Veteran Physician Finds Faith Plays Vital Role in Patient Recovery

Clear Facts

• Dr. Marc Siegel reports that 70% of physicians believe in God and 55% have witnessed medical miracles in practice.
• His new book “The Angels Among Us” documents cases where faith, human intervention, and medical care combined to produce recoveries.
• Siegel argues that spirituality strengthens patient resilience and should not be dismissed by modern medicine.

Dr. Marc Siegel, a longtime physician and Fox News senior medical analyst, presents new evidence that faith and spiritual support can influence patient outcomes in his upcoming book “The Angels Among Us.”

The work draws on clinical experience, medical research, and documented recoveries that defy standard prognosis.

“You don’t draw the line between an explanation that’s medical or spiritual. They’re combined,” Siegel told Fox News Digital. “And the more doctors that remember that, the better.”

Siegel cites survey data showing that most doctors hold religious beliefs and many report seeing recoveries that exceed medical explanation.

“The messengers are either actual angels from God that come down, that can take human form, that are voices where you don’t have a visualization, or they can be humans that God appoints to do angel-like work,” Siegel said.

He expands the definition of angels to include doctors, nurses, and ordinary citizens whose actions provided critical support during medical crises.

One case follows U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Spencer Milo, who received a terminal brain tumor diagnosis after trauma in Iraq. While seeking a second opinion, Milo met a Benedictine monk and subsequent imaging showed the tumor was benign.

Milo also credits former President George W. Bush with offering emotional support during a later crisis, identifying both encounters as instrumental to his recovery.

Siegel recounts an ICU patient in his residency training who remained in a coma for three months after severe brain trauma. Despite a negative prognosis, the patient regained consciousness and returned to work.

“That embroidered on me the need to not give up — the need to look for explanations beyond just the purely physical,” Siegel said.

“My role is not to decide who lives and who dies. My role is to relieve suffering and prolong life.”

The book also covers Siegel’s own family experience when his 98-year-old father survived severe COVID-19 and emergency surgery while on dialysis for four years.

Additional accounts describe a critically ill patient who reported seeing spiritual figures just before her condition improved.

Siegel includes an interview with Dr. David Gens, the lead surgeon who treated President Ronald Reagan after the 1981 assassination attempt, detailing emergency decisions and the president’s recovery.

The physician stresses that faith and prayer do not replace clinical care but remain a key factor in resilience.

“Spirituality affects outcomes because it’s a prerequisite to the courage to overcome,” Siegel said. “Great doctoring helps enormously, but prayer and hope give patients the strength to keep fighting.”

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