Case Report of gastroparesis healing: 16 years of a chronic syndrome resolved after proximal intercessory prayer

Can you be cured if the doctor disagrees? A case study of 27 prayer healing reports evaluated by a medical assessment team in the Netherlands

THE SETTING: between 2015 and 2020 a medical assessment team evaluated 27 reports of prayer healing in the Netherlands.

OBJECTIVES

Three research questions were formulated. What are the medical and experiential findings? Are there medically remarkable and/or unexplained healings? Which explanatory frameworks can help us understand the findings?

METHODS

The reported healings were analyzed using both medical files and patient narratives, as part of a case study research design compiled by a multidisciplinary research team. An independent team of five medical consultants, representing different fields of expertise, evaluated the 27 case files. According to criteria these were selected from a larger group of 83 received reports. Experiential data was obtained by in-depth interviews and analyzed. Instances of healing could be classified as 'medically remarkable' or 'medically unexplained'. Subsequent analysis was transdisciplinary.

RESULTS

Eleven of the 27 healings assessed were evaluated as 'medically remarkable', none were labelled as 'medically unexplained'. Recurring characteristics were common to some degree in all healings, whether 'medically remarkable' or not: a temporal connection with prayer, instantaneity and unexpectedness of healing, strong emotional and physical manifestations, and a sense of 'being overwhelmed' and transformed. The healings were invariably interpreted as acts of God. Positive effects have persisted for 5 to 33 years, with 2 relapses.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings on remarkable healings do not fit well in the traditional biomedical conceptual framework. All healings exhibited important non-medical aspects, whether or not they were assessed as medically remarkable. We need a broader multi-perspective approach in which all relevant data is considered to be valuable, both experiential and objective. This so-called horizontal epistemology may be helpful when trying to understand the findings, and it may bring about mutual understanding between patients, health practitioners and relevant disciplines.

Three cases of hearing impairment with surprising subjective improvements after prayer. What can we say when analyzing them?

AIM

to enhance the understanding of documented mismatches between 'subjective' experiences and 'objective' data in three cases of self-reported instantaneous healing of hearing impairment upon prayer.

METHOD

description of three cases taken out of a larger retrospective case-based study of prayer healing in the Netherlands. In this larger study multiple reported healings were investigated using both medical files and patients' narratives through in-depth interviews. A subset of three cases with dramatic subjective reduction of hearing impairment upon prayer was studied. These patients underwent extensive additional investigations at the audiology center of the Amsterdam University Medical Centre. All data was evaluated by an interdisciplinary medical assessment team, subsequent analysis was transdisciplinary.

RESULTS

the three case histories with self-reported healing after prayer demonstrated a clear mismatch between subjective experiences and objective findings. No measurable improvements were found in four different audiological testing methods. However, in-depth interviews, hetero-anamnesis and a validated questionnaire all confirmed the healings. The medical assessment team could not label these healings as 'medically remarkable' because of absence of measurable 'objective' changes, but they did consider them as 'remarkable in a broader sense'. On expert consultation no equivalents of mismatches to this extent could be found. The healing experiences of our participants involved their entire being with profound positive effects in different domains of their lives, and a perception of a benevolent God who acted upon them. There was a distinctive pattern, labelled by the participants as a healing of mind, soul and body.

CONCLUSIONS

The subjective-objective incongruities that were found were not well understood. We noticed a paradox: the 'objective' measurements did not reflect hearing abilities in daily life where-as 'subjective experiential' data did. The latter could be 'objectified' and validated in various ways. In fact, a rigid distinction between 'objective' and 'subjective' was not relevant here, nor a hierarchy among them. A model leaving room for different causations (horizontal epistemology) complied best with the multi dimensionality we came across.

Case report of instantaneous resolution of juvenile macular degeneration blindness after proximal intercessory prayer

An 18-year-old female lost the majority of her central vision over the course of three months in 1959. Medical records from 1960 indicate visual acuities (VA) of less than 20/400 for both eyes corresponding to legal blindness. On fundus examination of the eye there were dense yellowish-white areas of atrophy in each fovea and the individual was diagnosed with juvenile macular degeneration (JMD). In 1971, another examination recorded her uncorrected VA as finger counting on the right and hand motion on the left. She was diagnosed with macular degeneration (MD) and declared legally blind. In 1972, having been blind for over 12 years, the individual reportedly regained her vision instantaneously after receiving proximal-intercessory-prayer (PIP). Subsequent medical records document repeated substantial improvement; including uncorrected VA of 20/100 in each eye in 1974 and corrected VAs of 20/30 to 20/40 were recorded from 2001 to 2017. To date, her eyesight has remained intact for forty-seven years.