Does it have a prayer?

By William J. Cromie

Gazette Staff

This year, hundreds of people are praying for heart surgery patients they don't even know.

Some of the patients will know they are being prayed for, some won't know, and others won't be prayed for. It's an unusual scientific experiment to determine if prayer has healing powers.

"We are doing a scientific test of the power of belief," says Herbert Benson, associate professor of medicine at the Medical School and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute. "Anecdotal information about the healing power of faith has existed for centuries. We'll try to put that information on a scientific basis by measuring the possible effects of intercessory prayer. If we can show that prayer helps people who don't even believe in God, that would be revolutionary!"

Benson (HMS '61) claims he is receiving a steady stream of letters from physicians and health-care givers who comment that such a study is long overdue. There is also a steady stream of criticism from scientists and, surprisingly, religious scholars who claim that scientific methods cannot prove if, or how, prayer works.

Benson, 62, courteously parries the thrusts of his critics with spiritual and pragmatic arguments. He refers to himself as a nonpracticing Jew who believes in God in the form of a force -- an energy and organizing principle at work in the universe. He says humans are "wired for God" in the sense that belief is part of human biology, and even confers a survival advantage.

On a different level, Benson feels that it's an experiment with a burning need to be done, and he's burning to do it.

Among the problems that could arise: if prayer affects people at a distance, so might antiprayer, or malevolent thoughts. "No question," Benson admits, "negative beliefs can harm you. If you believe in voodoo or other kinds of hexes, you could die from it. I don't know if such feelings will be present, or if they could mess up the study."

Prayer and Placebo

Benson and his colleagues are following the footsteps of Randolph Byrd, who, in 1988, asked born-again Christians to pray for 192 patients in a coronary-care unit at a San Francisco hospital. A matched group of 201 patients were not prayed for, at least by the born-again Christians.

During their hospital stay, the first group required fewer drugs and fewer extra treatments such as help with breathing. Byrd's conclusion: prayer promotes healing.

But the study has many critics, including Benson. Those who were prayed for didn't get out of the hospital any faster and did not live longer. And other technical problems with Byrd's work prevent it from getting wide scientific acceptance.

Benson and his team intend to do an experiment that will provide more precise results. They will use three groups of patients who have undergone heart bypass surgery. One group will be prayed for and will know about it. Two other groups won't know if they are the targets of prayer. One of them will be and one won't be, but neither doctors nor patients will know which is which.

"By comparing those who are uncertain with those who do know they are being prayed for, we'll find any results of the power of belief," Benson says. That would prove that belief in God is good for your health.

Comparing those who are not being prayed for with those who don't know they're being prayed for should reveal if prayer works whether or not you know you're being prayed for, or whether or not you believe in God. "If that occurs, it would be the revolutionary finding," Benson comments.

And it would be a finding hard to explain. If you believe in prayer, know you are prayed for, and get better, that may be the placebo effect. A third or more of sick people get better when they receive only tender care, encouragement, or dummy pills. This effect baffles scientists. In fact, Benson's interest in how placebos work helped drive him into the present experiment.

If prayer works whether or not someone thinks it will, that is similar to people being helped by a drug they don't believe will work. Explaining how a drug works, however, is far easier than showing how the thoughts of others might benefit sick people.

Benson says he will cross that bridge when he comes to it. "We are just starting," he notes. "When we see the data, we'll decide on the next step."

The experiment, Benson says, will involve "hundreds of patients" in each group. They will receive prayers while being treated in three different hospitals, one in the South, one in the Midwest, and one in New England or California.

Their prayers will come from religious groups around the country who routinely pray for other people. The intercessors, from many different faiths, will be given the first names and last initials of those they pray for.

The experiment is planned to last for two years.

Trying to Relax

Many scientists don't think the study has a prayer of working.

"I don't worry about that," Benson says. "My interest in such questions has been dictated by the opportunities and excitement they present, not by the possible downside. If that weren't the case, I wouldn't have done any of the things I've done in the past 30 years."

After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1961, he became fascinated with the effect of behavior on high blood pressure. Few doubt the connection between stress and high blood pressure today, but at that time the idea was considered "unscientific," if not off-the-wall.

Benson experimented with squirrel monkeys until a group of young people who practiced transcendental meditation suggested he work with them. "If I was beyond the pale with my research on monkeys, this was even further beyond," he recalls.

By taking measurements of the meditators, Benson found that meditation could decrease heart rate, oxygen consumption, and breathing rate. "It produced a physiological state opposite to stress," he says.

A private foundation offered Benson a grant to study the physical effects of meditation and relaxation. At first, Harvard refused to let him accept the funds, but later relented.

Benson defined what he now calls the "relaxation response," a calm state brought about by sitting quietly and repeating a sound, words, or muscular activity over and over. When everyday thoughts intrude, the person passively disregards them and returns to the repetition.

Other techniques incorporate deep, slow breathing and pleasant visual images. Last year, a National Institutes of Health panel found "strong evidence for the use of [these] relaxation techniques in reducing chronic pain in a variety of medical conditions."

The experts also concluded that "relaxation and biofeedback produce improvements in some aspects of sleep, but it is questionable whether the magnitude of improvement in sleep onset and total sleep are significant."

Benson notes that several of his colleagues at the Mind/Body Medical Institute, part of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, have government grants to study the effects of relaxation on other medical problems, such as depression in infertile women.

As an example of how far such techniques have come in 30 years, relaxation therapies are now taught in 60 percent of U.S. medical schools and are offered by many major hospitals.

Benson points to the similarity between techniques to elicit relaxation response and prayer. "Many religions from Christianity to Islam have built ways to evoke the relaxation response, including prayers, vespers, or just staring at the horizon," he says.

The next natural step, Benson maintains, is to determine if belief and faith have measurable healing powers. He proposed the present study to the private John Templeton Foundation, which agreed to fund it with a $1.4 million grant.