Complementary Alternative Cardiovascular Medicine

Chapter 9 /Prayer and CVD 149
This paper most likely addresses issues like the ethics and recommended
approaches to issues, such as the need for informed consent from patients
participating in study protocols using prayer therapies.
The involvement of federal agencies and professional societies may
also help future research to stay focused on the health care agenda that
is central to this area of systematic study. Issues, such as how God
responds to prayer, whether there is proof that God exists, or which
ethnic type of prayer is best, may make for interesting topics of philosophical
debates but have little to do with safety and efficacy assessments
of prayer as a novel adjunctive therapy for patients with CVD or
other diseases. Similarly, whether prayer may affect human beings only
at some ineffable level must be considered an issue outside of what is
relevant to health care. Healing prayer of scientific and therapeutic significance
can, in part, be defined by the requirement that at least some
somatic manifestation of the healing effect is measurable.
Recently, a paper was published by Chibnall et al. arguing against the
validity of applying scientific methods with statistical analysis to the
constructs of prayer and spirituality (19). They argue that the use of the
null hypothesis is inappropriate in prayer and spirituality studies (in
other words, “Assuming that God cannot heal at the bequest of human
intercessors, what is the probabililty of getting these results?” (19). They
also argue that blinding healers or intercessors to patients is inappropriate,
especially when the human connection of the intercessors might be
part of what makes the intervention successful. Their article provides a
thorough list of possible questions and concerns regarding prayer research,
including the amount of prayer; the type, form, duration, frequency, level
of fervency, and number of prayers; team vs individual prayer; specific
faith involved; and the entity to whom the prayer is directed. The authors
challenge the application of a deterministic model and the concept of
causality to study prayer. The paper raises several interesting concerns
regarding future research, although these critiques cannot simply be said
to support the conclusion that research in this area is intrinsically meaningless.
CURRENT PERSPECTIVES ON CLINICAL APPLICATION
OF HEALING PRAYER
With no insight into the mechanism and immature scientific literature
to date, the weight of evidence does not support changing recommendations
or developing specific guidelines for the systematic incorporation
of healing prayer into health care delivery in general. Participation in
investigational protocols of intercessory prayer that combine reasonable