Where is proof of healing?

I WAS amazed and rather saddened that you felt fit to give valuable column inches to a This Week feature on the activities of Ely s Healing Rooms (Ely Standard, January, 4 2007). What I found particularly objectionable were the quotes from this organisa

I WAS amazed and rather saddened that you felt fit to give valuable column inches to a This Week feature on the activities of Ely's Healing Rooms (Ely Standard, January, 4 2007).

What I found particularly objectionable were the quotes from this organisation's director, Tim Frost in which he made various claims about what he, his colleagues, and prayer to the God in which they believe can achieve for those for whom "the doctor can't do any more" which later in the article seems to include those "with diseases that can't be treated".

This presumably means those with terminal illnesses, which either cannot be treated by medical science or for which treatment has failed and are in or about to enter palliative care.

Elsewhere in the article and without any apparent challenge from your reporter or editorial caveat, Mr Frost unequivocally states that "God can heal them".

I look forward to the publication in these pages of properly documented cases of such healings which are not simply coincidental with the (possibly delayed) efficacy of medical treatment and which furthermore have been subject to ongoing trials involving a properly constituted sample of patients suffering from the same disease at a similar stage and who have also been given a terminal prognosis. Such trials should, of course, also have been conducted over a number of years by different practitioners in a variety of socio-cultural settings, and been observed and recorded by independent and objective individuals.

Without such evidence, the belief of Mr Frost and his ilk is nothing more than an unsubstantiated claim and to proffer it to despairing and desperate people is contemptible in the extreme even if the perpetrator's intent is good.

WILLIAM STACEY

Ely