The power of prayer?

Though this entry is about a sportsman, it's not about sport. No doubt, even if you have no interest in football, you'll be aware of what befell young Fabrice Muamba, the Bolton Wanderers footballer, during a game at Spurs a few days back.

It is, of course, wonderful to see him apparently recovering and doing so well, as a football fan and just out of common humanity. But one thing about his case has disappointed me hugely. A few details need filling in, just in case you're not familiar with them.

The 23-year-old had a heart attack on the pitch, collapsing face down, unconscious, unresponsive, not breathing. He was treated for some time on the pitch by some half dozen paramedics, and a heart specialist, Dr Andrew Deaner, who happened to be in the crowd and ran onto the pitch. The game was abandoned of course, the other players in tears, and he was taken to hospital with his heart evidently not beating of its own accord. In fact, it seems that, according to one of the specialists who treated him, he was effectively dead for 78 minutes, and his heart did not beat unaided for two hours. He was given no fewer than 15 separate shocks from the defibrillator, none of which restarted his heart.

The fact that he is now, just a few days later, conscious, speaking to people, moving his limbs and apparently recovering, is scarcely believable. So incredible, in fact, that his recovery seems to have been put down to nothing less than divine intervention. In this most secular (fortunately) of countries, suddenly a rash of imprecations from all around to pray for the lad. If his immediate family and friends draw comfort from this during his suffering, that's a good thing for them, of course. But the headlines in some of the tabloids reflect a baffling race to give credit for his recovery to the man upstairs.

'It's in God's hands', boomed one paper during the early stages of his treatment, quoting his family. And as he improved, 'All your prayers are working. To God be the glory', his fiancee wrote on Twitter. Now, I understand that the people who actually saved his life, the medical staff on scene and the heart specialists at the London Chest Hospital, do their jobs because they want to help people and are doubtless getting a job satisfaction from his case that the rest of us will probably never fully appreciate.

But this removal of the credit from them and placing it into the hands of some deity is taking faith to the point where it does them a singular disservice. Where was the glory to them? Where was the 'All their hard work and dedication is working'? If his recovery thus far is a miracle, it is one of modern medicine, and of the enormous hard work, skill and dedication of the medical people who didn't give up on him when they might have done.

The only power of prayer as far as I can see it is that it makes the people offering them feel better. They must alleviate a sense of helplessness, of an inability to do something when you desperately want to. But if it's all down to God, all down to prayer, why bother with the medical care in the first place? If it's the prayers, would the faithful leave the man in bed, not worry about actually treating him and just let prayers do their 'work', given the choice? Exactly how much faith in prayer is there here, compared to a trust in medical expertise? I sincerely hope that, when this remarkable story hopefully ends with him walking out of hospital fully recovered and with a smile on his face, that same family also remember to thank publicly the remarkable medical people who should have praise and gratitude heaped upon them. Drs Deaner, Tobin, and all the other medical staff who saved the man's life, to you be the glory.