Doctor to measure prayer’s healing effects
Published: March 7, 2006
Polls show that the majority of Americans believe in the healing power of prayer. But Dr. Gary Elkins isn’t content with leaving the matter to conventional wisdom. He wants hard facts.
Elkins, who works at Scott & White Hospital, plans to launch a study that will attempt to measure the effect of prayer by monitoring the immune systems of cancer survivors. Although other studies have been done on religion’s role in healing, Elkins said he thinks his study can provide better data about the specific power of prayer.
“We feel like prayer should be examined just like anything else,” he said.
Elkins, director of Scott & White’s Mind-Body Cancer Research Program, said the study has been in the development phase for about a year. The topic has long been of interest to him, he said, but part of the reason he decided to do the study is because the National Institutes of Health has recently expressed more interest in examining medical alternatives, such as yoga, hypnosis and prayer.
Elkins hopes he can get a grant from the federal agency after the initial phase of his research. In the meantime, Scott & White has earmarked $40,000 for the project.
For the initial study, Elkins plans to recruit 40 adults who have had cancer and have an interest in prayer, he said. People of all faiths will be eligible.
Selected participants will be divided into two groups, Elkins said. One group will be told to go about their lives as normal. The other will be asked to go to Scott & White for four days in a row to engage in 20-minute prayer sessions.
The sessions will be hosted by a Scott & White chaplain, but participants will pray on their own, Elkins said. They can pray in any manner they want.
After the four days, Elkins will try to draw conclusions using two tools: a psychological survey and blood samples. Participants in both groups will give blood and fill out the survey at the beginning and end of the study period. An additional blood draw will be taken a month later, Elkins said.
Elkins admits that the psychological survey is somewhat subjective. But the blood samples will provide concrete data, Elkins said.
Each will be tested for T-cells and helper cells, which demonstrate the body’s immune response, Elkins said. Using that data, researchers will be able to determine whether prayer had an effect on participants’ health, he said.
“When you look at the hard data of the immune system, that’s pretty convincing,” Elkins said.
That empirical data is the main difference between Elkins’ study and others that have been done, he said. Another key difference is its specificity, he said.
Most other studies have looked generally at the role of spirituality in healing, Elkins said. But prayer is just one component of religious activity, so those studies don’t provide a good basis for proving prayer’s power, he said.
Judy Hoelscher, a hospice chaplain for Scott & White, said she is glad Elkins is attempting to capture hard data. She hears all the time that prayer makes a difference in patients’ lives, she said, but it would be nice to be able to back that belief up with research.
“This will be just one way to see scientifically if we can document how prayer does work,” Hoelscher said. “It’s just going to be exciting to see if it can be proven.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: