Depressing day in medical news, as not only have the studies showing beneficial cardiovascular impacts from light drinking been debunked, but those showing health improvements from prayer bit the dust as well. West Wing watchers will remember a storyline were Bartlett could've gotten a Republican Congress to restore his foreign aid budget if only he'd appropriate $115,000 to study the apparent protective effects of remote prayer. In what I always found a stunningly pigheaded display of principle over pragmatism, he refused. But back in the real world, the government has spent a couple million commissioning such studies and, with the results of the largest now in, remote prayer's effects seem definitively disproved. Nuts.
