Prayers

The experiment cited most often by advocates of prayer is one by a cardiologist at San Francisco General Medical Center (Randolph C. Byrd, "Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population," Southern Medical Journal 81, July 7, 1988: 826-829. )

Byrd studied 393 patients between August 1982 and May 1983, dividing the group into 192 patients who were prayed for, and 201 who were not. He reported that, among other things, the people who were prayed for were five times less likely to develop pulmonary edema; that none required endotracheal intubation, and fewer of them died.

This study has been discredited.

A sceptic's view: Secular Humanism

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