A study on the effects of |
Professor Randolph Byrd
"Remote healing" is a phenomenon that is known amongst natural therapies and
other people interested in the paranormal, but until now it has hardly been
systematically tested at all. The cardiologist Randolph Byrd, a former professor
at the University of California, wanted to remedy this situation. He carried out
a ten-month computer-based study of the medical case studies of patients who had
been taken into the San Francisco General Hospital during this time because of
heart disease. Byrd created a group of experimenters, that consisted not of
well-known healers, but of ordinary people whose only special feature was, that
they regularly prayed in one of the surrounding church communities. The people
chosen were asked to pray regularly for a group of 192 sick people; a further
210 patients for whom no-one prayed within the framework of this experiment
formed the control group. This experiment was carried out under the strictest
conditions: the patients were chosen at random, the test was carried out using
the double-blind system, in which neither the patients nor the doctors and
nurses knew which patient belonged to which group.
The experimenters were
given the names of the patients and certain information about the nature of
their heart disease and were asked to pray for them every day. They were not
given any further information. Since each experimenter was able to pray for
several patients, each patient had five to seven people who were praying for
him. The results were statistically significant. It was found that the group for
whom prayers had been said needed only a fifth of the antibiotics that the
control group needed (three compared to 16 patients); suffered three times less
frequently from lung oedema (three compared with eighteen) and never needed to
be put on a respirator (whilst twelve patients in the control group required
this).
Similarly, there were fewer deaths in the "prayer" group than in the
control group (although this result was not statistically significant). Neither
the distance between the patients and the people praying form them, nor the type
of praying made any difference to the results. The crucial factor was
concentrated, repeated praying, no matter to whom the prayer was said and where
the prayers were said."
Links
These three links are very good!
- http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/7t1/7t120a.html
- http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/7t1/7t120b.html
- http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/7t1/7t120c.html
Others:
