Having A Prayer Recent Research Seems To Indicate That Prayer Has A Measurable Effect On The Sick, Whether They Know It Or Not

Last week’s episode of “ER” ended with a particularly arrogant young surgeon stumbling through the first three lines of the 23rd Psalm.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” the surgeon said, standing beside a dying infant. “I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures.”

He trailed off, started again, failed a second time.

Clearly, this was a doctor who didn’t have a prayer.

It was a remarkable scene because it was so rare. This television drama, despite its weekly diet of startling and traumatic images, almost never shows a character attempting to pray.

That’s a reflection of the contemporary estrangement between faith and medicine. It doesn’t mirror reality.

“Even now, there’s more prayer going on in American hospitals than anybody would ever guess,” says Dr. Larry Dossey, author of “Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine.” “Prayer has gone underground.”

His colleague, Dr. David Larson, president of the National Institute for Healthcare Research in Rockville, Md., says, “It’s not there on ‘ER’ because that’s not real life.”

Recent studies show that people routinely pray in hospitals, Larson says. According to one study, 96 percent of heart bypass patients said they prayed before surgery.

“At-risk groups pray more,” Larson says. “The elderly pray more. The older you get, the more you pray.”

Research also seems to indicate that prayer actually promotes healing. Dossey will examine that scientific evidence and its implications for the field of medicine during a conference this weekend called “Conscious Living, Conscious Dying.” He’ll speak at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Crescent Court Ballroom in downtown Spokane.

Dossey, a specialist in internal medicine and the former chief of staff at Humana Medical City Dallas, now focuses on the integration of faith and health. He is the executive editor of a journal called “Alternative Therapies.”

A soft-spoken Texan, he grew up, as he says, “in the buckle of the Bible belt.” But by the time he was in medical school, he’d shed his fundamentalist roots and become an agnostic.

“When I was in school, spirituality was a term that didn’t even exist,” he says.

In his first year of medical practice, Dossey treated an elderly man with lung cancer at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Both of the man’s lungs were filled with cancer. He refused Dossey’s treatment and went home to die.

His church congregation prayed for him non-stop.

Dossey gradually forgot about him. About a year later, a colleague called Dossey and told him to see his old patient. The man was back in the hospital with a case of flu.

Dossey examined his former patient’s chest X-rays. On the year-old X-ray, the man’s lungs were riddled with cancer. On the new one, they were clear.

The radiologist’s report said that in the intervening 12 months the patient had had an overwhelming response to treatment.

Dossey knew there had been no treatment.

Only prayer.

“This case really got to me,” Dossey says. “Any sane individual had to wonder about the effects of prayer.”

In 1986, Dossey was startled by a study’s results from the San Francisco General Hospital coronary care unit.

In this double blind study, 393 heart patients were randomly divided into two groups. One was prayed for by independent prayer groups, the other was not. Neither the patients, the doctors nor the nurses knew who was being prayed for.

The prayed-for group was five times less likely to need antibiotics and three times less likely to develop pulmonary edema. None of the patients in that group required a ventilator, but 12 of the non-prayed-for patients did.

Although the number was not statistically significant, fewer prayed-for patients died.

“I never thought anybody would test prayer like this,” Dossey says. “I was shocked by the whole thing and fascinated by it.”

Since then, Dossey has examined additional research.

“There are 250 studies that show that prayer and religious practice are good for people’s health,” Dossey says. “They live longer and they get sick less. The results are clear and compelling.”

Dossey has found 150 studies on intercessory prayer, the practice of praying at a distance for someone else’s health.

Research indicates that prayer or “positive intentionality” may affect not only human health, but also the growth and healing of non-human life forms such as bacteria, barley seeds and mice.

“The bottom line is, something is going on here,” he says.

Research indicates that prayers of any faith are equally effective.

Dossey decided he had an ethical responsibility to pray for his patients. Although not a member of any organized religion, he had studied Buddhism, Taoism and Christian mysticism. He got in the habit of praying privately each morning.

“It deepens the doctor-patient relationship,” he says.

Dossey no longer sees patients, but he sticks prayer requests on Post-It notes on the left side of his computer.

“Before I start work, I remember these people in prayer each day,” he says.

Like any other treatment, prayer isn’t 100 percent effective. “I wouldn’t want to put all my eggs in the prayer basket,” he says. “If I had appendicitis, I would get an appendectomy and I would use prayer as well.”

Dossey believes that prayer research will be gradually embraced by physicians.

“Modern medicine has become one of the most spiritually malnourishing professions we’ve got in this culture,” he says.

“Physicians are like everybody else. They have needs for meaning and purpose and value in their lives. A lot of these needs have not been met.”

Dossey predicts this research will revolutionize health care.

One of the co-sponsors of the two-day seminar in Spokane is the new Providence Center for Faith and Healing. It’s located at Sacred Heart Medical Center.

Johnny Cox, the interim director, says he hopes the new center will participate in scientific prayer research.

Hospitals need a spiritual resurgence. Today, Cox says, they’re under enormous pressure to become human body shops, staffed by mechanics rather than compassionate professionals.

“I totally believe that keeping Sacred Heart a sacred space where healing can happen is the challenge of the 21st century,” Cox says.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Molly Quinn

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONSCIOUS LIVING/DYING SEMINAR The Conscious Living/Conscious Dying seminar features eight speakers this weekend at the Crescent Court Ballroom. Saturday: George B. Cheney on “A Journey Seeking Hope”; Paul Quinnett on “A Question of Suicide”; Patricia Weenolsen on “The Art of Dying Consciously”; Terese Schroeder-Sheker on “Prescriptive Music for the Dying”; and Dr. Melvin Morse on “We Die The Life We Live.” Sunday: Dr. Judith Orloff on “A Light in the Storm”; Dannion Brinkley on “At Peace in the Light”; and Dr. Larry Dossey on “Healing Words: The Power of Prayer & The Practice of Medicine.” Cost is $95. To register, call 624-1873.