The Reason Healthcare Reform Will Never Pass

By nature, I am a philosopher. I suppose some would suggest the manifestation of this inclination would be cold, unfeeling, and heartless, and if I am to be honest, my feelings may not be felt as intensely as the next person, as I look to analyze each moment, rather than to fully experience it. While I cannot completely remove the feelings and emotions common to all human beings, it seems rather apparent to me, I weigh in more on the critical side rather than the emotional side. I don't concern myself with pain and suffering, for such things are a given in this mortal world. Rather I seek to understand motivations, underlying causes of behavior, and why people do what they do, individually and in groups. While this entails the observation of emotion, it does not require me to share that emotion, and the choice to indulge emotional stirrings is strictly up to me.

I admit upfront, that's probably a rare perception, as most people gawk at me with bewilderment and despair. It is only natural to embrace emotions, only natural to feel the world around you, physically and spiritually, guided by your intellect. It is only natural to feel the pain of a crying child, a lost Alzheimer's patient, or a mother seeing her child in distress. Emotions are natural, and human beings indulge them to their fullest extent.

However problems occur when emotions begin to cloud, and perhaps override, the intellect.

Many people believe in the power of prayer, and the healing it may offer, many people believe in medical science as the best means to heal what is wrong. Most Americans occupy the middle ground and want it all, to believe in our various Gods, and to believe in the so called miracles of medicine. We want to cheer the strides of science and still humble ourselves on the Sabbath. We want access to MRIs and divine miracles alike. We want debates about issues like stem cell research without conceding the positions are so intrinsically inimical as to make discussion fruitless.

This is the reason healthcare reform will never pass, because there will constantly be a divide and conflict between those seeking to discuss the topic intellectually, and those unable to discuss the issue without emotional strings and input.

But things may be changing.

Twenty faith healers were recruited by Dr. Elisabeth Targ, clinical director of psychosocial oncology research at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. These faith healers took part in a clinical test to measure the effects of faith healing.

The experiment, involves twenty severely ill AIDS patients randomly selected. Half the patients were prayed for by the faith healers, the other half were the control group, and the patients were not told if they were being prayed. Targ hasn't published her results yet, but she describes them as "encouraging" enough to warrant a larger, follow-up study with 100 AIDS patients.

This type of experiment would have been unthinkable just a generation ago, as Western medicine has sought to rid itself of it's past, filled with mysticism and "voodoo." While such experiments aren't de rigueur in today's medical world, there does seem to be a shift in the medical community that is beginning to acknowledge there may be more to health than blood-cell counts and EKGs, and more to healing than pills and scalpels.

"People, a growing number of them, want to examine the connection between healing and spirituality," says Jeffrey Levin, a gerontologist and epidemiologist at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. To do such research, he adds, "is no longer professional death." Medical schools are adding courses on holistic and alternative medicine, including faith based healing.

This sea change in the attitude of medical professionals comes at a time when patients are demanding alternative treatments for their chronic problems. Many patients have lost faith in the high-tech version of modern Western medicine, and seek a more personal, spiritual approach to health and healing. Chronic illnesses, often induced by stress and life-style, such as high blood pressure, backaches, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, depression and acute illnesses that become chronic, such as cancer and AIDS, are good candidates to test the water with some faith. Traditional forms of treatment seem to be leaving patients alienated, and uncared for by the very people ostensibly saving their lives.

"Anywhere from 60% to 90% of visits to doctors are in the mind-body, stress-related realm," asserts Dr. Herbert Benson, president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute of Boston's Deaconess Hospital and Harvard Medical School, but, notes Benson, "traditional modes of therapy--pharmaceutical and surgical--don't work well against them."

More than 200 studies on the role of religion have been conducted over the last few years. Most of these studies offer evidence that religion is good for one's health. Some highlights:

--A 1995 study at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center found that one of the best predictors of survival among 232 heart-surgery patients was the degree to which the patients said they drew comfort and strength from religious faith. Those who did not had more than three times the death rate of those who did.

--A survey of 30 years of research on blood pressure showed that churchgoers have lower blood pressure than nonchurchgoers--5 mm lower, according to Larson, even when adjusted to account for smoking and other risk factors.

--Other studies have shown that men and women who attend church regularly have half the risk of dying from coronary-artery disease as those who rarely go to church. Again, smoking and socioeconomic factors were taken into account.

--A 1996 National Institute on Aging study of 4,000 elderly living at home in North Carolina found that those who attend religious services are less depressed and physically healthier than those who don't attend or who worship at home.

--In a study of 30 female patients recovering from hip fractures, those who regarded God as a source of strength and comfort and who attended religious services were able to walk farther upon discharge and had lower rates of depression than those who had little faith.

--Numerous studies have found lower rates of depression and anxiety-related illness among the religiously committed. Nonchurchgoers have been found to have a suicide rate four times higher than church regulars.

Do the faithful actually have God on their side? Are their prayers answered? A true scientist, insists Jeffrey Levin, cannot dismiss this possibility: "I can't directly study that, but as an honest scholar, I can't rule it out."

One of the most famous, or infamous examples, depending on your point of view, is a 1988 study by cardiologist Randolph Byrd at San Francisco General Hospital. Byrd took 393 patients in the coronary-care unit and randomly assigned half to be prayed for by born-again Christians. The patients were not told of the experiment. The control group, not prayed for, was five times as likely to need antibiotics and three times as likely to develop complications as those who were prayed for.

A poll conducted by TIME/CNN of 1,004 Americans found 82% believed in the healing power of prayer and 64% thought doctors should pray with those patients who request it. Yet few doctors are comfortable with the role of shaman. "We physicians are culturally insensitive about the role of religion," says David Larson, noting that fewer than two-thirds of doctors say they believe in God. "It is very important to many of our patients and not important to lots of doctors."

"The combination of forces--consumer demand and the economic collapse of medicine--are very powerful influences that are making medicine suddenly open to this direction," observes Andrew Weil, a Harvard-trained doctor and author of Spontaneous Healing.

Will faith one day play a larger role in Western medicine? Only time will tell. The indications are good things will change, must change, to reflect the wishes of the consumer. I find this heartening. 

*Suggested Reading:
Francis Collins has been the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute since 1993; he headed a multinational 2,400-scientist team that co-mapped the 3 billion biochemical letters of our genetic blueprint. Collins continues to lead his institute in studying the genome and mining it for medical breakthroughs. He is also a forthright Christian who converted from atheism at age 27 and now finds time to advise young evangelical scientists on how to declare their faith in science's largely agnostic upper reaches. His best seller in 2006 was, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press.) Follow this link for some wise words from Francis Collins, taken from a debate in 2006, with fellow scientist and agnostic, Richard Dawkins.