BobHarris.com - Largest study ever: prayer from strangers useless after all

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Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

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Largest study ever: prayer from strangers useless after all

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Friday, 31 March 2006

$2.5 million study at six hospitals, largest ever, 1800 patients involved:

The largest study yet on the therapeutic power of prayer by strangers has found that it provided no benefit to the recovery of patients who had undergone cardiac bypass surgery.

In an unexpected twist, patients who knew prayers were being said for them had more complications after surgery than those who did not know, researchers reported Thursday.

The complications were minor, and doctors surmised that they could have been caused by the increased stress on patients worried that their conditions were so bad they needed prayers.

Hard as it may be to get over the pleasurable egotism of believing otherwise, apparently the gods do not actually give us all emergency red phones.

This news comes on the same day the 9/11 tapes are coming out.

This is, of course, a complete coincidence.