Mon 27 Feb 2006
A Little Girl Needs Your Prayers
Posted by steve under Politics
[3] Comments
This is just a heart breaking and heart warming story of a little girl who needs your prayers: Charlotte Wyatt. It’s heart breaking that she is very sick and the courts and the doctors do not want to fight for this little girl. It is heart warming because of the faith and hope that her parents have and how much they are willing to put on the line for their little girl. As anyone who has kids knows, there is nothing you will fight harder for than your kids.
I know there are a lot of people who need your prayers, but if you can spare a little room for this girl, she can sure use your help.
Study fails to show healing power of prayer
Knock yourselves out theists, Pray till the cows come home!
(CHICAGO (Reuters) – A study of more than 1,800 patients who underwent heart bypass surgery has failed to show that prayers specially organized for their recovery had any impact, researchers said on Thursday.
In fact, the study found some of the patients who knew they were being prayed for did worse than others who were only told they might be prayed for — though those who did the study said they could not explain why.
The patients in the study at six U.S. hospitals included 604 who were actually prayed for after being told they might or might not be; another 597 patients who were not prayed for after being told they might or might not be; and a group of 601 who were prayed for and told they would be the subject of such prayer.
The praying was done by members of three Christian groups in monasteries and elsewhere — two Catholic and one Protestant — who were given written prayers and the first name and initial of the last name of the prayer subjects. The prayers started on the eve of or day of surgery and lasted for two weeks.
Among the first group — who were prayed for but only told they might be — 52 percent had post-surgical complications compared to 51 percent in the second group, the ones who were not prayed for though told they might be. In the third group, who knew they were being prayed for, 59 percent had complications.
After 30 days, however, the death rates and incidence of major complications was about the same across all three groups, said the study published in the American Heart Journal.
COMPLICATIONS AFTER SURGERY
“Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on whether complications occurred (and) patients who were certain that intercessors would pray for them had a higher rate of complications than patients who were uncertain but did receive intercessory prayer,” the study said.
There is “no clear explanation” for the latter finding, it added.
The study — called the largest of its kind — was designed only to try to measure the impact of intercessory prayer on heart surgery patients, an intervention that some earlier reports had showed seemed to be beneficial.
“Our study was never intended to address the existence of God or the presence or absence of intelligent design in the universe” or to compare the efficacy of one prayer form over another, said the Rev. Dean Marek, director of chaplain services at the Mayo Clinic, one of the authors.
I just found another person who needs to be prayed for.
You would think that God would allow himself to become a lab rat.
It’s almost like God doesn’t feel the need to prove his own existance!
Not that it matters, since this is a stupid idea for an experiment, but there were people also secretly praying for the control group.