William Saletan summed-up the most recent multi-million dollar study concerning the impact of prayer on one's health in a recent Slate.com piece this way:
Warning: The surgeon general may determine that prayer is hazardous to your health. That's what can happen when faith sets out to prove its power through science.
Mr. Saletan's wry observation is based upon the results of a three-year, $2.4M study of the impact of other peoples prayers on the recovery of patients who recently underwent heart surgery.
Patients who knowingly received prayers developed more post-surgery complications than did patients who unknowingly received prayers—and patients who were prayed for did no better than patients who weren't prayed for. In fact, patients who received prayers without their knowledge ended up with more major complications than did patients who received no prayers at all.
[ more ]
While witty, I prefer the conclusion reached by Dr. Bruce Flamm as quoted in The Washington Post:
"I would hope that these results, combined with similar recent findings, would encourage scientists to stick to science and stop dabbling in the supernatural," said Bruce Flamm of the University of California at Irvine.
Food for thought during the upcoming election cycle. It only takes a single vote to impose the unsubstantiated beliefs of a few concerning important matters of personal privacy and public policy, ranging from a woman's right to choose to stemcell research funding, on all of us.