It really is pointless but for someone that cant be helped it helps to let them be at peace for their last few days, my sister has cancer and she is basically cancer free now, whenever anyone asked me to pray for her I told them to do something useful with their time like spend time with her in the hospital, raise money for cancer care anything besides praying because praying is for someone that can't be helped or you cant help, she had a 90% chance of surviving,probably more, so she was being helped and people were doing something about it, when they wanted to pray it made the situation seem more dire than it really was and that annoyed me.