Double blind experiments
lots of medical procedures have never been double blind tested. It is
very hard to double blind test surgical procedures so many never have
been. But all drugs, and some other medical techniques, are subjected
to empirical testing as the means to discover whether they work. What
is a double blind test. Well it involves a number of groups of people
those who design the experiment and publish the results, those
involved in randomising the patients used in the study to ensure
those chosen for the drug or a placebo are truly chosen by chance,
then there are the patients themselves who should have signed consent
forms to take part in the study; then there are the nurses who
administer the drugs or the placebo. Those who actually administer
the drugs will not know whether they are the drug or a placebo
and this is why it is a double blind trial as both the patients and
the therapists are blind they dont know who is getting which
treatment, the drug or the placebo. When the results come in they are
collated and only at that point do those involved in the study put
together the information, held in different data banks, about which
patients have received the drug or the placebo. When the results show
a statistical improvement in the patients who received the drug over
the placebo and of course there is a placebo effect so it is
possible that the placebo patients will also have shown some
improvement over a control group receiving neither the drug nor the
placebo then the drug is on the way to being licensed for
therapeutic use in hospitals around the world, or at least in those
hospitals which can afford to buy it at the price the drug companies
market it at.
In Duke University Medical School there is a cardiology specialists and a practice nurse who visited a hospital run by the Sai Baba foundation in India in which worship, prayer, healing were all central to the life of the hospital. This led them to question aspects of the technological medical model they were pursuing in North Carolina. They also had results from their own cardiology unit which they were surprised by in most cardiology units in the West procedures such as angioplasty typically result in complications and post-op conditions in around 3o per cent of patients whereas they were only seeing such problems in 3 per cent of patients. Durham is in the heart of the Southern Bible Belt of the East United States and they speculated that their very low level of post-op complications might be a consequence of the larger number of people undergoing the procedure who were being prayed for by church congregations and relatives in the area. But suspicion is not enough in the medical world. Scientists do not rest their confidence in belief - they want empirically verifiable results. So they set about devising a double blind randomised experiment in prayer involving 750 patients in total and 12 prayer groups around the world, and later on, another 12 prayer groups to pray for the prayers.
The results that came in were not as exciting as they had hoped. There seemed to be no difference in outcome between those who were prayed for and those who were not prayed for. However there was a statistically significant difference in the latter period of the study when they introduced the prayers for the prayer groups in effect doubling the dose. The double dose prayed for patients had 30% better outcomes than those who were not prayed for. When asked why those who were prayed for in a single dose were not healed the Carmelite sister in one group said well it is not so much that we necessarily expect God every time to physically heal a person but we do expect God to meet the person where they are in their disease, and help them along the way, give them peace, relieve their anxiety even if the end of the journey is death. Death is not after all separation from God but the opposite.
The story of Bartimaeus is also a story about double blindness. Bartimaeus thinks he knows what he needs to see again. But many people who are physically blind, at least in our culture, lead good lives, contribute to the community, care for children, hold down important jobs. Did he need to see? Or did he need to follow Jesus did he need to become the disciple of the Messiah. The disciples who are with Jesus are blind to this man and his needs they did not see him just as society did not see him. The blind in Palestine in those days were beggars, on the margins, on the edge God was said to have punished them for some terrible sin and they were outcast, they had no proper place among the people of God and among upright citizens. They were therefore forced to beg. But the disciples are blind in another way as well they have been following this man Jesus for upwards of 24 months now and they still do not know who he really is. Some are following him because he works miracles, others because he is popular with the crowds and following him is a lot more interesting than mending fishing nets and makes them a lot more popular than their past lives as tax collectors or money changers. Others are following him because they hope he will lead a revolution against the Roman Empire and the collaborators the Jewish rulers who act as proxy for the Romans oppressing the people under Roman rule and collecting taxes on behalf of the Romans. The disciples and the people who come to hear Jesus do not really see who he is they do not see him as the Son of God, the suffering servant, the lamb who will be slain. They want a worldly Messiah who will rescue the Jewish people from Roman rule.
Bartimaeus is also double blind he needs to see but he too, like the disciples needs above all to see God in Jesus, and to able to redirect his life to follow him. In hailing Jesus as Son of David he shows his hearts true desire and as God meets the desire which is in his heart, his other needs his physical deficiency are also made good.
Western medicine encourages us to see our bodies as machines we dont connect our emotions, our spiritual lives with the messages we get from our bodies. I was struck by this last weekend when T Blair had a fairly serious heart condition but the next day worked 12 hours and flew to Northern Ireland for a public relations disaster and gave a speech when he looked frankly pretty world weary and ill. Why was he not listening to his body he is trying to run everything himself from Downing Street. More than any previous PM more even than M Thatcher. He keeps himself awake at night with caffeine just so he can keep on top of all the briefs he is trying to control. His body sends him a warning but he ignores it. This is not a good model of leadership and it is not a good way to run a government or a society and it is not good for his body-soul, or for the soul of the nation to have this kind of top down control freak management style as the model for the nation illness for many comes from a sense of life being out of control, of having no power, of ones sense of self being denied by managers or partners or even children who seem to take life and dignity and control from us rather than share it with us.
Prayer is the answer we so often say this. Do we believe it? Our culture does not encourage us to believe in prayer we spend less time doing it than any predecessor culture or civilisation in human history and we are mentally, though certainly not physically, less well, less whole than any previous human era if the figures for mental illness, depression, drug dependency are to be believed. Prayer involves not just asking for things but seeing things in a new way it involves not just intercession but vision. Holiness is not just about not sinning it is a quality we encounter in certain people who are people of prayer. When we meet them we perhaps see in their eyes a quality which enables them to see into the depths, a stillness which we find very attractive though perhaps also a little scary, and when they speak they speak words of wisdom, though perhaps fewer words than the rest of us are accustomed to speak. The life of prayer sounds like a life for contemplatives, monks those with time and no sense. But truly it is those of us living in the real world who are losing our senses prayer awakens us to all the levels of reality that the modern technologically ordered form of life closes down to us it helps us to see to see Christ in the stranger and the marginalised those who like Bartimaeus our society rejects; to hear what our bodies are saying to us when we get ill or stressed; to discern what the signs of stress that the earth is giving out in extreme climate events or polluted skies or shrinking fish stocks; to realise that underneath all the anxieties and stresses of daily life there is another deeper reality of peace and joy and love that at the deepest level these qualities are stronger, far more all-pervasive than our daily lives, or the stories of our culture let us imagine.
Prayer lets make more time for it. IT is not selfish, it is not monkish it puts us in touch with the Spirit who breathes the life of all life. And it is not just prayer which asks though there is plenty of evidence, if we needed it that prayer for the sick does indeed work and is our Christian duty. But it is also the prayer of quiet, the prayer of the heart. When we go deep into ourselves in the time of quiet through a breath prayer and a simple mantra such as Jesus Son of God Have Mercy on Me a Sinner or the gift of tongues or one word such as Peace, Jesus, or Spirit we encounter that deeper level of reality that Bartimaeus touched when he was inspired to acknowledge Jesus as the Son of God. May God touch you, inspire you, open your inner eyes to your deepest needs and may God fill you with his presence as you make time and space for the prayer of quiet this week.