Toto
May 2, 2005, 04:47 PM
The LA Times Health section had an article today: Far-off Healing (http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-prayer2may02,0,3690879.story?coll=la-home-health) (should have been far out healing, since the author seems to have an addled point of view.)
I am almost riled up enough to write a letter to the editor. I would like help tracking down the unsupported claims about successful prayer studies.
E.g. In the early '90s, Elisabeth Targ and colleagues at the California Pacific Medical Center studied the effects of distant healing on 20 AIDS patients. Schlitz, who worked with Targ (who died of a brain tumor in 2002), said the study found those receiving prayer survived in greater numbers, got sick less often and recovered faster than those who did not. A follow-up study of 40 patients found similar results.
However, from here (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.html?pg=5&topic=&topic_set=) WHAT TOO FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT TARG'S FAMOUS AIDS STUDY
That her study had been unblinded and then "reblinded" to scour for data that confirmed the thesis - and the Western Journal of Medicine did not know this fact when it decided to publish.
Her famous study was not, as its reputation suggests, designed to measure the number of AIDS-related illnesses. Targ and Fred Sicher had targeted their study to measure mortality but were caught off-guard by triple-drug anti-retroviral therapy, which became common practice one month into the six-month trial. When biostatistician Dan Moore broke the randomization code to unblind the data, it told them nothing - since only one patient had died, the data was meaningless.
Moore brought Targ and Sicher into his office and showed him the data on his computer. Moore thought this new triple-drug therapy was nothing short of a medical miracle, the triumph of science. It was saving lives! But Targ and Sicher didn't want to see it that way. Targ asked him to crunch the numbers on the secondary scores - one a measure of HIV physical symptoms, the other a measure of quality of life. These came out inconclusive; the treatment group didn't score better than the control. Not what they wanted to find. In dismay, Targ called her father. He calmed her down, told her to keep looking. She had Moore run the mood state scores. These came out worse - the treatment group was in more psychological stress than the control group. Same for CD4+ counts. Targ flew down to Santa Fe to attend a conference at a Buddhist retreat run by her godmother. When she called back to Moore's office, Sicher answered. Moore was crunching the last data they had, hospital stays and doctor visits. "Looks like we have statistical significance!" Moore announced. Sicher told Targ, who turned and yelled out to her friends and the conference.
Bingo.
Later that week, Moore met with an AIDS physician at California Pacific Medical Center. This doctor thought distant healing was bogus but agreed to give advice. He remarked that the length of hospital stays wasn't very meaningful. Patients with health insurance tend to stay in hospitals longer than uninsured ones. He pointed Moore to an important AIDS paper that had been recently published. It defined the 23 illnesses associated with AIDS. He told Moore they ought to have been measuring the occurrence of these illnesses all along. Moore took this list to Targ and Sicher. There was only one problem. They hadn't collected this data.
They gathered the medical charts and gave them to their assistant to black out the names of the patients. This done, Targ and Sicher began poring over the charts again, noting the data they hadn't previously collected. Since Sicher had interviewed many of these patients (up to three times), Moore worried Sicher could recognize them just by the dates they came to the hospital and what they were treated for. Sicher admitted he could (there were only 40). He had also seen which group each patient was assigned to, treatment or control, but he swore he didn't remember and maintained he was therefore impartial. (Sicher remembers this differently. He insists he couldn't recognize the patients from their charts and never knew which group each was in.) Targ told her boyfriend she was worried about Sicher's impartiality, but she took him at his word, even though Sicher was an ardent believer in distant healing, by his own frequent admission. He had put up the money himself for the pilot study ($7,500), had paid for the blood tests. He had a vested interest in the outcome.
This isn't what science means by double-blind. The data may all be legitimate, but it's not good form. Statisticians call this the sharpshooter's fallacy - spraying bullets randomly, then drawing a target circle around a cluster. When Targ and Sicher wrote the paper that made her famous, they let the reader assume that all along their study had been designed to measure the 23 AIDS-related illnesses - even though they're careful never to say so. They never mentioned that this was the last in a long list of endpoints they looked at, or that it was data collected after an unblinding.
At about the same time, Duke University's Krucoff was leading a small but unusual experiment to determine if cardiac patients would recover faster after angioplasty surgery if they received any of several intangible (noetic) treatments. His study compared the results of healing touch, stress relaxation and distant healing with standard care.
Spiritual healers from around the world — including Jews leaving prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Buddhists praying in monasteries in Nepal and France, Carmelite nuns in Baltimore offering prayers during vespers, and Moravians, Baptists and fundamental Christians praying during church — each simultaneously prayed for one of several designated groups in the study.
All of the groups did better than the standard care group, with those receiving distant prayers doing best. He has since completed a larger, multi-site study. That study — the largest to date — is currently under review for publication in a medical journal.
Krucoff (http://www.rhine.org/about_bod.htm) seems to be a new-Age type: Dr. Mitch Krucoff is Associate Prof. of Medicine/Cardiology at DUMC, Director of the Cardiovascular Labs at the VA, Senior Faculty at Duke Clinical Research Institute and Director of their Interventional Clinical Trials Labs. After a B.A. in religious studies (Yale,1980) and an M.D from George Washington, he completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiology. After several years on the Georgetown faculty, he joined the cardiology faculty at DUMC in 1988. Dr. Krucoff has served on the Board of Directors of the Sri Satya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences in Puttaparthi, India. He serves as consultant to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute , NIH's National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine, and the Cardiovascular and Circulatory Devices Panel at the FDA. Dr. Krucoff has published more than 100 articles and book chapters on various aspects of cardiology, coronary care, spirituality and complementary medicine . He is the principal investigator of the Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) Study Project at DUMC.
His study is mentioned here (http://my.webmd.com/content/article/11/1674_51527?printing=true)
But religious tolerance seems to know of another study (http://www.religioustolerance.org/medical4.htm) of his that showed no effect.
Does anyone know of a more comprehensive source for Krucoff's studies?
I am almost riled up enough to write a letter to the editor. I would like help tracking down the unsupported claims about successful prayer studies.
E.g. In the early '90s, Elisabeth Targ and colleagues at the California Pacific Medical Center studied the effects of distant healing on 20 AIDS patients. Schlitz, who worked with Targ (who died of a brain tumor in 2002), said the study found those receiving prayer survived in greater numbers, got sick less often and recovered faster than those who did not. A follow-up study of 40 patients found similar results.
However, from here (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/prayer.html?pg=5&topic=&topic_set=) WHAT TOO FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT TARG'S FAMOUS AIDS STUDY
That her study had been unblinded and then "reblinded" to scour for data that confirmed the thesis - and the Western Journal of Medicine did not know this fact when it decided to publish.
Her famous study was not, as its reputation suggests, designed to measure the number of AIDS-related illnesses. Targ and Fred Sicher had targeted their study to measure mortality but were caught off-guard by triple-drug anti-retroviral therapy, which became common practice one month into the six-month trial. When biostatistician Dan Moore broke the randomization code to unblind the data, it told them nothing - since only one patient had died, the data was meaningless.
Moore brought Targ and Sicher into his office and showed him the data on his computer. Moore thought this new triple-drug therapy was nothing short of a medical miracle, the triumph of science. It was saving lives! But Targ and Sicher didn't want to see it that way. Targ asked him to crunch the numbers on the secondary scores - one a measure of HIV physical symptoms, the other a measure of quality of life. These came out inconclusive; the treatment group didn't score better than the control. Not what they wanted to find. In dismay, Targ called her father. He calmed her down, told her to keep looking. She had Moore run the mood state scores. These came out worse - the treatment group was in more psychological stress than the control group. Same for CD4+ counts. Targ flew down to Santa Fe to attend a conference at a Buddhist retreat run by her godmother. When she called back to Moore's office, Sicher answered. Moore was crunching the last data they had, hospital stays and doctor visits. "Looks like we have statistical significance!" Moore announced. Sicher told Targ, who turned and yelled out to her friends and the conference.
Bingo.
Later that week, Moore met with an AIDS physician at California Pacific Medical Center. This doctor thought distant healing was bogus but agreed to give advice. He remarked that the length of hospital stays wasn't very meaningful. Patients with health insurance tend to stay in hospitals longer than uninsured ones. He pointed Moore to an important AIDS paper that had been recently published. It defined the 23 illnesses associated with AIDS. He told Moore they ought to have been measuring the occurrence of these illnesses all along. Moore took this list to Targ and Sicher. There was only one problem. They hadn't collected this data.
They gathered the medical charts and gave them to their assistant to black out the names of the patients. This done, Targ and Sicher began poring over the charts again, noting the data they hadn't previously collected. Since Sicher had interviewed many of these patients (up to three times), Moore worried Sicher could recognize them just by the dates they came to the hospital and what they were treated for. Sicher admitted he could (there were only 40). He had also seen which group each patient was assigned to, treatment or control, but he swore he didn't remember and maintained he was therefore impartial. (Sicher remembers this differently. He insists he couldn't recognize the patients from their charts and never knew which group each was in.) Targ told her boyfriend she was worried about Sicher's impartiality, but she took him at his word, even though Sicher was an ardent believer in distant healing, by his own frequent admission. He had put up the money himself for the pilot study ($7,500), had paid for the blood tests. He had a vested interest in the outcome.
This isn't what science means by double-blind. The data may all be legitimate, but it's not good form. Statisticians call this the sharpshooter's fallacy - spraying bullets randomly, then drawing a target circle around a cluster. When Targ and Sicher wrote the paper that made her famous, they let the reader assume that all along their study had been designed to measure the 23 AIDS-related illnesses - even though they're careful never to say so. They never mentioned that this was the last in a long list of endpoints they looked at, or that it was data collected after an unblinding.
At about the same time, Duke University's Krucoff was leading a small but unusual experiment to determine if cardiac patients would recover faster after angioplasty surgery if they received any of several intangible (noetic) treatments. His study compared the results of healing touch, stress relaxation and distant healing with standard care.
Spiritual healers from around the world — including Jews leaving prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Buddhists praying in monasteries in Nepal and France, Carmelite nuns in Baltimore offering prayers during vespers, and Moravians, Baptists and fundamental Christians praying during church — each simultaneously prayed for one of several designated groups in the study.
All of the groups did better than the standard care group, with those receiving distant prayers doing best. He has since completed a larger, multi-site study. That study — the largest to date — is currently under review for publication in a medical journal.
Krucoff (http://www.rhine.org/about_bod.htm) seems to be a new-Age type: Dr. Mitch Krucoff is Associate Prof. of Medicine/Cardiology at DUMC, Director of the Cardiovascular Labs at the VA, Senior Faculty at Duke Clinical Research Institute and Director of their Interventional Clinical Trials Labs. After a B.A. in religious studies (Yale,1980) and an M.D from George Washington, he completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiology. After several years on the Georgetown faculty, he joined the cardiology faculty at DUMC in 1988. Dr. Krucoff has served on the Board of Directors of the Sri Satya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences in Puttaparthi, India. He serves as consultant to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute , NIH's National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine, and the Cardiovascular and Circulatory Devices Panel at the FDA. Dr. Krucoff has published more than 100 articles and book chapters on various aspects of cardiology, coronary care, spirituality and complementary medicine . He is the principal investigator of the Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) Study Project at DUMC.
His study is mentioned here (http://my.webmd.com/content/article/11/1674_51527?printing=true)
But religious tolerance seems to know of another study (http://www.religioustolerance.org/medical4.htm) of his that showed no effect.
Does anyone know of a more comprehensive source for Krucoff's studies?