April 14, 2006

Study of Prayer's Healing Power on Surgery Patients Finds No Effect

By LILA GUTERMAN

The largest medical study of the efficacy of intercessory prayer in healing has found it has no effect on patients' recoveries from heart-bypass surgery, researchers announced in late March. Patients did just as well when church groups did not pray for them as when they did.

What's more, a group of patients who both received prayers and knew that they were being prayed for fared worse than did other study subjects, who knew only that they might be prayed for.

The authors said

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