religion & medicine

I found a different type of religion story this week from the New York Times. It is a medical and religion story. The article by Nicholas Bakalar can be found online.

The story was about a recent study examining doctors' religious beliefs and how those affect their interpretations of clinical and scientific data. Although the lead is pretty straight to the point (hard news), it does convey the interesting results of the survey-- including doctors' opinions of divine intervention. Something that I thought was a good way to appeal to more readers was the advice about finding a doctor of the same religion. The idea of the study is vague and ethereal, but to give patients' specific advice from implications of the survey helps relate it to everyday people.It also points out the controversy even within the medical community about the topic. I would have like to seen some real people's reactions to the study, and ask them if they consider themselves to be religious or not. As it stands now, it reads like a university news release (may have been).