In article <Q_Gm9.97994$S32.6621126 at news2.west.cox.net> "John Knight" <jwknight at polbox.com> writes:
<"Cary Kittrell" <cary at afone.as.arizona.edu> wrote in message
<news:anf808$e4j$1 at oasis.ccit.arizona.edu...
<> In article <_jEm9.97635$S32.6596105 at news2.west.cox.net> "John Knight"
<<jwknight at polbox.com> writes:
<> <
{...}
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<"As The Federalist has reported previously, science is finally catching on
<that prayer works! A study at North Carolina's Duke University Medical
<Center found that patients with heart problems who received alternative
<therapy after angioplasty were 25 to 30 percent less likely to suffer
<complications, while those who were subjects of 'intercessory prayer' on
<their behalf had the greatest successful recovery rate. The study of 150
<patients, conducted between April 1997 and April 1998, involved random
<assignment of patients to study groups, and neither the patients nor the
<physician researchers were aware of the group assignments. Prayer had the
<greatest health benefits, surpassing such alternatives added to standard
<heart care as guided imagery, stress relaxation, and healing touch
<therapies". - The Federalists
<
All of the prayer studies I am aware of have had significant
criticisms of protocol, but let that pass for a moment --
if prayer is so powerful, and conventional medicine such
a joke, then why were angioplasties done in the first place?
Why not just pray all those plaques and vascular spasms away?
Why bypasses, if you can simply pray increased cardiac circulation
into existance?
If you get acute apendicitis, to the point that your appendix
thretens to rupture, and soon, are you going to go under the
knife, or will you just try to pray even harder?
And why we're on this exact topic, what's your opinion of those
cases, which recur with dreary regularity, in which parents
refuse because of religious beliefs to take their children
in for treatment of conditions which are completely curable
by modern medicine, but which proceed instead to kill the child
notwithstanding the concerted prayerful attentions of the
entire sect?
-- cary