In a letter to the editor, professor Leonard Malkin of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology here takes issue with a member of the clergy who exhorted people to pray to ward off a bird flu pandemic. Malkin expresses skepticism about the effectiveness of prayer and points out that "it is science that has provided us with antibiotics and vaccines. "If prayer worked, millions of people would not have suffered from those afflictions whose cures had to wait for scientific discoveries," he writes.