Intercessory Prayer

The idea of prayer and whether it "works", while often a topic of Atheist discussion, has no bearing on the existence of a rational First Cause for the universe, i.e. a deity. So I don't usually post about such things. But I did accept the challenge of trying to find a study that empirically measures the effect, if any, of prayer. This is not difficult, anyone can google up studies of this and that.

And I did find studies that have found a positive correllation between prayer and healing. There is enough now that even the NIH has commissioned a study. Predictably, skeptics have attacked the validity of the tests, even though they include double-blind, controlled testing.

But I did find one salient study that eliminates the human element in terms of the suspicious God Spot in the human brain argument. This research was performed on the effect of intercessory prayer on animals (non-human primates).

The study is here, an NIH site.

I will reproduce here the results, you can go to the site for details.

The effect of intercessory prayer on wound healing in nonhuman primates.

RESULTS: Following IP/L-tryptophan treatment, prayer-group animals had a reduction in wound size compared to non-prayer animals (P=.028). Prayer-group animals had a greater increase in red blood cells (P=.006), hemoglobin (P=.01), and hematocrit (P=.018); a greater reduction in both mean corpuscular hemoglobin (P=.023) and corpuscular volume (P=.008); and a reduction in wound grooming (P=.01) and total grooming behaviors (P=.04) than non-prayer-group animals. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study are consistent with prior human trials of IP effectiveness, but suggest IP-induced health improvements may be independent of confounds associated with human participants. Findings may provide direction for study of the mechanisms of IP-induced health improvements in both human and animal models.

PMID: 17131981 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]