November 19, 2001

Study documents power of prayer in pregnancy
___By Mark Wingfield
___Managing Editor
___The growing movement to document the effectiveness of prayer gave birth to a major piece of new evidence this fall with publication of an international study on prayer and pregnancy.
___The study, reported in the September issue of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, involved 219 women undergoing in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer in a Seoul, Korea, hospital. Unknown to them, the women were classified into two statistically similar groups, one of which was prayed over by Christian intercessors and one of which was not.
___Women in the group receiving prayer were nearly twice as likely to become pregnant through the treatment as women in the group not receiving prayer. Also, women in the group receiving prayer showed pregnancy rates much higher than the historical norm for treatment in the same program at the same hospital.
___Results of the study were reported by Rogerio Lobo, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University in New York City.
___Here's how the study worked:
___ The 219 women, ranging in age from 26 to 46, were treated between December 1998 and March 1999 at Cha General Hospital in Seoul. All were candidates for the in vitro fertilization.
___ Unknown to them throughout the period of study, they were assigned to one of two groups.
___ The two groups were divided and randomized by an independent set of researchers not affiliated with the rest of the study. One group of women served as the control group, and they were not the objects of prayer. The other group became the object of regular intercessory prayer, although they did not know they were being prayed for.
___ All patients were treated with the same medical protocol.
___ Intercessors were enlisted in the United States, Canada and Australia to pray specifically for the women in the assigned group, although the intercessors received only photographs of the women and did not know their names or any other personal information.
___ Groups of three to 13 intercessors were given photographs of five women undergoing treatment and asked to pray for their ability to conceive.
___ Other groups of intercessors were enlisted to pray for the patients in a general way and to pray for the effectiveness of the others offering prayers.
___ Results of the fertility treatments were not reported to those conducting the prayer study until after pregnancy results were available for the entire test group.
___In the final analysis, the group of women who received the unknown prayer support had a 50 percent pregnancy rate, compared to 26 percent in the control group.
___Further, after adjusting for three spontaneous losses in each group, the group of women receiving prayer ended the study with more than double the rate of term deliveries seen in the control group. Forty-six percent of women in the prayed-for group delivered at term, compared to 22 percent of women in the group not receiving prayer.
___The study showed particular success among women over the age of 30, where more problems with pregnancy usually occur.

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