Scientific Evidence for
the Healing Power of Prayer

First, regarding the impact of non-local human will upon a target recipient, studies have historically demonstrated that the transmission of cognitive information is possible without any visible intervening mechanism, that is due to non-local events. Further numerous prior studies demonstrating that non-local cognitive information can alter the autonomic states of a target receiver has been independently validated by replication of two prior studies. Thus the literature shows ample precedent for the potential positive effects of intercessory prayer on target patients.

A study by Randolph Byrd (1988) was implemented under a methodologically competent, double blind protocol. This study demonstrated using simple analysis of variance, that intercessory prayer yielded statistically significant improved patient recovery outcomes in a uniform sample of approximately 200 cardiac patients who otherwise received identical care compared to a 200 person control group. His study, conducted at San Francisco General Hospital has been reported in the Brain/Mind Journal, and quoted in the Medical Tribune. He and two colleagues found in a tightly controlled double-blind 10 month study, controlled for age and severity of condition, that the documented effects of prayer are positive.

Prayer in this study was offered by strangers who were given only the name and condition of the subject patient and did not otherwise know them. The person's who prayed evenly represented the three major faiths, and each prayed for several patients without constraint or advise on the manner or amount of prayer. Each patient in the experimental group had from five to seven persons praying for him or her. Prayer had a statistically significant positive effect in reducing common side effects of surgery on 192 of 393 patients subject to cardiac surgery.

The effects included: (1) The experimental group had statistically fewer side effects in general; (2) Only three (compared to 16 in the control group) required antibiotics; (3) Six (compared to 18) suffered pulmonary edema; and (4) None (compared to 12) required intubation. His findings have been affirmed by Arthur Kennel, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Mayo Medical School and John Merriman, Chief of Staff-elect at Doctors Medical Center in Tulsa whose own professional experiences are consistent with Byrd's finding.

The Intrinsic Spiritual Capacities for Wellness are Affirmed: Prayer taps the intrinsic capacity of the living body to induce its own mind directed therapy. But the dominant dualistic paradigm in medicine did not allow for this possibility. The two primal errors of the established scientific paradigm (Duality and Materialism) lead modern science and consequently the practice of orthodox medicine to a fatal limit in which the perception of phenomenon (e.g., illness and disease) are confused when it defines both the nature and source of disease as their cause. Chopra has said that the Mechanism of disease is confused as being the same as its source. They are not the same. The errors that follow from this indefensible premise require that, since the conditions and evidence of disease that appear in the body "are" the disease, then treatments are limited to these visible conditions using what materialistic interventions can be focused on this evidence.

These interventions are limited to externalize invasive practices using drugs, surgery, and prosthetics of numerous variety. The Materialistic Paradigm thus transcends the present materialistic limits which traps the scientist and physician. There is evolving a consistent pattern of irrefutable evidence that there is a mind body connection that transcended even sciences most advanced descriptions. Some of the data which support this claim are noted below. What is some evidence for the Mystical Paradigm that can be defended by research and investigations in the medical sciences, particularly with regard to the role of religious commitment and spiritual healing in particular? The basic idea of healing power existing at the level of simple human contact was raised by James Lynch, M.D. (1977,) a research cardiologist at Johns Hopkins University. His clinical experience clearly showed the correlation between bereavement, social isolation and personal anomie to a number of pathologies, but in particular to heart disease. He found that there was a significant relationship between various forms of loneliness, bereavement and anomie in the mortality incident to coronary disease as published by Carter and Glick. In his assessment of a patient's vulnerability to cardiac disease based on life style variables involving the loss of a spouse, Lynch concludes from the information from Carter and Glick that the nature of an emotional-spiritual bond between a man and woman has clear implications for health and quality of life: "What emerges from all of the clinical cases and statistics described in this book is a picture of dialogue as a continuum that stretches from the total isolation at one extreme to a life totally saturated with love at the other... In its most general meaning, dialogue consists of reciprocal communication between two or more living creatures. It involves the sharing of thoughts , physical sensations, ideas hopes, and feelings." (Lynch, op cite1977)

There are also concurrent development of systemic or holistic approaches to medicine. For example Achterberg (1985) documents integrative applications of imagery and healing. Larry Dossey, M.D., (1984, 1989a, 1989b, 1990, 1993, 1995, 2001) is developing the constructs of "Era III" medicine characterized by the legitimacy of mind-body interaction by which intercessor influences are mediated by non-local (i.e., outside the body), phenomenon, e.g., intercessory prayer.

Deepak Chopra, M.D. (1989, 1990, 1991, 1993) brings the paradigm of eastern mysticism to the intercessor function to empower the patient to a more holistic spiritual consciousness of their own contributions to their illness and its healing. Gordon (1984) has defined holistic medicine as the frontier and not the fringe of emergent and advancing medical alternatives. For those who are caught by only fragments of this emergent pattern, these developments have sometimes been reviewed as remarkable, perhaps even sensational, in challenging the established paradigm of materialistic science. But in testimony to the persistent stability of an established paradigm in face of the signs of an emerging alternative paradigm (Kuhn, 1963), the overall response to such findings by the scientific medical community has been one of apathy and indifference if not outright hostility or cynicism.

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