The far side: ok, so prayer can work, but after the fact . . .?

There are plenty of studies around to suggest that prayer can quicken a patient's recovery. If you accept the current non-quantum space/time paradigm, this alone is a remarkable fact, and would suggest that the space between us all is far from empty.

But Dr Larry Dossey, who researches the effects of prayer, is positing an even more extraordinary theory: that prayer can also influence past events. This suggests that you can intend (or pray) for a better outcome for something whose outcome would appear to be determined - and still influence it.

He quotes in support a study carried out by Leibovici, published in the British Medical Journal in 2001 (BMJ, 2001; 323: 1450-1). Leibovici enlisted 3393 patients who were prayed for between four and 10 years later. While the mortality levels were similar in the group prayed for and the one not prayed for, those who were prayed for actually left hospital sooner - even though they were prayed for up to 10 years later. (I know, it's hard to get your head around this. Imagine what it's like trying to write it).

How can this be? Dossey suggests that we really don't know enough about the way the universe functions, or our own consciousness, to answer that. Physicists don't know how time operates, and they are equally clueless about consciousness so 'dismissing retroactive prayer, which involves both, seems premature,' says Dossey.

(Source: British Medical Journal, 2003; 327: 1465-8).