Prayer Heals, when it's close & personal

Prayer heals when it's close-up and personal, and there's a study to prove it. It's not just any kind of prayer, but "proximal intercessory prayer", or PIP-when one or more people pray for someone in that person's presence and often with physical contact-that was found by a team of doctors, scientists and religious experts to have remarkable results in healing some patients.A team of medical doctors and scientist led by Indiana University professor of religion Candy Gunther Brown found in the study, conducted in rural Mozambique, that prayer brought highly significant improvements to hearing-impaired participants and significant changes to the visually impaired. Fourteen hard-of-hearing and 11 visually impaired study participants were recruited at meetings of Pentecostal Christian groups in Mozambican villages and towns. They were tested with a handheld audiometer or vision charts, depending on their impairment, before and after they took part in a prayer session.
There was a highly significant imrovement in hearing across 18 ears of 11 subjects and significant visual improvements, says the study which will be published next month in the peer-reviewed Southern Medical Journal. Two of the hard-o-hearing study participants were able to hear sounds 50 decibels lower after the prayer session and three of the visually impaired subjects saw their vision improve from 20/400 or worse to 20/80 or better. The study focussed on the clinincal effects of prayer and did not attempt to explain how or why some participants saw such remarkable improvements. This study shows that in some instances there are measurable effects, that can be demonstrated using clinical studies, said Brown.
(Source : Times of India)