re: #3 SidewaysQuark

Well, prayer IS cost-effective, in that you get what you pay for (nothing).

Unfortunately in this case, its even worse than that, since many of these poor desperate people are forking over cold hard cash for these prayers. Just read this section of the article,

Margaret Lavonga attended a healing prayer service several years ago. She said she paid money for a prayer cure and nearly ended up dead after the pastor told her and others to stop taking their medicines.

“We were very desperate after realizing we had been infected as young women,” she said.

At the church, she was asked to pay the equivalent of $12 to be accepted for the healing ceremony and $24 at the end of the ceremony. The pastor then confiscated her drugs and those of four others and set them ablaze. The group was asked to undergo a test at a certain clinic in Nairobi, where they were all declared cured.

I really hope the people at the Hospital who carried out those “tests” all lose their jobs. At the very even if they can’t punish the “faith healers” I hope they can at least punish any medical personal who were complicit in this, in one way or another. They obviously didn’t do a very good job in determining whether or not they were cured.