Some Thoughts about Faith Healing
Stephen Barrett, M.D.
The notion that prayer, divine intervention or the ministrations of an
individual healer can cure illness has been popular throughout history.
Miraculous recoveries have been attributed to a myriad of techniques
commonly lumped together as "faith healing."
During the past forty years, several investigators have studied this
subject closely and written about their findings.
Louis Rose, a British psychiatrist, investigated hundreds of alleged
faith-healing cures. As his interest became well known, he received
communications from healers and patients throughout the world. He sent
each correspondent a questionnaire and sou ght corroborating
information from physicians. In Faith Healing [Penguin Books 1971], he
concluded, "I have been unsuccessful. After nearly twenty years of
work I have yet to find one 'miracle cure'; and without that (or,
alternatively, massive stati stics which others must provide) I cannot
be convinced of the efficacy of what is commonly termed faith healing."
[1]
During the early 1970s, Minnesota surgeon William Nolen, M.D., attended
a service conducted by Katherine Kuhlman, the leading evangelical healer of
that period. After noting the names of 25 people who had been
"miraculously healed," he was able to perform follow-up interviews
and examinations. Among other things, he discovered that one woman who had
been announced as cured of "lung cancer" actually had Hodgkin's
disease -- which was unaffected by the experience. Another woman with cancer
of the spine had discarded her brace and followed Ms. Kuhlman's enthusiastic
command to run across the stage. The following day her backbone collapsed,
and four months later she died. Overall, not one person with organic disease
had been helped. Dr. Nolen reported his findings, which included observations
of several other healers, in Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle, a book
that I heartily recommend [2].
C. Eugene Emery, Jr., a science writer for the Providence Journal, has
looked closely at the work of Reverend Ralph DiOrio, a Roman Catholic
priest whose healing services attract people by the thousands. In 1987
Emery attended one of DiOrio's service s and recorded the names of nine
people who had been blessed during the service and nine others who had
been proclaimed cured. DiOrio's organization provided ten more cases
that supposedly provided irrefutable proof of the priest's ability to
cure. D uring a six-month investigation, Emery found no evidence that
any of these 28 individuals had been helped [3].
The most comprehensive examination of contemporary "healers" is
James Randi's The Faith Healers [4]. The book describes how many of the
leading evangelistic healers have enriched themselves with the help of
deception and fraud. Some of Randi's evidence came from former
associates of the evangelists who got disgusted with what they had
observed.
Randi also exposed the techniques used by evangelist W.V. Grant, who
calls out people in the audience by name and describes their ailments.
Grant obtains this information from letters people send him and by
mingling with the audience before his show. To help his memory, he
uses crib sheets and gets hand signals from associates who also use
crib sheets. After one performance, Randi was able to retrieve a
complete set from the trash Grant left behind! Following another
performance, Randi found that some members of the audience had given
false information about themselves, their ailments, and their medical
care. For example, after "Dr. Jesus" had "put a new
heart" into a man supposedly awaiting open-heart surgery, Randi found
that the details (including the doctor and hospital named by Grant) could
not be corroborated.
Grant's subjects typically are "slain in the spirit" and fall
backward into the arms of his assistants. In 1986 I observed from a few feet
away what happened when he encountered an elderly woman who did not wish to
fall backward when he touched her forehead. Grant pushed his fingers into
her neck so hard that she could not remain standing. I also watched him
"lengthen" the leg of a man who limped up to the stage, supposedly
because one of his legs was shorter than the other. The audience may have
been impressed with this feat, but I was not. Before the show began, I noted
that the man was one of Grant's assistants and walked normally.
Intercessory Prayer
In 1988, two investigators reported that their thorough search of the
scientific literature had located only three controlled examinations of
the effects of prayer by third parties on people who were unaware of
the prayers. Of these, one (described b elow) claimed benefit but was
poorly designed, whereas the others found no benefit and were well
designed. Surprised by the small number of published studies, Witmer
and Zimmerman asked 38 journal editors whether they had ever received
but rejected a manuscript on the subject of intercessory prayer. They
also asked the editors to ask their readers whether they knew of any
such study, published or unpublished. No editor or reader responded
affirmatively [5].
The study most often cited as evidence that third-party prayer is
effective was carried out in the coronary care unit at San Francisco
General Hospital. The study compared 192 patients who were prayed for
by Christians located outside the hospital with 201 patients who served
as controls [6]. The published report stated that the prayed-for group
had fewer complications. However, the author's tabulation was not valid
because he scored interrelated complications separately and therefore
gave them too much weight. The average length of hospital stay, which
was not subject to this type of scoring error, was identical for the
treatment and control groups [5].
Is Anyone Helped?
Is there any evidence that faith healing works? The first step in
approaching this question is to specify what should be considered proof
that an ailment has been healed by a supernatural method. In my
opinion, three criteria must be met: 1) the ailment must be one that
normally doesn't recover without treatment; 2) there must not have been
any medical treatment that would be expected to influence the ailment;
and 3) both diagnosis and recovery must be demonstrable by detailed
medical evidence.
If I wanted to demonstrate that I had an effective new treatment
method, I would take pains to document the basis for my belief. For
example, if I thought I could cure cancer with prayer, I would begin by
making certain that patients I worked on actually had cancer. I would
obtain their records, talk with their doctors, and have independent
physicians examine them to determine their current status. After
administering my treatment, I would conduct careful, long-range follow-
up studies and report the outcome in detail.
Has any "faith healer" ever sent for the medical records of a
client? Or had a client examined by a doctor before and after healing is
administered? Or inquired about a client's health months or years after
the healing? Or even kept statistics to indicate what percentage of
people with various ailments appear to have been helped? Or compiled
data that an independent investigator could verify? As far as I know,
no healer has ever done any of these things. On the other hand, many
cases have been documented in which people with serious disease have
died as a result of abandoning effective medical care after being
"healed."
Thus, as far as I am concerned, there is no reason to believe that faith
healing has ever cured anyone of an organic disease. What about functional
ailments -- in which the symptoms are bodily reactions to tension? Some
people who visit "healers" may feel better because the experience
causes them to relax or because of a placebo effect. But any benefit of
this type should be weighed against the fact that people who are prayer
heals by replacing bad thoughts with good ones. Christian Science
practitioners work by trying to argue the sick thoughts out of the person's
mind. Consultations can take place in person, by telephone, or even by mail.
Individuals may also be able to attain correct beliefs by themselves through
prayer or mental concentration.
"You can Heal," a pamphlet of the Christian Science Publishing
Society, states that "every student of Christian Science has the
God-given ability to heal the sick." Two weeks of class instruction
are required to become a practitioner.
The weekly magazine Christian Science Sentinel publishes several
"testimonies" in each issue. To be considered for publication, an
account must be "verified" by three individuals who "can
vouch for the integrity of the testifier or know of the healing." During
the past few years, believers have claimed that prayer has brought about
recovery from anemia, arthritis, blood poisoning, corns, deafness, defective
speech, multiple sclerosis, skin rashes, total body paralysis, visual
difficulties, and various injuries. Most of these accounts contain
little detail, and many of the diagnoses were made without medical
consultation.
As far as I know, no systematic, medically supervised study of the
outcome of Christian Science healing has ever been performed. However,
a recent study suggests that devout Christian Scientists, who rarely
consult doctors, pay a high price for avoiding medical care. The study
was performed by William F. Simpson, Ph.D., an assistant professor of
mathematics and computer science at Emporia State University. Dr.
Simpson compared alumni records from Principia College, a Christian
Science school in Elsah, Illinois, with records from the University of
Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, and published his findings in the Journal
of the American Medical Association. Even though Christian Science
tenets forbid the use of alcohol and tobacco, the death rates among
those who had graduated from Principia between 1934 and 1948 were
higher than those of their University of Kansas counterparts -- 26.2%
vs. 20.9% in men, and 11.3% vs. 9.9% in women [7]. A subsequent study
comparing the mortality of Christian Scientists and Seventh-day
Adventists (who also are admonished to abstain from cigarettes and
alcohol) found even greater differences [8].
Rita and Douglas Swan, whose 16-month-old son Matthew died of
meningitis under the care of two Christian Science practitioners in
1977, are not surprised by these statistics. Angered by their
experience, she founded CHILD, Inc., to work for legal reforms that can
protect children from inappropriate treatment by faith healers. So far,
they have collected 140 cases of children who died in this manner.
Information about her group can be obtained by writing to P.O. Box
2604, Sioux City, IA 51106.
Membership in the Christian Science Church has been declining steadily.
Since 1971 the number of practitioners and teachers listed in the
Christian Science Journal has fallen from about 5000 to about 1800, and
the number of churches has fallen from a bout 1800 to about 1300.
Recommendations
Can anything be done about faith healing? Believers don't see it as a
problem, while most nonbelievers don't see it as a priority issue and
have little sympathy for its victims. But a few things might help lower
faith healing's toll on our society:
Laws to protect children from medical neglect in the name of healing
should be passed and enforced. In states that allow religious
exemptions from medical neglect, these exemptions should be revoked.
Maybe the practice of faith healing on minors sho uld be illegal.
ûFaith healing should no longer be deductible as a medical expense.
ûReporters should be encouraged to do follow-up studies of people
acclaimed to have been "healed." "Healers" who use
trickery to raise large sums of money should be prosecuted for grand larceny.
References
Return to The Skeptic Tank's main Index page.
http://www.quackwatch.com
Randi's most noteworthy experience was the unmasking of Peter Popoff,
an evangelist who would call out the names of people in the audience
and describe their ailments. Popoff said he received this information
from God, but it was actually obtained by confederates who mingled
with the audience before each performance. Pertinent data would be
given to Popoff's wife, who would broadcast it from backstage to a
tiny receiver in Popoff's ear. After recording one of Mrs. Popoff's
radio transmissions, Randi exposed the deception on the Johnny Carson
Show. First he played a videotape showing Popoff interacting with
someone in the audience. Then he replayed the tape with Mrs. Popoff's
voice audible to illustrate how Popoff used the information.
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