Benson, H.; Dusek, J.A.; and Sherwood, J.B. Essay

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Benson, H.; Dusek, J.A.; and Sherwood, J.B. "Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in Cardiac Bypass Patients: a Multicenter

Randomized Trial of Uncertainty and Certainty of Receiving Intercessory

Prayer." American Heart Journal. Vol. 151 (2005): 934-42. Reported by Carey,

in "Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer" The New

York Times, (March 31, 2006). Retrieved March 12, 2011 from:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html

Intercessory prayer in medicine is the use of prayer to divine powers to assist and benefit the welfare of patients in clinical circumstances. Various studies have produced conflicting results with some purporting to demonstrate a benefit toward positive clinical outcomes and other concluding that the act of praying for medical patients is useless. This study sought to examine the issue empirically through a formal quantitative analysis designed to compare the medical outcomes of surgery patients who received intercessory prayer and those who did not.

Statistical Procedures Used in the Study

The patients selected for the study were all pre-scheduled for elective coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery. The results of their recovery over the initial 30-days following surgery and compared. Their respective recovery was measured in terms of their relative rates of post-surgical complications, their relative rates of major post-surgical medical events, and their respective mortality rates. The first group of patient-subjects were unknowing recipients of intercessory prayer. The second group of patient-subjects received no intercessory prayer and they were never informed about whether or not they would be recipients of intercessory prayer. The third group of patient-subjects received both intercessory prayer and information that someone would be praying on their behalf. The prayers on behalf of the two patient-subject groups receiving intercessory prayer were delivered by members of a local religious group who agreed to add a request to their usual prayers asking that the patients on their lists be blessed with "successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.

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" Those prayers were delivered daily for two weeks beginning on the evening before the scheduled surgery.

The statistical basis of the study was predicated on the known post-operative complication rate of approximately fifty percent 50% of patients experience post-operative CABG surgery complications within the first thirty days of surgery. That general statistic provided the basis of the initial assumption that complication rates would be approximately fifty percent among the patient-subjects in the second group, who received no prayers and who were not expecting prayer. The researchers postulated that a complication rate differential of ten percent or more in this group would be considered statistically significant. Specifically, complication rates of forty percent or less would be considered to support the hypothesis that intercessory prayers had benefited surgical outcome in this group.

With respect to the patient-subject group receiving (and expecting to receive) intercessory prayer, the researchers postulated that a complication rate differential of twenty percent or more in this group would be considered statistically significant. Specifically, complication rates of thirty percent or less would be considered to support the hypothesis that intercessory prayers had benefited surgical outcome in this group. The stricter burden of statistical significance was predicated on the need to counter the potentially beneficial effect of the expectation of receiving prayer on the part of….....

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