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The biggest scientific experiment on prayer has failed to find any evidence that it helps to heal the sick.
Doctors in the United States have disclosed that heart patients who were prayed for by groups of strangers recovered from surgery at the same rate as those who were not.
The three-year study, led by cardiologists from Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina, involved 750 patients in nine hospitals and 12 prayer groups around the world, from Christians in Manchester to Buddhists in Nepal.
Earlier, less extensive, research suggested prayer could have a measurably beneficial effect.
The new research, dubbed the Mantra project, was led by Dr Mitch Krucoff, a cardiologist, whose pilot studies had led him to believe that prayer could have measurably beneficial effects.
Over three years, 750 patients awaiting angioplasty, a procedure to clear
obstructions from their arteries, were recruited for the experiment.
Names selected at random by a computer were sent to the 12 prayer groups, who began praying immediately for their recovery. Neither the hospital staff nor the patients and their relatives knew who was being prayed for.
The prayer groups included American Christian mothers, nuns in a Carmelite convent in Baltimore, Sufi Muslims, Buddhist monks in Nepal and English doctors and medical students in Manchester. Prayers were even e-mailed to Jerusalem and placed in the Wailing Wall.
An analysis of the results found that there were no significant differences
in the recovery and health of the patients who were prayed for and those who were not.
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