HOPEFULLY THEY'RE AT LEAST REPUBLICANS:

Debate Over Faith's Role In Healing Grows Strong (Gary White, 6/13/04, The Ledger)

Bob Weaver of Lakeland, a retired pastor with two sons who are ministers, generated a prayer chain of considerable length during a series of medical crises that included an aneurysm, pneumonia, prostate and kidney infections and severe internal bleeding.

"We had so many churches praying for us," said Jean Weaver, his wife. "That's why he's alive; there was so much prayer."

That assertion puts the Lakeland woman in one camp of an ongoing debate on the intersection of faith and medicine, a debate fed by thousands of studies addressing the relation between religion and health.

In the past decade or so, attempts to measure scientifically the effect of prayer on medical outcomes have become increasingly common, with attendant controversy. Meanwhile, dozens of medical schools now offer future physicians training in how to address patients' religious needs.

That's a welcome development for Harold Koenig, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center and one of the nation's leading advocates for incorporating religion into medical treatment. Koenig oversaw a 1997 study that concluded those who regularly attend religious services may have better immune system function than those who do not.

"I believe when God decides to heal people and people request healing and people are praying, that does make a difference," Koenig said.

Richard P. Sloan, a professor of behavioral science at Columbia University, serves as Koenig's best-known foil in the debate over abolishing the wall of separation between religion and medicine. [...]

Even an ardent rationalist like Sloan acknowledges the comfort that prayer and other religious activity can bring for people facing a health crisis. He says hospitals should offer spiritual care to their patients but insists it should come from chaplains and clergy rather than doctors or nurses.

Many patients and family members, however, have different expectations. Jean Weaver drew strength from the professed Christian beliefs of some of her husband's doctors during his treatment. One Lakeland surgeon, she says, stopped on the way into the operating room to lead a prayer, and another told her he prays every day. She believes those religious connections aided her husband's treatment.

Burton Whitehead, whose wife Rebecca survived a brain aneurysm, near-drowning and heart attack last August, says medical professionals in his native Ohio always seemed uncomfortable with any mention of faith. To his delight, that wasn't the case at the hospitals in Orlando and Winter Haven where Rebecca was treated.

When he told the doctors and nurses who treated his wife that he was praying for them, "They all said, `Thank you, we need that,' " Burton Whitehead said.

Dr. Lodovico Balducci, head of the Senior Adult Oncology Program at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, says he doesn't hesitate to pray with his patients and sometimes suggests it -- though he adds that he avoids proselytizing.

"That's one of the areas I think is very heartening for the patient to know you share their values or at least you have a sense of values," Balducci said.

If nothing else wouldn't it at least help to know that the medical staff cares enough to pray for you? Not to mention that they won't unplug you when your insurance runs out...

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 15, 2004 7:45 AM