I have never been to a massage therapist. Nor have I been to an aroma therapist, undergone a past-life regression or had my auras balanced. However, I support the right of any other person to choose to do so. That right to choose was restricted when the Carbondale City Council voted to legislate the amount of education and training required to practice massage therapy here.

In enacting any legislation, governments of any size must balance the need to protect the public good against the right of individual freedom of choice. It is probably fair to say that the proportion of Carbondale residents that make use of massage therapy is small, indeed. It may be growing, but it still represents a fraction of the population at large.

Unlike genuine public health issues (e.g., water quality, sanitation), massage therapy can hardly be construed as an issue that affects the public good. The notion of public infers a relatively high degree of intrusiveness or potential exposure. There is nothing intrusive about massage therapy whether or not you want it is a matter of personal choice. Likewise, who you choose and what qualifications you consider important also should be a matter of personal choice. We have all been to doctors who had all the right credentials but were poor physicians.

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Implicit in the argument that government needs to regulate alternative medical practices is the message that we as citizens are not knowledgeable enough to make those decisions ourselves (aside from the obvious argument that those seeking massage therapy are probably more educated and health conscious than the average health consumer). As a health consumer, it is a personal responsibility to be knowledgeable about what services we seek and pay for. If massage therapists differ in their qualifications, then it is a personal responsibility to determine that, and then make a treatment decision based on criteria that we deem important.

Government regulation of alternative health practices is particularly troubling. Nearly always, as it was in this case, the decision to rewrite the law was in response to the concern of a therapist for the safety of clients other therapist’s clients. The unstated result of this ordinance is that competition is reduced and power is consolidated. This pattern has been repeated throughout medical history. Medical doctors opposed the practice of osteopathy early in this century as soon as the profession became strong enough to represent a threat to their economic status. Currently, one of the chief obstacles to the increased utilization of nurse-midwives is the medical profession’s concern for loss of patients and income. The institution of standards-of-practice may be presented as a way of assuring quality, but rarely are the motives purely altruistic.

Standards, however noble, also serve to reduce the diversity of practice. But health and healing are very individual processes. Given the same circumstances and exposure to the same pathogens, some of us may get sick and others may not. And among those who get sick, the course of illness will not be the same. Likewise, a specific treatment may be beneficial to one person and make no difference to another. That is simply the nature of health and healing. As such, the greater the variety of treatment options available, the more likely one is to find a practitioner that reflects the values and beliefs of an individual client.

In a dubious effort to protect, the City Council may be litigating out-of-existence treatment options and practices that have genuine healing potential. Of the spectrum of alternative health practices that have blossomed in the last decade, massage therapy is probably the most well-known and accepted. I am skeptical of the value of many of the others. However, the individual’s right to choose from the full range of alternatives is a principle that should be supported.

Doctoral Candidate, Health Education