items of interest

with contributions from Larry Dossey, lrene Monroe, Claudia Combs

A STUDY CONDUCTED by Dr. William Harris at Kansas City's Mid-America Heart St. Luke's Hospital has shown that patients who were prayed for did 11 percent better than those in the control group. "The patients who were prayed for, just did better. . . . I mean everything that word means," said Dr. Harris.

From a sample of more than 990 patients suffering from serious heart conditions, 524 were randomly assigned to a control group. The 466 patients who remained were prayed for daily by five separate volunteers who were not on hospital property. The prayers began one day after the patients were admitted and continued for twenty-eight days. Neither the patients nor their physicians knew that the study was being conducted or that the intercessory prayers were being made.

Reported by The Kansas City Star
October 25, 1999

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Dreaming of something for nothing?