text: Vol. 7, No. 3 ISSN 1073-5461 March 1999 MINNESOTA'S HOUSE BILL 685 AND SENATE BILL1042 WOULD PUT COMPETENT, HARD-WORKING MASSAGE THERAPISTS, MOSTLY WOMEN, OUT OF WORK EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE NOT HARMED ANYBODY
  Licensing arrangements ...can be characterized less as methods for protecting the public and for providing external social control in the interest of the consumer than as a means for protecting the occupation's market dominance. Indeed, licensing has the unique quality of making a violation of the professional monopoly a punishable crime. - Haug As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he share the passion and action of his time, at peril of being judged not to have lived. - Oliver Wendell Holmes This is a follow-up of my report, "Minnesota Does NOT Need to Regulate Massage Therapists Because Regulation is NOT Needed for the Safety and Well Being of its Citizens" (Massage Law Newsletter. 6(2):1-3.1999). This and our other reports on state regulation of massage are available on <http://www.tiac.net/users/maryella/>.
  Catherine Condon's article Show of hands is far from unanimous on bill to regulate massage therapists (in the January 6 - 19, 1999, edition of the Villager - a St. Paul, MN, weekly newspaper) tells how controversial House Bill 658 is. The article identifies Sheila Sweeney as "vice president of the Minnesota chapter of the American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) which is lobbying for the bill," and is "also a member of the Coalition for the Regulation of Massage Therapists and Oriental Bodyworkers, which drafted the bill."The article also reports Sister Rosalind Gefre's comments in favor or state regulation of massage therapists.
  This is particularly important because House Bill 658 may put many people, mostly women, out of work because they do massage which does not harm people. I am therefore asking the two above-mentioned individuals for well-documented information about the Coalition's bill. I am also requesting their permission to publish their replies in the Massage Law Newsletter on our website so that others will get first hand information about the "other side." QUESTIONS FOR SHEILA SWEENEY
  Questions about harm The Villager reports that you are concerned about "potential harm to consumers" because there is a large percentage of massage therapists practicing with little formal education." I would appreciate your providing me with well-documented information that replies to the questions I asked you in my previous report in the Massage Law Newsletter, and to the following questions in this report.
  and standards With respect to your concern that: A large percentage of massage therapists "practicing with little formal education could mean potential harm to consumers:" 1. Precisely what do you mean by "formal education"? And how much "formal education" is "little formal education" compared to enough? What's the cutoff point for "little" and "enough" formal education? And what well-documented information justifies this cutoff point?
  (b) Why do you assume they do not have enough education, formal or informal? 5. To what "standards that are nationally recognized" do you refer? 6. What well-documented evidence do you have that massage therapists with "little formal education" are more likely to harm people, than massage therapists who have had the formal education which meets "standards that are nationally recognized"?
  What about prostitution? The alleged need to regulate massage to control prostitution often pops up when regulation is promoted on state and local levels. However, my research has shown that state regulation of massage and local ordinances do NOT significantly reduce prostitution. This information is in my report, Prostitution and Massage. Part 1: State Regulation of Massage and Local Ordinances do not Reduce Prostitution. Part 2: The Reality of Prostitution. (Journal of Spiritual Bodywork. Special Issue No. 2. 1997) Also see Robert N. Calvert's Letter to the Editor about my report on prostitution in Spiritual Massage Ministry Newsletter. Vol. 3, No. 3. pages 6 and 7.
  1. How do you define what you call an "over- night workshop"? 2. What well-documented evidence do you have that an "overnight workshop" does not provide adequate training for massage therapists?
  1. How many massage therapists treated doctors' patients for whom massage was prescribed? 2. How many of those "loads of prescriptions for massage" were for stress reduction, for relief of pain, and for relief of dysfunction?
  3. Did any of the doctors, who wrote "loads of prescriptions for massage" or any of their patients have well-documented complaints about the massage therapists who treated those patients? 4. If so: (a) How many such complaints were there? (b) What was the nature of the complaints? And (c) What was the training and experience of the massage therapists about whom complaints were made?
  Finally, Barbara McMonigal-St. Dennis "in the St. Paul city Office of License Inspections and Environmental Protection" noted that, "Until 1993, St. Paul required massage therapists to have a certain number of hours of education... Though the city has dropped that requirement, we're seeing people" [presumably massage therapists] "coming in with more and more hours of education" WITHOUT STATE REGULATION OF MASSAGE THERAPISTS. A QUESTION FOR SHEILA SWEENEY
  Why don't you support House Bill 537? This bill provides freedom of access to com- plementary and alternative health care, including massage therapy. It provides freedom of choice for the consumer and freedom to practice for both licensed and unlicensed practitioners. It does not put anybody out of work. It does not cause any practitioners economic harm. Specifically, in what ways would House Bill 685 and Senate Bill 1042 better serve the public than House Bill 537?
  " FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS" John Adams
  No one knows what an "adequate training" is for massage therapists
  The fact that there is still no agreement on what kind of training and how many hours of training are needed raises the question - needed for what? It makes no sense to define an adequate training as one which produces massage therapists who are competent in terms of on-the-job performance because there's no way to objectively measure that kind of competence. Therefore no one knows what kind of training and what number of hours of training are needed to produce a massage therapists who is competent in terms of on-the-job performance.
  Here's the proof of this pudding State-required trainings vary from 250 hours in Texas and 1,000 hours in Nebraska to 3,000 hours in British Columbia. This Canadian province requires 2,725 more hours of training than Texas and 2,000 more hours of training than Nebraska, which requires 750 more hours of training than Texas. But there is no well-documented evidence that any one of these trainings produces more or less competent massage therapists than the other two. Because of this wide variation among states, some people think we need national requirements which would be the same for all states. But since state requirements make no sense, why would national requirements make any sense?
  There is no well-documented evidence that those who graduate from accredited massage schools are more competent that those who graduate from nonaccredited massage schools. There is no well-documented evidence that the widely accepted 500-hour training produces more competent massage therapists than a training of 250 hours does.
  There is no well-documented evidence that Nebraska's 1,000-hour produces more competent massage therapists, than trainings of 500 hours do. There is no well-documented evidence that the Province of Ontario's 2,200-hour training produces more competent massage therapists than trainings of 500 and 250 hours do.
  To intelligently discuss whether state regulation is needed to protect the public from harm by allegedly inadequately trained massage therapists, it is necessary to have well-doc- umented information about 1. How much harm has actually occurred, the nature of the injuries, and how serious they were - in states which do and do not regulate massage therapists.
  2. The amount and kind of training, and the years of experience of the massage therapists who actually caused the harm. Without this well-documented information, there neither is nor can there be any well-documented evidence that:
  1. State regulation protects the public from harm. 2. State regulation is needed to protect the public from harm 3. State regulation could provide that pro- tection if it were needed.
  Without this well-documented evidence, there's nothing to discuss. Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where to find information on it. - Samuel Johnson