Primary Children’s Hospital participates in many multi-institutional cancer studies for new chemotherapy drugs or combinations of drugs. PCH’s participation is interesting because we can observe the effect of the many priesthood blessings that are given there. The participation of multiple institutions in cancer studies is needed in order to get the number of patients required to detect small differences between treatments. The participating medical institutions are commonly a combination of religious and non-religious, and can number only a few or more than a dozen.

All newly admitted LDS patients at PCH are visited on the first evening of their hospitalization and asked if they want a blessing. This is an actual church calling. It was one of my callings 20 years ago when I was in a university student ward. It seemed that over half of patients wanted one, whether or not they already had a blessing from someone else. I gave about 6-10 a night, and this must have been a fraction of all of the blessings given there. The cancer wards were very sad, but inspirational.

It is important that medical studies are controlled for variables such as type of tumor, extent of spread, age and co-morbid conditions. This must be done in order to compare apples to apples. This presents an interesting opportunity to test the power of prayer, particularly priesthood blessings.

Does the data show that we need to take into account whether or not the patient had a priesthood blessing? No. How about whether the care was given at a religious medical center? No.

There is no difference in outcomes for the children who receive blessings or are treated at a religion-affiliated medical center. How can we be sure? As you would expect, when there is a significant difference in outcomes between participating institutions the matter is looked to meticulously until the difference can be explained. If one institution is doing something better everyone else wants to know.

When the same treatment is given to similar patients with the same type of cancer those who were given blessings do no better. If this weren’t the case PCH would stand out and the academic world would have noticed by now.
If priesthood blessings really worked cancer studies at PCH would demonstrate it, but they don’t.

PCH is no longer run by the mormon church, but being in Utah, it's understandable that they are swarming with mormons who want blessings.

While it might not be scientifically productive, I would never begrudge a parent who asks for a blessing for his or her sick child. My heart goes out to anyone in that situation.

Agreed. The blessing is more for the family than for the afflicted.

Anything that provides comfort. . .

I doubt that anybody will ever conduct a rigorous blind study of the effectiveness of priesthood blessings. I pretty obviously don't believe that they amount to much.

But I don't think blessings are worthless either. Not because Elohim is sitting on a cloud somewhere just waiting for some super awesome worthy priesthood holder to make the difference by saying a few magic words. But the mind is a funny thing. I easily could believe that having emotional support and caring friends could make an improvement in survival and remission rates. So there's that.

There are things that I miss about the church. Not enough to ever want to go back. But I never really fully replaced the support or community that came from the church. I think having a tangible reminder of the support and love of other church members is the one positive thing that comes from priesthood blessings.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2018 01:26AM by Strength in the Loins.