Can prayer help surgery?

The American Journal of Surgery has published a transcript of a presidential address titled, “Can prayer help surgery?“, and my first thought was that that was absolutely brilliant — some guy was roped into giving a big speech at a convention, and he picked a topic where he could stand up, say “NO,” and sit back down again. If he wanted to wax eloquent, maybe he could add a “Don’t be silly” to his one word address.

But a reader sent me a copy of this paper, and I was wrong. The author spent four pages saying “Yes”. It flies off to cloud cuckoo land in the very first sentence, which compares prayer to “chemotherapy and radiation as adjuvant therapies to surgery, working synergistically to cure cancers”, and then justifies it by pointing out that patients do internet searches for alternatives to surgery, and prayer is a popular result. So, right there in the first paragraph, we get the Argument from Extravagant Assertion and the Argument from Google. It’s not a good start.

This was given at a professional conference, though, so he has to talk about the data, and this is where it starts getting funny. He explains that there sure have been a lot of prayer studies lately, 855 in the past 15 years, and with 46 prospective randomized series in the Cochrane database, which he summarizes succinctly:

Equal healing benefit has been demonstrated whether the prayer is Hindu or Buddhist, Catholic or Protestant, Jewish or Muslim.

That’s the way to spin the data into something positive. Unfortunately, this is the happy peak of his foray into actually looking at the data, putting a cheerful universalist twist on the actual results, which he later grudgingly admits are non-existent. When they all show no benefit, that is equal benefit, after all.

Can medical science prove the benefit of prayer to im- prove the result of an operation? I refer you to the latest Cochrane review on this topic.5 This 69-page manuscript is a meta-analysis of 10 prospective randomized studies on intercessory prayer to help the efforts of modern medicine involving over 7,000 patients. Some studies in this meta- analysis showed benefit, while others did not. The conclusion of the authors was that there is no indisputable proof that intercessory prayer lowers surgical complications or improves mortality rates.

That’s the point where he should have stopped and stood down. The science has answered his question, and the answer is no. Unfortunately, this admission is at the top of page two, and he’s going to go on and on. He rants that the studies all basically suck — there can’t be good controls, people would pray for themselves, they didn’t check how devout the prayers were, and of course, that most excellent catch-all refutation, “What happens when the outcome being prayed for is not in accord with the will of God?”

The paper can be summarized so far as an argument that prayer helps because there have been a lot of studies on it, and those studies all show equal benefit, but that benefit is zero, and the studies are all bad science. How can his thesis be saved? Oh, I know: needs more anecdotes.

There is no indisputable proof that prayer can aid in healing. Those who believe do so by faith alone. I’ve seen the power of prayer work together with surgery many times firsthand. An example of this was witnessing my father-in-law miraculously survive an aortic arch dissection, outliving his surgeon by 20 years.

Wait, what? The family prayed, a skilled surgeon saved the patient, so prayer works? And also, from this one story, shouldn’t we just as reasonably conclude that prayer kills surgeons?

The rest of the paper is empty noise about how many patients want to pray and how it makes them feel better emotionally, and how the author is wonderfully open and supportive in praying with his patients. Meandering over the field of anecdote and citing his patients’ wishful thinking does not rescue his premise from the pit of rejection, I’m afraid; the only accurate answer to the question of whether prayer helps in surgery is “No, but people like to think it does.” It certainly doesn’t justify the author’s conclusion.

So, have I answered the question, “Can prayer help surgery?” While there is not conclusive scientific proof that prayer improves surgical outcomes, it certainly can help
relax an anxious preoperative patient and may help enhance the relationship between patient and surgeon. A surgeon must be comfortable with prayer to offer it. Professionalism can be maintained provided the prayer is offered in a non- confrontational manner and reflects the spirituality of the patient. Surgeons who want the best for their patients need to utilize every tool available, and to quote one of my patients, “Prayer is a powerful tool.”

Nah. Let me add a better quote: “The author is a powerful fool.” If he actually escaped unscathed from this address without being splattered by flung rubber chicken and puddin’ cups, my opinion of surgeons will be shattered.

Schroder DM (2011) Presidential Address: Can prayer help surgery? The American Journal of Surgery 201:275-278

The Brits are going to be insufferable for a while

I can tell. It’s coming. A royal heir has gotten engaged to some young woman, and there will be one of those royal weddings, and the sentimental argle-bargle in the British media will soar to new heights of fatuousness. I’ll miss most of it, fortunately, but I pity everyone in the United Kingdom who’s going to have to suffer with the royal romanticism for a while.

At least this time the Telegraph has set the bar for stupidity abysmally low, and I have no idea how anyone else willl sink lower (the fun will be in the trying, I’m sure). Someone has found a jelly bean that looks like Kate Middleton.

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I don’t know what this means. Even the candy-making machines in jelly bean factories are infatuated with tabloid press stories about the imminent wedding, and are pressing their obsessions into sugar and gelatin? Kate’s visage is so potent that speckles and spots are spontaneously rejiggering themselves to conform? Or, perhaps, credulous idiots are rife in both the public and tabloid editorial rooms?

I suggest that The Telegraph document this novel property of random dots and send a reporter/photographer to the nearest sewage treatment plant and gaze adoringly into the feculent froth until more detailed images of connubial Windsorness bubble to the surface.

So that’s what they mean by the “War on Poverty”

Minnesota is leading the way. Our Rethuglicans have figured out how to end poverty: by making it illegal to have money if you’re poor? Wait, that makes no sense.

Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month.

Lest you think our most contemptible lawmakers have no heart at all, consider that this is the generous version of their earlier plan.

This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.

I’m not sure what they’re thinking. If they’re so poor, the only way they could have any money is if they stole it from a rich guy? Or something? Maybe they’re just setting up a perfect Catch 22: now the police can roust someone who looks poor, and if they’ve got no money, send them to jail for vagrancy; if they’ve got more than $20, arrest them for possession of illegal currency.

Some people don’t believe me. Here’s the link to the proposed legislation. They want to give all benefits via a debit card so they can restrict and monitor purchases. And if this is their sole source of income, that means they’re only allowed a cash allowance of $20/month. Control, control, control.

Section 1. [256.9870] ELECTRONIC BENEFIT TRANSFER DEBIT CARD.
Subdivision 1. Electronic benefit transfer or EBT debit card. (a) Electronic
benefit transfer (EBT) debit cardholders in the general assistance program and the
Minnesota supplemental aid program under chapter 256D and programs under chapter
256J are prohibited from withdrawing cash from an automatic teller machine or receiving
cash from vendors with the EBT debit card. The EBT debit card may only be used as a debit card.
(b) Beginning July 1, 2011, cash benefits for programs listed under paragraph (a)
must be issued on a separate EBT card with the head of household’s name printed on the
card. The card must also state that “It is unlawful to use this card to purchase tobacco
products or alcoholic beverages.” This card must be issued within 30 calendar days of
an eligibility determination. During the initial 30 calendar days of eligibility, a recipient
may have cash benefits issued on an EBT card without the recipient’s name printed on the
card. This card may be the same card on which food support is issued and does not need
to meet the requirements of this section.
(c) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), EBT cardholders may opt to have up to $20
per month accessible via automatic teller machine or receive up to $20 cash back from a vendor.

I hope these people aren’t your friends

Japan has a tragic and devastating earthquake. American responses follow a range of attitudes. One that is normal and appropriate is sympathy and outreach by donations to organizations like the Red Cross; if you’re in that group, good for you, congratulations on being a human being.

Another response that is far too typical is for people to drop to their knees and start praying to their fairy-tale magic man in the sky, being about as ineffectual as is possible while still feeling smug about it. That’s human too, it’s just dumb. You don’t get congratulations for being a stupid human being, but at least you don’t make me want to disown the human race.

And then there’s a third reaction. I was sent a collage of messages posted on Facebook in the last day or so, and these make me ashamed to share a culture with these wretched people.

I may be about to ruin your morning. Don’t click on this compilation of facebook entries unless you’re one of those cynical people who already has low expectation of the worst of Americans.

And…the story from Japan has just gotten worse. There was an explosion at a nuclear power plant last night.

How do we know when the world will end?

Harold Camping has been predicting the end of the world for quite some time. He’s always been wrong, but now he is insisting absotively posilutely that the earth really will end on 21 May of this year, and he’s got teams of brainwashed, deluded followers roaming the country claiming the end is nigh.

I’ve always wondered how he comes up with his specific dates, and now here’s a short article that lays the math out for us.

According to them, Noah’s great flood occurred in the year 4990 B.C., ‘exactly’ 7000 years ago. Taking a passage from 2 Peter 3:8, in which it is said a day for God is like a thousand human years, the church reasoned that seven ‘days’ equals 7000 human years from the time of the flood, making 2011 the year of the apocalypse.

In its second ‘proof’ the exact date is revealed by working forward from the exact date of the crucifixion – April 1, 33 AD. According to their reasoning, there are exactly 722,500 days from April 1, 33 A.D. until May 21, 2011 – the alleged day of judgement. This number can be represented as follows: 5 x 10 x 17 x 5 x 10 x 17 = 722,500.

The church then argues that numbers in the bible have special meanings, with the number 5 signifying atonement or redemption, the number 10 signifying ‘completeness’ and the number 17 equalling heaven.

That is quite possibly the dumbest reason I have ever heard to throw away all of your belongings and go on the road screaming about the end of the world. I think humanity is in on some great conspiracy to forever disappoint my opinion of it.

They have funny standards of feminine beauty in Maine

The Rethuglican governor of Maine, Paul LePage, has been dismissing the health risks from Bisphenol A, an additive to plastics which is known to be an estrogen mimic. His remarks take “Not even wrong” to whole new levels of crazy:

The only thing that I’ve heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards.

Hey, I’ve heard that high densities of homeopaths and other quacks in your state gives off fumes that cause severe mental retardation in civil servants. Could it be?

Ladies of Pharyngula, who knew that if only you increased your estrogen levels a bit more, you too could sprout a lovely beard like me? I’m sure there are better ways to maximize your beauty than stuffing milk jugs in your microwave, though. I don’t recommend ever taking health advice from a Republican.

Ludicrous religious behavior compounded by altitude

Here’s some more sophisticated theology for you. “Prayer Warriors” in Colorado Springs are hopping into helicopters to fly over the city and deliver prayers from on high. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the same urge I had when hiking in the mountains in the Rockies and Cascades, and every time I stood at the edge of a high cliff, I felt a temptation to unzip and sprinkle a little shower on the objects below me. I resisted, but gullible Christians apparently lack self control.

Why do physicists think they are masters of all sciences?

If you asked me about cosmology, I’d defer to physicists — I’ve read Stenger & Hawking & Krauss & Carroll, and I might be willing to say a few generalities about what I’ve learned about the process, but I’d always say you should look to the original sources for more information.

There seem to be a lot of physicists, however, who believe they know everything there is to know about biology (it’s a minor subdivision of physics, don’t you know), and will blithely say the most awesomely stupid things about it. Here, for instance, is Michio Kaku simply babbling in reply to a question about evolution, and getting everything wrong. It’s painful to watch. This guy isn’t really an idiot, is he?

Man, he doesn’t have a clue and is just making it up as he goes along.

Fundamental error: he confuses evolution with natural selection, and thinks that if we aren’t being hunted down by sabre-toothed cats, evolution has stopped. This is wrong. We currently have reduced mortality compared to our ancestors, which suggests that we are less strongly selected in specific ways, but we are still experiencing selection — some of us have been selected for lactose tolerance in the last 10-15,000 years, for instance, and sexual selection is ongoing, and in case you hadn’t noticed, there are still diseases around that kill people.

But most importantly, reducing mortality and selection allows variants to survive, increasing the diversity of forms present in the population. You could even argue that reducing selection increases the rate of evolution. Selection is a conservative force that retains only a subset of the population for propagation into the next generation, you know.

And the rest: “gross” evolution? What the hell is that? Creationists already mangle the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution, now all I need is some half-assed third category getting peddled by the ignorant. And where does he get this idea that Australia is the product of accelerated evolution? That makes no sense at all; isolation meant the populations there evolved relatively independently of forms elsewhere, not that something goosed their mutation rates.

Oh, look: somebody in the comments asks Kaku about why we only use 20% of our brains. Let’s hope the next time he answers a reader question, he’ll tell us at length what we can do with the sleeping 80% of our brains. (I use mine for fulminating at morons, how about you?)

Actually, I’d rather he tried to answer the question in the title of this post.

Pray4PZ!

Some gomer has set up a website about prayer with a subsection dedicated to an experiment: they’re going to pray for PZ Myers. They’re rather vague about what they’re praying for, which I guess is tactically useful, since if I stay healthy or drop dead they can then claim success either way. I’m also going to confound their experiment since I’m going to tell everyone to not Pray4PZ, and since their site traffic is so minuscule, I’m going to overwhelm their results.

They also have a post titled “Can PZ Myers be reasoned with?”, which is amusing — I guess the prayer effort wasn’t doing much, so they had to resort to reason, and they even do that ineffectively.

They’ve also got an online poll, and I’m embarrassed to point it out. The subject is me again, it was set up 11 months ago, and it has received ONE vote so far. That’s just sad.

poll: Is PZ Myers the AntiChrist?

No. Obama is. : (0 votes)
No. Pat Robertson is. : (0 votes)
No. Someone else is. : (0 votes)
No. He doesn’t claim to be God. : (1 votes)
100 %
YES! YES! YES! : (0 votes)
I don’t know. : (0 votes)
Other answer: : (0 votes)

There’s a lesson here. I guess I’m not Kim Kardashian, and just dropping my name won’t make you popular and draw in lots of meaningless interest.

Now if one of the Kardashians was on that poll…

I get email

Lately I’ve been receiving a flood of messages from the anti-choice zealots. They’ve got one thing in common: they all contain lots of images of aborted fetuses, a common tactic used by these creatures to intimidate with horrible images. I’m not impressed. Here’s a representative example, with the url to yet another horror show removed.

Please read

Abortion is more than a “procedure” and it is rare that a pregnancy causes harm or death to a woman.

Maybe to better understand the murder that abortion truly is, you should study the photos in the link below. It is easy to desensitize yourself and your readers and say it’s just a procedure, and the fetus is just a “bunch of cells,” but again, I ask that you study the photos in the link below, and I hope you are sickened with the real truth- Abortion IS Murder.

  URL deleted  

Abortion is more about greed and selfishness. There are many many many families that would give anything to do a domestic adoption and offer prenatal care to a woman that did not want to keep/raise her baby.

No one says it better than Mother Teresa.

“It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you live as you wish”

I pray that you will take the time to more fully understand what abortion is, and why the option to kill our nation’s babies should not be an option at all.

Sincerely,
Sarah Dillon

Sarah Dillon is an ignorant hysteric, and she’s awesomely stupid. She couldn’t have written a letter better guaranteed to dissuade me from accepting her position.

First, never quote Mother Teresa at me — she was an evil hag who worshipped poverty, who did not help people except to encourage them to suffer more for her faith, while she lived in comfort and traveled far and wide to receive the accolades of the gullible. I would never find the words of that wicked woman persuasive.

Secondly, the standard bullying tactics of waving bloody fetuses might cow the squeamish, but I’m a biologist. I’ve guillotined rats. I’ve held eyeballs in my hand and peeled them apart with a pair of scissors. I’ve used a wet-vac to clean up a lake of half-clotted blood from an exsanguinated dog. I’ve opened bodies and watched the intestines do their slow writhing dance, I’ve been elbow deep in blood, I’ve split open cats and stabbed them in the heart with a perfusion needle. I’ve extracted the brains of mice…with a pair of pliers. I’ve scooped brains out of buckets, I’ve counted dendrites in slices cut from the brains of dead babies.

You want to make me back down by trying to inspire revulsion with dead baby pictures? I look at them unflinchingly and see meat. And meat does not frighten me.

The vilest thing in the picture is the moron waving the sign and thinking they’re making an argument.