December 8, 2007.
DROUGHT AND THE POWER OF PRAYER. PART 2.

Well it’s been almost a month since I wrote wrote about the governor of my home state of Georgia, Sonny Perdue, leading the state legislature in a prayer for rain, and after that I actually got my pants wet driving around Atlanta in my convertible with a leaky roof. Guess it serves me right for spoofing the governor and his prayerful friends. Who knows, maybe those prayer people had an effect. The local paper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, seems to have made a field day out of it. Looks like they were lacking content for their ‘Faith and Values’ section. I mean, until the rapture comes, or the Mormons find incontrovertible proof that Jesus really did go to Utah, what kind of “news” can there be in the world of religion? So the AJC worked the prayer and drought thing for all that its worth. They got comments from the local preachers, priests, rabbis, and Buddhist monks, about whether it was appropriate to pray for rain and whether they were asking their congregations to do it. The faiths have come up with a variety of creative ways to squeeze liquid from the skies. Hindus came up with a special chant. At the direction of the local Archbishop, every week the Catholics read out “rain” as one of the things to pray for, followed by a “Lord, hear our prayer,” from the congregation. It seems that from the Buddhist corner that there was a feeling that meditation by the monks on this topic might help liquid manna fall from the skies. And in the Baptists corner there seems to be fairly unanimous opinion that the earthly thoughts of the parishioners will convince the Lord Almighty to shower us with his beneficence. This month’s showers were seen as evidence that this was the case. On the docket was a joint prayer service with the Methodists. Gonna bring their umbrellas as an expression of faith.

Even though my fellow Atlantans have been praying away, though, it hasn’t done much good. You see after that one time I wet my pants we haven’t had a drop of rain. Atlantans continue sucking water right out of Lake Lanier though, their principle source of drinking water. Picking up old tires and broken refrigerators off the dried up bed of post).

I think it is fine for people to pray/meditate/dance/convulse/transcend, or whatever they want to do to get themselves to a better place. But I think that those people who are folding up their hands in prayer to a personal God to open up the heavens and let rain fall on their pointed heads are simply ridiculous.

You see there is a scientific consensus that planet Earth (you live there too? How cool!) is gradually warming up, and that this warming processes will cause changes in weather patterns throughout the world, including droughts. Normally in Georgia during the summertime the heat and humidity builds up throughout the day until late afternoon when we have some real doozy rain storms with lots of thunder ‘n lighting. Didn’t have a single one of those this summer. Sonny and the prayer people were only able to squeeze out of the skies two days of steady drizzle that looked more like my native Seattle. Hardly satisfying. And nothing since then. So the obvious conclusion is that climate change is behind the Georgia drought. OK not only Red State problem. Blue State people listen up. You are burning up out there in California. Literally. And for us to ask Jehovah to make things all better after we have pooped in our own room is absurd. I say better to use prayer/meditation/dance/convulsion/transcendence to make us all better able to be good stewards of Planet Earth, that was given to us by God/Yahweh/GreatSpirit/Osiris/BigBang/Whatever.

I actually like the views from the spiritual leaders of Atlanta’s Muslim and Jewish faiths better than what the Hindus/Buddhists/Baptists/Catholics had to say.

Plemon Al-Amin, the prayer leader at Masjid of Al-Islam in Atlanta said, “Because the Quran was first revealed in Arabia, there were always challenges in terms of rain. And we do actually have rain prayers.

“But we want to make sure everybody is already in the frame of mind of conserving. Because it's problematic when you are asking for something and not making proper use of what you already have.”

Rabbi Shalom Lewis of Etz Chaim of Atlanta, said, “I teach the efficacy of prayer is to inspire us, and it gives us a sense that we are participants in what goes on this planet and on this earth.

“And we also recognize that we pray to God for our ability to know what is right or wrong and how to deal with the limited bounty we have.”

My point exactly. Rather than looking to miracles from heaven, why don’t we use prayer/meditation to help us learn how to transform ourselves to that we can use the resources of Planet Earth in a sustainable way, cuz it is going to have to start with us, since our government doesn’t seem to be playing a leadership role in this regard.

I’ll leave you with the example of the Rain Man of Atlanta, who doesn’t use the government’s water supply, but has an abundance of supply from his own rain barrels. He’s thinking about building a hot tub. I’m gonna say a prayer for him.

 December 7, 2007.
 November 14, 2007.
DROUGHT AND THE POWER OF PRAYER

Well it’s been quite a week here but “another rainy night in Georgia” doesn’t exactly describe it. You see for you Huffpost readers in the Blue States who don’t think much about us poor Southerners, we are having a hell of a drought. And it is bad enough that they stopped teaching evolution in Georgia public schools (that whole “monkey to man buzzword thing”, which caused me to yank my kids from public schools), I had to wake up Tuesday to hear our governor, Sonny Purdue (how come someone with a name like Sonny get elected to public office anyway? Oh, I forgot for a minute that I live in Georgia), leading the legislature in a prayer for rain.

I mean, for Christ’s sake (no pun intended), why doesn’t he get off his ass and do something about it? I mean, we have a month’s worth of drinking water left, there is a total ban on watering, and some towns in the mountains are having to get their drinking water hauled in by truck every day. Last mOnth a plan to build a mountain of artificial snow at Stone Mountain Park here led to outrage when it got on the front page of the Atlanta Journal Constitution. You see, it’s legal, since the Georgia legislature passed a law that says you can use as much water as you want if you are a business. And on Thursday people blew their tops when they learned that one Cobb County man named Chris Carlos was using 14,700 gallons of water per day for his personal residence. His publicist commented that he only recently learned of the severity of the water crisis, and was taking steps to cut back.

I mean, HELLO? My environmental terrorist daughter won’t even let me keep the water running when washing dishes. The other day she turned the water off when I was filling up a pot to cook pasta. So come on Sonny, rather than sitting there praying, why don’t you take a leadership role and pass some damn laws to prevent such outrages from taking place. Stop going around like Moses and puffing your chest in turf battles with Alabama and Florida about how much water is going to be released from Georgia rivers to those states.

So what is the first thought that crosses the mind of you readers upon hearing about our wonderful governor praying for rain? Of course! Is there any evidence for the value of prayer? My first thought as well. And since this is supposed to be a blog about medical news and not about water politics, I set about to dutifully review the literature for you on the question. And after my trip to the virtual medical library, much to my surprise I found several studies to support the value of remote intercessory prayer (prayer by people that don’t know you), both in improving outcomes and reducing length of stay for heart disease patients and patients with infections.

However, upon reading the commentaries by my fellow scientists on the studies I became increasingly confused. If prayer really was efficacious, was it ethical to withhold prayer from anyone? And what if a patient is a Muslim, is it ethical and appropriate for a Christian to pray for them without their consent? Do the studies prove that God exists? There were also a lot of methodology problems as well, like too many statistical tests performed. To be honest the effects were small (2%) and not clear enough for me to make a conclusion. But what stopped me in my tracks was reading about the design of one of the studies. You see, they had done the prayer over four years after the person got out of the hospital. And their mutton-headed logic was that you couldn’t assume that God had a linear approach to time, therefore when the prayer took place shouldn’t matter. As one of the commentators said (not a scientist, to his credit), does that mean I can pray to have the will changed from my aunt who died five years ago? I mean, I had to call in to question the sanity of people who would design a study in such a way. However if you were a true believer, why not?

I think I am hearing some raindrops falling outside…

Doug Bremner, MD, is a physician
and researcher in Atlanta GA
and author of Before You Take That Pill:
Why the Drug Industry May be
Bad for Your Health

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