty. His research appears in the current issue of American Heart Journal. The study found that those receiving "off-site" intercessory prayer-again, without their knowledge-had fewer complications than any other group, including those who received other in person "complementary therapies" (guided imagery, stress relaxation, or healing touch) before surgery.
While believers already appreciate the benefits and influence of prayer, too many scientists remain committed to a rigid materialism that denies any role for divine intervention. Studies like these may not allow the medical community to fully understand the workings of a sovereign God and His healing touch, but they make it harder for them to deny His power.
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