Fw: My opposition to SB 513

[Guest guest]

Below is a great letter of protest to the NM legislature to help stop the SB 513 Bill from becoming law.

Anyother NM Naturopath should do the same.

Yours in Knowledge, Health and Freedom,

Doc

PS. Please pass this around to all of your Naturopathic New Mexican Friends.

 

Doc Shillington727-447-5282Doc

- dr. ken winston caine

Mark Smith

Cc: Lightharmonics ; docshillington ; email ; boydlandry ; drsus ; arobillard ; suziqbyr ; botan ; donaldson ; Novahomeopathic ; cbjb7 ; perfectadjustments ; naturecarern ; drdeannd ; info ; askdrdavedc ; BIODOC ; Forevrnwlywds ; medicinecave ; gkeanna3 ; seva ; hilariodc ; hpeiper ; janaai ; Cranial7 ; jeffgoin ; romigj ; kandice_cochrane ; drlarryjohnson ; jaioqi ; Unwyndings ; mkdavi2 ; dr.marilyn ; mkh1139 ; botija687 ; mspot ; michelemorgan ; hlbiz ; philji ; LQUESADA ; rsteinhoff ; raynln ; rmoreynd ; rockalu ; dpoli2 ; anu505050 ; sarahj ; shogun10 ; smith243 ; palmetto50 ; similars

Sunday, February 18, 2007 5:35 PM

Re: My opposition to SB 513

As a courtesy and in the interest of open discussion, I am copying here a draft of the letter I customized for each of the members of the Public Affairs Committee in opposition to SB 513.Dear Senator xxxxxxx:I urge you to oppose SB 513. It is highly flawed.I have 26 specific objections to the proposed legislation. I will present you first with some summary highlights of my chief objections and then in a more extensive statement attached, present more detail and objections.Please reject SB 513 because it:- Misrepresents what "traditional naturopathy" is. Its unique definition does not meet the criteria developed by the mid-1990s by the Coalition for Natural Health which coined the term.- Improperly claims exclusive licensing jurisdiction over a multitude of natural health practices that have been in the public domain since the dawn of time.- Would disenfranchise and outlaw New Mexico herbalists, curanderos, Native American healers, natural hygienists, homeopaths, lifestyle coaches, wellness counselors, health-food and supplement salespeople, spa facilitators, workshop leaders, complementary health educators, and more.- Would unwisely and severely limit the public's access to a wide variety of alternative and complementary health care options, claiming them all to be the exclusive domain of a small number of to-be "licensed traditional naturopaths." Is the public clamoring for this?- Dangerously and improperly extends traditional naturopathy directly into the practice of medicine by creating an underqualified class of medical practitioners that it would specifically license to diagnose and treat disease, draw blood, order and interpret conventional medical tests, use ultrasound and X-rays and cardiograms and other diagnostics, none of which are actually taught in the largest-enrolled traditional naturopathic college programs in the United States.- Is not inclusive of the several highly diverse factions of naturopathy and was not developed in open consultation with them in New Mexico and creates a unique and unsatisfactory New Mexico hybrid. Any naturopathic legislation New Mexico eventually adopts needs to recognize at least a limited right to practice of any resident who has satisfactorily completed a government-approved naturopathic training program or who holds a doctor of naturopathy degree from any government-approved school, OR who has passed either the NPLEX or ANMCB exams. Right to practice should not be exclusive to any of those conditions. That would assure that no single narrow faction of naturopathy would claim exclusive jurisdiction over the field and the public would be well-served by the wide variety of options available. Idaho has a model law of this nature. SB 513 law would leave all of that up to an appointed board to determine, which leaves far too much open to special interest group pressure and whims and misunderstandings and each elected governor's feelings about holistic health options.- Appears designed to benefit only the owners and graduates of one New Mexico school purporting to teach traditional naturopathy while graduates of two other New Mexico state-approved universities' long-established naturopathic programs would not meet the bill's requirements and would required to undertake further studies of procedures and subjects not widely considered to be part of "traditional naturopathy."- Has a completely inadequate grandfathering clause that would not give the majority of New Mexico naturopaths and natural health practitioners the possibly three to four years necessary to complete additional schooling necessary to qualify for licensure under this bill's odd definition of "traditional naturopathy."- Usurps the title N.D., designating it as meaning "naturopathic diplomate" and would allow only "traditional naturopaths" to be licensed under the law to use the designation, whereas for 100 years this has been the abbreviation for the doctor of naturopathy degree issued by colleges and universities. No one who has earned a doctor of naturopathy degree from a government-approved college or university should be prohibited from citing their academic degree or title in New Mexico, regardless of whether they choose to opt for licensure as a "traditional naturopath" under this bill's provisions.- As best I can ascertain, approximately 100 natural health practitioners in New Mexico on my email list were not consulted while the language of this bill was being developed. This bill was not vetted by a preponderance of naturopaths in New Mexico and therefore could not represent a consensus of their highest thinking and desires and standards.There are MANY more things wrong with this proposed law.I go into my objections in more detail in the addendum below.But in summary, I most strongly urge you to reject SB513. It simply is not well thought out and would not serve New Mexico citizens and New Mexico naturopaths well. We can do better. And should.Sincerely,Ken Winston Caine37 White Wolf RoadCerrillos, NM 87010--0095ADDENDUMObjections to SB 513:1. Does not reflect traditional naturopathy as defined by the Coalition for Natural Health which coined the term a decade ago. And, as such, does not reflect the training, scope of practice or philosophy of traditional naturopathy and would exclude many traditional naturopaths. This legislation is misleading in language and possibly in intention and would create an exclusive class of "traditional naturopaths" that does not exist in any other state in this country, nor in any other country in the world. (See item number 9 below for elaboration.)2. Appears that it would deny livelihood to New Mexico naturopaths and those who move to New Mexico who have schooled in traditional naturopathy anywhere other than The Medicine Wheel school operated by Randy and Susan Barnes, who seem to have originated this bill. It would require graduates of all other traditional naturopathic schools to obtain the specific type of education offered at the Barnes's school -- or the type offered at the six quasi-medical, NON-traditional naturopathic colleges in North America -- in order to practice in New Mexico. This bill appears to unduly benefit the Barnes's school and to exclude or disregard the standards and programs offered by the larger and much-longer-operating naturopathic programs of the New Mexico state-approved University of Natural Medicine and Westbrook University -- as well as the programs offered by the majority of traditional naturopathic colleges and programs in the United States and world-wide.3. Limits natural and holistic health care options for New Mexicans, rather than expanding them, by limiting all practices defined as "traditional naturopathy" in the bill -- many if not most of which have been in the public domain nearly since the dawn of civilization -- to those few privileged practitioners to be licensed by the to-be-created board as "traditional naturopaths." This unnecessarily and unwisely would make illegal much of what traditional curanderos and Native American healers and a wide variety of lifestyle coaches and wellness counselors and holistic teachers and Ayurvedic practitioners and homeopaths and herbalists and yogis and health-food store nutrition advisors, alternative health product and supplement salespeople, complementary health educators, spa facilitators and retreat leaders currently offer to the citizens of New Mexico.(See "Section 7. B. A person who provides other natural health care services shall not be in violation of any law relating to the healing arts as long as the person does not: ...")COMMENT: Delete the word "other" from this. If you do not, then anyone providing natural health counseling or services, any of the broad scope of practices contained in this bill's definition of traditional naturopathy, who does not apply for and obtain licensure under this act would be in violation of the law. That is nonsense. Virtually none of the practices contained in this bill's definition of "traditional naturopathy" are the exclusive domain of naturopathy and this bill should not make them such, or make them subject to licensure. Indeed many of them have been in the public domain for all of recorded history.4. In a state with such a strong holistically and environmentally oriented tourist economy -- with hot springs and spas and natural health and personal development retreat centers and international holistic conferences -- we should not pass legislation that limits the public's access to counseling in healthy lifestyle alternatives and that limits the ability of a wide variety of variously trained and qualified practitioners and teachers to offer mostly benign but often uplifting holistic wellness and personal development alternatives.5. The public is not clamoring for the Legislature to protect them from the rich variety of holistic counseling and complementary health offerings available.6. The public is not demanding that only licensed "traditional naturopaths" be permitted to teach and offer traditional natural health and holistic lifestyle counseling and programs -- most of which do not even closely involve the practice of medicine.7. The couple hundred naturopaths living and sharing their knowledge in New Mexico were not consulted in the development of the language of this bill.8. The small segment of the state's naturopaths clamoring for licensure are NOT adequately qualified to practice medicine but want to be licensed, according to this bill's language, to diagnose and treat disease and through such licensing to be able to claim parity with medical doctors. True traditional naturopaths have no such needs or desires because, by charter, they do not diagnose or treat disease, do not practice medicine. Instead they counsel and educate about wellness and wholeness and building strong, healthy well-functioning bodies and outlooks.9. The Coalition for Natural Health coined the term "traditional naturopath" about a decade ago to distinguish the classically trained naturopath from a rapidly emerging medical faction. The Coalition states:"A 'Traditional Naturopath' avoids procedures common to medical care. Among them are: diagnosing disease, treating disease, prescribing drugs and pharmaceuticals, and performing invasive procedures. In determining the root cause of a client's problems, Traditional Naturopaths do not diagnose or treat disease, but instead focus on health and education. They teach clients how to create an internal and an external environment that is conducive to good health, enabling the clients to make their own choices. Traditional naturopathy is not a medical practice. Major and minor surgery, prescribing drugs and pharmaceuticals, giving injections and drawing blood should be limited to medical doctors only and not performed within the scope of naturopathy." (source: Coalition for Natural Health Position Papers; http://www.naturalhealth.org/tradnaturo/ppn.html)10. This proposed bill, which co-opts the term "traditional naturopath," allows the practice of medicine -- that is, diagnosis and treatment of disease, blood drawing, diagnostic imaging, electrocardiograms, ultrasound, clinical laboratory tests, examinations and physiological function tests and more which are not part of traditional naturopathy. (See Section 3: H) Traditional naturopaths are not trained to perform such things in the largest state-approved traditional naturopathic schools in this country (such as Clayton College of Natural Health with 25,000 students and graduates since 1980).11. This bill appears to allow its licensed naturopaths to perform chiropractic and osteopathic-like adjustments. This concerns me because, while I believe such treatments are valuable, very few modern traditional naturopathic schools offer any training in this, but the faction of naturopaths that fancy themselves as equal to medical doctors does train in this type of spinal and joint manipulation, though they are not trained to the extent of chiropractors and osteopathic physicians.12. There is no need for licensure of traditional naturopaths since they do not practice medicine or perform invasive procedures and instead serve as health educators and lifestyle counselors. Licensure, as proposed, does not protect the public. Rather, under this law, licensure is designed to protect the livelihood of only a very small portion of the trained and practicing naturopaths in New Mexico by forbidding the greater majority of eclectically and university and classically trained naturopaths and natural and holistic health and wellness counselors from pursuing their livelihood and mission of sharing the principles of good health and wellness. (See the American Naturopathic Medical Association's position of licensure vs. certification: http://www.anma.com/licvscert.html)13. The public would be better served -- and would be well served and protected -- by an informed-consent act (similar to the proposed SB 18). Such an act would require all non-licensed health practitioners in New Mexico to fully disclose in writing their training and qualifications and theory of practice, clearly state that they are not licensed and that they do not practice medicine, etc., and which each client would acknowledge through a signature. A version of such a provision is included in this proposed law (Section 7 B), but bewilderingly it is written so that it does not apply to the bill's licensed "traditional naturopaths" and is written so that it would exclude all other residents from offering any of the modalities defined in the law as "traditional naturopathy."14. This bill does not seek to resolve or reconcile the 100-year-long fissure between the classical (now known as "traditional") naturopaths and the smaller breakaway medically oriented faction of naturopathy and instead proposes to legalize only a quasi-medical form of naturopathy yet amazingly refers to it as "traditional naturopathy." This leads me to believe that this is not truly legislation intended to preserve the rights of public access in New Mexico to traditional naturopathy but rather a backdoor attempt to establish an exclusive class of naturopaths as under-qualified quasi-medical doctors.15. The proposed board is vested with far too much power to alter the scope of the law and establish standards that might not at all be satisfactory to the majority of naturopaths currently living practicing in New Mexico and elsewhere in the United States, and in the world for that matter.16. The makeup of board not adequately defined to assure that it would represent the broad range of naturopaths in New Mexico and not just one specific school of naturopathic thought or practice or a preponderance of representatives of one specific association of naturopaths.17. The law should specify that any standards and requirements the board establishes should be consistent with the dominant training and curricula historically offered at the majority of state-approved and government-approved naturopathic schools and programs in the United States and internationally. The board in its considerations should give the most weight to the curricula of those schools with the highest enrollment historically and most students graduated. (That assures that standards the board applies are representative of naturopathy as it is most commonly taught and understood nationally and internationally and not limited to any narrow school of thought. Language to this effect needs to be included in the legislation as a mandate.)18. The state might be wise to mandate the board to create a tiered licensure system, applying different titles and scopes of practice to adherents of the various naturopathic philosophies and levels of training. Those who have actually trained extensively in medicine might be titled as "naturopathic physicians" and given the right to diagnose and treat illnesses and to order and administer some conventional medical tests; whereas "licensed naturopaths" might be limited to counseling clients on natural ways to restore overall balance (called "equilibrium" in naturopathy) and build health and wholeness, but not permitted to diagnose disease or claim to treat specific illnesses other than under a doctor's referral.19. SB 513 does not protect my right to use the title, naturopathic doctor, that I earned by degree through college and university programs in state-approved schools in the U.S. and India. Rather, this proposed law designates that the title "N.D." stands for "naturopathic diplomate" and is exclusively reserved for use by those people that the to-be-created state board would license.(See "Section 6. USE OF TERMS.--A person licensed as a traditional naturopath pursuant to the provisions of the Traditional Naturopathic Practice Act, in all promotion and advertising services to the public, shall use the title "traditional naturopath" or the designation of 'TN' or 'ND, Naturopathic Diplomate'.")COMMENT: 1. A "traditional naturopath" is someone who practices pursuant to the definition of "traditional naturopathy" as created by the national professional association, The Coalition for Natural Health, in the mid-1990s. 2. ND is the abbreviation for the doctor of naturopathy degree issued by many state-approved schools. Anyone with that degree should be able to use the designation after their names. It does NOT traditionally mean "naturopathic diplomate."The term N.D. has been an academic title for 100 years and is the official abbreviation for the doctor of naturopathy degree issued by many state-approved schools. It does not commonly mean "naturopathic diplomate." The state should not appropriate the N.D. designation and give it a new meaning and thus confuse and mislead the public and at the same time deny the right of legitimate degree holders to cite their educational degree in New Mexico. The state, if it feels compelled to license naturopaths should use a simple straight-forward designation such as "licensed naturopath" or "licensed naturopathic practitioner." That designation could apply as well to those who are graduates of extensive natural health and holistic health practitioner programs taught by many massage schools nationwide. One need not hold a doctoral degree to teach and counsel naturopathy.20. The grandfather clause is inadequate. One year is not long enough for naturopaths who have trained traditionally through other accredited and/or state-approved schools any time in the last 40 years to undergo the extensive continuing education required to meet the licensing standards in this very odd form of "traditional naturopathy" defined in the bill. (I speak as one who has formally trained in different naturopathic colleges and programs internationally in every decade since the '70s.)Grandfathering should allow four years to meet new requirements and standards from the date such requirements and standards are established by the board. Those who have graduated from any accredited or state-approved or government-approved school(s) or program(s) offering the equivalent of a minimum of 1,200 hours of supervised training and practicums in the broad scope of natural health and which were authorized to issue the degree "doctor of naturopathy" or "doctor of natural health" or its equivalent or certification as a naturopath should be grandfathered. Likewise those who have passed the ANMCB or NPLEX boards should be grandfathered.All grandfathered naturopaths should be required to use an informed-consent disclosure statement to be signed by clients and kept on file for five years and that details the precise education the naturopath has completed, degrees received, and philosophy and mode of practice. No grandfathered naturopath should be authorized to draw blood, administer X-rays, administer electrocardiograms or perform any other medical or invasive procedures.....21. The bill needs a client bill of rights to protect the holistic health care consumer.22. The bill has no provision requiring detailed patient record keeping / charting / and no requirement to share records (with signed client release) between other health professionals. That is needed to insure patient safety, adequate patient oversight and cooperation between health disciplines.23. The bill has no public protection requirement that licensed naturopaths carry practice liability insurance.24. The term "classroom hours" is not defined and might exclude those programs that make use of various models of distance education, web classes, and practicums and symposia which nearly all colleges and universities are introducing.25. Section 19 A. 11 would make it illegal for a naturopath to practice under "an assumed name." That should be amended to read "for fraudulent purposes." Why else would this even be in here? Would you disqualify a naturopath who wrote a health book under a pen name? Or who marketed herself "Dr. Healthy Glow?" Why have this clause in here at all?26. Annual license renewal seems excessive. A requirement for annual continuing education seems appropriate._____d r . k e n . w i n s t o n . c a i n eMind Body Spirit Journal - Holistic How-To Since 1993WHAT REALLY WORKS in holistics, alternative medicine, personal growth, success, right livelihood, coaching and planetary healing?http://www.MindBodySpiritJournal.com37 White Wolf Road, Madrid, New Mexico 87010 505.780.1894