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Prayer Has A
"Scientific" Basis
Dear Karl,
I'd like to tell you about my
personal experience and then ask you what you think about prayer for
healing.
I had surgery which removed a
tumor. One of three of the parathyroid glands. They flooded my body
with calcium through an I.V. after surgery. I was thoroughly
depleted with osteopenia. That stimulated my remaining 3 glands
eventually to kick in. I was in another world for about a month and
a half. When I first came to I remember seeing in black and white.
My right arm was locked up with tetanus. IT was like a permanent
Charlie horse. I lost all upper and shoulder muscle and movement.
The calcium made me hyper toward the end. I laughed a lot.
I don't know how to describe the
sensations. they were like nothing anyone normally experiences. The
tingles and jolts of electricity as my body and mind struggled to
recover. The physical medicine doctor prognosis of my arm was 2 year
60% movement return. I rejected that immediately. I worked my arm
hard and constantly. I said a lot of prayers also. I took
inspiration from everyone and thing around me. I remember watching
Rambo 3 in my room and working my arm.
I felt I needed to recover as fast
as could to feel normal again. I can never thank the people enough
who took care of me. I regained 100% movement back in one month.
They really can't explain why my right arm deteriorated or why it
came back. MY illness had been coming on for several years
undetected. I had never been ill in my life and even upon entering
the hospital I still did not believe it. Just as the doctor
couldn't believe I was still standing and breathing. they told me
later that I should have been in a coma, kidney failure , heart
failure, MY serum count of calcium was the highest they have seen. I
made the medical journals. I don't recommend my experience to
anyone...but when I look back I have mostly good memories. I had
tremendous pain, a lot of laughter, a lot of wonderful people
encouraging me to get better.
I found out what I was made
of...courage ,hope. And I've still got a great sense of humor. Just
because you are a hypochondriac doesn't mean you don't have a fatal
disease.
I take calcitrate. I also eat
lots of veggies. I think your site is great like it sits.
"you either believe everything or
nothing is a miracle in this world." Albert Einstein
" I ain't no physicist but I knows
what matters . . . ak!ak!ak!"
Popeye
absence of evidence.. is not
evidence of absence. unknown
Rick
Dear Rick
I have a
recorded lecture, called The Four Roads To Ruin, in which I
describe the FOUR different things which can ruin your health. I'll
send you a copy. I have been wanting to write a book with this
title, and actually think about it a lot.
The theme of the
Book would be that these four items pretty much cover ALL the health
problems man can have.
The first is
mental and spiritual, and addresses your question directly. There
is no question that a large part of health, and of healing, take
place beyond the boundaries of medical knowledge. The doctors often
refer to this in guarded tones, talking about the "placebo" effect,
but it troubles them because they can't understand it. (Another
important factor very poorly understood is diet, and that is my
major life's work -- read about that by
clicking here.)
I also speak to this subject on the page of my philosophy.
Let me tell you of
an experiment which I describe in my Book, Life Flow One, The
Solution For Heart Disease, starting on page 214.
The Only Double
Blind Study
In Non-Drug Treatment
Of Heart Disease
A "double blind study" means that
neither the patient nor the attending physician knows which patient
is getting the special treatment. This story is also included on
another page on this web site.
Click Here to read that.
The drug company, for instance,
wants to test new drug A. It's in a red pill. So, they make a
batch of these new red pills, with the drug. Then they also make a
batch of pills containing sugar, or something inert, and make them
red too. These are called the "placebo" pills, because if the
patient "gets better" when taking these sugar pills (with no drugs
inside) they would know that the improvement is due to the placebo
effect -- not due to any drug inside. They keep these pills
carefully separate.
Then, they find some doctors to
administer the pills. The doctors are given two batches of red
pills. One is marked "Number One," and the other is called "Number
Two." The doctors don't know which is the real pill and which is
the sugar pill.
The doctors give these pills to
their patients -- the patients who have the symptoms which the drug
is supposed to treat. The doctors keep careful track of which
patient gets which pill, and then follow the course of the patients'
health in his normal fashion.
If, after the appropriate time,
the doctor finds that all the patients who got the Number Two pill
are much more healthy, and the patients who got the Number One pill
are just as sick as before, the Doctor might guess that the Number
Two pill was the "real thing." In any event, the drug company knows
which is which.
This type of test eliminates what
often happens otherwise.
The doctor gets the new drug -- no
double blind, you understand. He tells the patient he has a new
drug for his ailment. The patient takes the pill and gets better.
We can't be sure it is the drug or some mysterious placebo effect.
So, doctors have these kinds of
tests going on all the time.
The test in my Book was not widely
reported in the medical journals but most heart specialists will
admit they know about it when you remind them with some details, but
none of them think the new special treatment is valid.
In this case the In Charge of the
experiment, Randolph C. Byrd, M.D., took the entire population of a
coronary intensive care unit at the San Francisco General Hospital
-- all the 450 patients who happened to enter into that unit, during
the period from August 1982 to May 1983. Each patient in that unit
was told about the treatment. Fifty-seven declined to be a part of
the test. That left 393 patients who signed consent forms to be
included for the test.
Remember, about half of those
patients would get the treatment and the other half would not. Those
who agreed to be in the test did not know which group they would be
in.
Some of the patients were just
arriving, in some cases scheduled to receive bypass surgery. Some
were recovering patients -- in some cases just having had bypass
surgery. There were a wide variety of different conditions in this
group of patients.
The In Charge divided the group
into two parts so that each group would have, as much as possible, a
similar number of patients with the same conditions.
In fact, out of 393 patients, 109
had been admitted with severe heart attacks and these were evenly
split between the group getting the special treatment and the
control group which did not.
In this amazing test the physician
in charge of each patient had no idea of whether or not his patient
was getting the special treatment. In fact, each patient continued
along whatever course of treatment had been originally scheduled for
him -- with no knowledge that he was going to get, or not get, a
special treatment in addition to the already scheduled treatment.
Dr. Byrd never personally met any
of the patients.
You understand the simplicity of
this test?
"Joe" was in the intensive care
unit, after a heart attack. He was scheduled to get bypass and he
got it. AT no time did he know whether or not he also received some
special treatment, nor did his doctor know. He did have to agree to
be in the test, but he didn't know whether he got the special
treatment.
The results were startling!
The group which got the special
treatment had a statistically significant improvement in their
recovery rates and over all health indicators compared with the
group which did not get the special treatment.
This special treatment was
provided at a basic cost of zero!
In other words, the only double
blind study ever done on heart patients in intensive care units,
showed a very good improvement from the treatment, but you have
never heard about it and you will never hear about it anywhere else
except from Karl Loren.
Wouldn't you think that a test
which such results would be repeated over and over again to make
sure that the results were valid!
Wouldn't you think that the big
hospitals, and the big drug companies, and the AMA would all clamor
to find out more about this treatment -- perhaps start teaching
other doctors about it?
I owe this story to my good
friend, now deceased, Dr. Robert Mendelssohn when he was a guest on
my radio talk show. He had a wonderful way of stringing out a
story, just as I have above. Since then, of course, I've obtained
the entire scientific report.
What was that treatment?
Well, the In Charge took the name
and some simple symptoms for each of the patients who were to get
the special treatment. He gave these names and information to
several individuals located in various cities around the United
States.
The job of these individuals was
to pray for the patient whose name they received!
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The In Charge did not tell
them HOW to pray, or when, or anything else. he picked people
who believed in prayer and were willing to pray for these
patients who they had never met. They were supposed to pray
at least every day for the patient they got. Each patient got
at least three different persons saying prayers and not more
than seven persons. |
Dr. Byrd picked persons to pray on
the basis of their being Born Again Christians with an active
Christian life as manifested by daily devotional prayer and active
Christian fellowship with a local church. member of several
Protestant churches and the Romany Catholic Church were represented
among the intercessors.
Those patients for whom prayers
were said did better, by quite a bit, than the patients for whom no
prayers were said.
That's all! Very simple!
Unbelievable.
You'd think that this research
report would have been broadcast in every newspaper, and then in
every church. It was viewed as a curiosity.
There were actually critical
reviews of the test -- criticisms on the basis that there was no
control over the praying method and that such techniques lacked
scientific basis.
So much for God in the halls of
medicine!
These may seem like a humorous
story, but consider how serious it is.
I've reported above about the
placebo effect.
Invariably when patients are given
some sugar pill, and told that it is effective in curing their
problems, about 25% of them will get better. That is the power of
the spirit and mind. Doctors are frightened to death of this
because they can't relate to it. Playing god, themselves, they are
not usually ready to acknowledge that there might be a real God, and
that real spiritual healing can actually take place.
Remember, the patients in this
test did NOT know, for sure, whether they were being prayed for or
not. it is possible that ALL of the patients did better than they
would have otherwise because ALL of them knew that there was some
chance, at lest, that someone was praying for them!
Would you like someone to be
praying for you when you next visit a doctor?
It would be a lot more effective
than bypass surgery or Mevacor!
Bypass surgery has a rate of
improvement, too, compared to patients who don't get it. The most
famous study of this type was done at thirteen different Veterans
Administration hospitals. The study was reported in the prestigious
New England Journal Of Medicine in September 1977.
A total of 596 patients were
included in the study. Ninety-four percent had angina pains and two
thirds had had heart attacks. These were serious problem patients!
Every-one of these patients would normally have received bypass
surgery -- that's how they were diagnosed.
As in any good study, the patients
were divided into two groups, taking into account all the
differences in age, medical condition, etc.
This was a very courageous test
because the doctors in charge had all agreed to give bypass surgery
to HALF of the patients, and NO BYPASS surgery to the other half.
Right away you can see that this
is not a blind study at all. The patients, and their doctors,
certainly knew which group they were in. But, with this type o test,
that's the best they could do.
You'd have to wonder at the half
who agreed to forego bypass surgery. Were they more courageous, and
therefore more likely to do well without surgery? that was one of
the criticisms of the study when it was reported.
One group got bypass surgery. the
other group was treated with drugs only -- mostly nitroglycerin
tablets.
What do you suppose?
Could bypass surgery show that it
had made a statistically significant improvement in the lives of the
patients who got it? After all, prayer had been shown to be
effective -- even meeting the fancy test called "statistically
significant."
You can guess the results!
The study followed these patients
over a period of many years. The basic test was whether the person
died or not, and then what further heart complications they had.
Of those who received bypass
surgery 86 percent were still alive after two years.
Of those who did NOT receive
bypass surgery, 87 percent were sill alive after two years.
the study followed these patients
for many years. Generally, even after more than ten years, it
proves out that prayer is far better than bypass surgery and
receiving NO surgery is just as good as receiving a bypass surgery.
Despite this devastating report,
in a respected Journal, the number of bypass surgeries grew rapidly.
If you quote the above story to
your cardiologist he will get very angry and spout out all sorts of
errors in the study. But, his anger simply betrays his hidden guilt.
He knows that the people he refers for heart surgery would do just
as well without surgery. he knows that if he would simply send the
patient to a church, the patient would do better.
He, that cardiologist, is a very
sick man -- spiritually. He, who plays god, and speaks lies with
that authority, is worse than Satin!
Check out THIS
PAGE for an exchange of messages between Karl Loren and someone who
claims to speak with the authority of God:
Karl Loren
This web site is a breath of fresh air in a world of pollution.
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