Faculty Bibliography

Prayer can be the most generous, open, solemn and thoughtful form of human expression. Faith that a prayer might enlist God's help to heal someone is about as universal a religious experience as there is. When medicine fails and science reaches its end, a physician would have to be pretty callous to scorn the faith of patients and their families

Harvard researchers and the John Templeton Foundation, a philanthropy devoted to bridging the gap between science and religion, recently poured nine years and $2.4 million into the most comprehensive study to date of the power of prayer for the sick. They wanted to see whether prayer by strangers, sometimes called "intercessory prayer," would increase the chances that people got better or had fewer problems as they healed

Caplan comments on whether there is really anything wrong with using medicine and biological engineering to modify one's brain and body to improve or enhance them

"Miracle Workers," which airs Monday nights on ABC, offers the services of so-called miracle doctors to people with horrible medical problems. The show's Web site says that the program is an example of the network's "tradition of developing reality programming that makes impossible dreams come true."