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Beau Perkins

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans.


Patricia Loder lost her 5-year-old son, Stephen, and 8-year-old daughter, Stephanie, in a car accident in 1991.

An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors "need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle."

More than half of randomly surveyed adults -- 57 percent -- said God's intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand that treatment continue.

When asked to imagine their own relatives being gravely ill or injured, nearly 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a hopeless outcome.

"Sensitivity to this belief will promote development of a trusting relationship" with patients and their families, according to researchers. That trust, they said, is needed to help doctors explain objective, overwhelming scientific evidence showing that continued treatment would be worthless.

Pat Loder, a Milford, Michigan, woman whose two young children were killed in a 1991 car crash, said she clung to a belief that God would intervene when things looked hopeless.

"When you're a parent and you're standing over the body of your child who you think is dying ... you have to have that" belief, Loder said.

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While doctors should be prepared to deal with those beliefs, they also shouldn't "sugarcoat" the truth about a patient's condition, Loder said.

Being honest in a sensitive way helps family members make excruciating decisions about whether to let dying patients linger, or allow doctors to turn off life-prolonging equipment so that organs can be donated, Loder said.

Loder was driving when a speeding motorcycle slammed into the family's car. Both children were rushed unconscious to hospitals, and Loder says she believes doctors did everything they could. They were not able to revive her 5-year-old son; soon after her 8-year-old daughter was declared brain dead.

She said her beliefs about divine intervention have changed.

"I have become more of a realist," she said. "I know that none of us are immune from anything."

Loder was not involved in the survey, which appears in Monday's Archives of Surgery.

It involved 1,000 U.S. adults randomly selected to answer questions by telephone about their views on end-of-life medical care. They were surveyed in 2005, along with 774 doctors, nurses and other medical workers who responded to mailed questions.

Survey questions mostly dealt with untimely deaths from trauma such as accidents and violence. These deaths are often particularly tough on relatives because they are more unexpected than deaths from lingering illnesses such as cancer, and the patients tend to be younger.

Dr. Lenworth Jacobs, a University of Connecticut surgery professor and trauma chief at Hartford Hospital, was the lead author.

He said trauma treatment advances have allowed patients who previously would have died at the scene to survive longer. That shift means hospital trauma specialists "are much more heavily engaged in the death process," he said.

Jacobs said he frequently meets people who think God will save their dying loved one and who want medical procedures to continue.

"You can't say, 'That's nonsense.' You have to respect that" and try to show them X-rays, CAT scans and other medical evidence indicating death is imminent, he said.

Relatives need to know that "it's not that you don't want a miracle to happen, it's just that is not going to happen today with this patient," he said.

Families occasionally persist, and hospitals have gone to court seeking to stop medical treatment doctors believe is futile, but such cases are quite rare.

Dr. Michael Sise, trauma medical director at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, called the study "a great contribution" to one of the most intense issues doctors face.

Sise, a Catholic doctor working in a Catholic hospital, said miracles don't happen when medical evidence shows death is near.

"That's just not a realistic situation," he said.

Sise recalled a teenager severely injured in a gang beating who died soon afterward at his hospital.

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The mother "absolutely did not want to withdraw" medical equipment despite the severity of her child's brain injuries, which ensured she would never wake up, Sise said. "The mom was playing religious tapes in the room, and obviously was very focused on looking for a miracle."

Claudia McCormick, a nurse and trauma program director at Duke University Hospital, said she also has never seen that kind of miracle. But her niece's recovery after being hit by a boat while inner-tubing earlier this year came close.

The boat backed into her and its propeller "caught her in the side of the head. She had no pulse when they pulled her out of the water," McCormick said.

Doctors at the hospital where she was airlifted said "it really doesn't look good." And while it never reached the point where withdrawing lifesaving equipment was discussed, McCormick recalled one of her doctors saying later: '"God has plans for this child. I never thought she'd be here."'

Like many hospitals, Duke uses a team approach to help relatives deal with dying trauma victims, enlisting social workers, grief counselors and chaplains to work with doctors and nurses.

If the family still says, "We just can't shut that machine off, then, you know what, we can't shut that machine off," McCormick said.

"Sometimes," she said, "you might have a family that's having a hard time and it might take another day, and that's OK."

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Richie Waves

Well UFO's and Evolution are like neck and neck in terms of people believing it in the US too..

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My lastfm

It's not trouble until its wreaked something

Brodie Landar

didnt you hear that bigfoot is fucking real richie?!?!?! what the fu*k man. now every country bumpkin in the world is validated

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Richie Waves

Oh yea.. I've seen the photo's!!

I WANT TO BELIEVE!!

Beau Perkins

Complicated topic for me. Because I beleive I have seen miracles. In my church I have seen people cured of cancer, Lupis, Brain Tumors and even Breast Cancer just disapear (Happened to Ash a year after my own fight with cancer)

Here is the thing though. I do not believe it is so much God. I belief it is that positive belief that you can beat it. I think the mind is very strong. I do believe God gives us that hope, that occasionally allow miracles to happen.

Now when someone is hooked up to a machine, and the Doctors say there is no hope, it is time to step into reality. Death is part of life and I belief when God says your time is up, it is up.

For personal reasons, I only go to a Christian Doctor. He is the one who actually introduced me to my pastor while I was fighting Colon Cancer. Now my specialist were not Christians but I felt at ease knowing my main physician was not only a tallented Doctor, but also a praying Christian. My surgeon was also Christian, it was comforting to me to have him pray with me before the surgery. He was recomended by my Doctor.

I do not think my case was a miracle, I honestly was never fatal. The though of death and a small chance always existed however. No matter how mild, it was still Cancer, a Cancer that was taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Miracles do happen though. I am postive I have witnessed them. God gives us that hope that allow it to happen. I think when someone lets a feeling of hopelessness creap into their heart and mind, then it is all in the doctors hands.

Merovigan

I read this story over someone's shoulder this morning.

"Stupid" is the word of the day.

Beau Perkins

No reason to be insulting guys. You dont believe fine. Comments like that are crap though.

Walker Moore

When pushed to the very edge, people will cling to any idea that offers them hope.

I'm not really surprised.

Merovigan

It goes beyond "not believing". It goes to a place where the more out of touch with reality someone is, the more society must bend reality to accommodate them.

"Oh, right...your terminally ill son just might make a sudden recovery and so we're going to let you go further into debt, just in case!"

There are ramifications to unrealistic thoughts and lifestyles.

Beau Perkins

Just for the record, I am not talking about those guys on TV that touch you and say "YOU ARE HEALED".

Those guys are just entertainment.

Everything I have witnessed that I would call a miracle, ultimately needed the wisdom of a Doctor. I heard testamonies where the Doctors are baffled on how someone was cured though.

Merovigan

Right, doctors get surprised. They're human. This is not miraculous.

Every time a doctor gets surprised there is, by definition, a credible explanation for what occurred. "God did it" is not a credible explanation.

Beau Perkins

No Mero, There are Doctors out there who do give credit to God. There are cases that just can not be explained.

Merovigan

You speak in the definite..."Can not be explained" is inaccurate or at least incomplete. You should say "Can not currently be explained" in order to be correct.

It's a small difference, but it's the difference between magic and reality.

Doctors who give credit to god are not allowed to work on me. I wanna add that to my DNR.

Brodie Landar

Being that I work law enforcement; when we are at a bad scene...I.e a possible fatal accident we are not allowed to concole or offer any form of hope to the families...the reason we do this is because more often then not offering false hope with words like "everything is going to be okay" or "hes gonna make it just hang in there" only set the family up for a greater fall when they do let go of life. We are trained to take a step back..make sure the crime scene is secure, and allow the families to deal with the event however rationally or irrationally it may seem.

Richie Waves

There's a lot of anti-miracles too though.. far more infact than there is actual miracles.. I agree though.. there are indeed cases that even leave doctors stunned at the recovery they see, but its a stretch to attribute them to god... even if you do, then you've the problem of attributing aforementioned anti-miracles to God also... it more than evens out..

Merovigan

Yeah, does anyone have the stats on the "anti-mircale"? Like, how many times is a doctor accurate when he says "There's no chance of recovery."

Beau Perkins

Anti-Mirracle?

I could get into my beliefs on why stuff happen, good and bad Richie but I know you all dont want me to start preaching to you. I don't want to be accused of evangelizing, I think I am already close to that fine line already in this post.

For now I am just talking about Miracles. I've said it 1000 times, I do not believe in luck.

Richie Waves

yea, anti miracle.. like say, SIDS and the like..

Brodie Landar

dont think were attacking at all beau. I like your posts, or else simply put; I wouldnt be posting here right?

were just playing devils advocate and saying "okay, well if all the good can be attributed to god, then we can attribute the bad to his maliciousness or disregard as well?"

Arilynn