Pray Anyway...

... it can't hurt. Can it?

The Seattle Times: Health: Study: Prayer didn't help sick: "Study: Prayer didn't help sick

By Jeremy Manier

Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO --- Praying for a sick heart patient may feel right to people of faith, but it doesn't appear to improve the patient's health, according to a new study that is the largest ever done on the healing powers of prayer.

Indeed, researchers at the Harvard Medical School and five other U.S. medical centers found, to their bewilderment, that coronary-bypass patients who knew strangers were praying for them fared significantly worse than people who got no prayers. The team speculated that telling patients about the prayers may have caused 'performance anxiety,' or perhaps a fear that doctors expected the worst.

Obviously, my colleagues were surprised by the unexpected and counterintuitive outcome,' said the Rev. Dean Marek, director of chaplain services at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,Minn., and a study co-investigator.

It was a strange end for the mammoth prayer study, which cost $2.4 million and enrolled 1,802 patients who had bypass surgery. Most of the funding came from the British-based John Templeton Foundation, which supports research at the intersection of science and religion."

Uh-oh. Get ready for a barrage of self-righteousness.