By JENNIFER McKEE, Gazette State Bureau

HELENA, MT - Funeral directors are backing an effort to designate who may handle remains of the dead. House Bill 323, sponsored by Rep. Bill Thomas, D-Great Falls, says that only licensed morticians and funeral home directors may pick up a body from the hospital or other place of death, that only such licensed people may house the dead in the days before burial or cremation, and that only such people can handle funeral arrangements.

Under the bill, crematory operators would be allowed to incinerate the remains of the dead, but they would not be allowed to transport or temporarily house the dead.

Opponents of the bill told the committee that the legislation is an effort to enshrine in state law a monopoly over Montana's death-care industry, which would drive up prices for grieving consumers.

But according to a group of funeral home directors and morticians, lead by Cincinnati lawyer Scott Gilligan, who was representing the National Funeral Directors Association, licensed funeral directors have the special training needed to safely transport and house the dead. Crematory operators, who are not required to have the same education as morticians and funeral home directors, are not qualified, Gilligan said.

Morticians must get a two-year associate's degree, followed by two years of other work, including an apprenticeship. Morticians and funeral home directors must also pass national board examinations.

Crematory operators do not need the associate's degree. Under state law, they are not allowed to plan funerals, host funerals in their buildings, embalm bodies or prepare bodies for a public viewing. Crematory operators are allowed only to transport, refrigerate and incinerate human remains.

Gilligan and others brought up the special training needed to handle the bodies of those who had died from infectious diseases. Gilligan specifically mentioned Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a sporadic brain-wasting illness that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, occurs about 200 times a year in the United States, or about one diagnosis for every 1.5 million Americans.

He and others testified that only licensed morticians and funeral home directors know how to properly remove pacemakers and other modern medical devices that can be dangerous if burned in a crematory.

"We are entrusted with people's most precious loved ones, and we don't take that lightly," said Terry Stevenson, a mortician and funeral director in Miles City.

But William Spoja, a crematory operator in Lewistown, said those arguments don't hold water. He challenged the committee to find something in the bill that "would help the grieving widow."

"Most of it is designed to help the grieving mortician," Spoja said.

Spoja and his Lewistown crematory, the Central Montana Crematorium Inc., have already survived complaints by local funeral home directors that he was illegally planning funerals.

Spoja testified that he thought the bill was an attempt to shut down his business and others like it. There is no public health reason crematory operators cannot transport and refrigerate remains, he said.

Josh Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, based in Vermont, opposed the bill. Slocum wasn't at the hearing, but he sent every member of the committee a detailed critique of the bill, arguing that hospital orderlies can safely transport bodies, so crematory operators shouldn't be prohibited from doing so.

What's more, Slocum argued in his critique, the bill allows licensed morticians to let someone with less or no training to transport the dead, so long as they are doing it for a mortician. If public health is the problem, he argued, why can an untrained employee of a mortician transport the dead, but a licensed crematory operator cannot?

Slocum also said remains of the dead are far less infectious than a sick, living person and that no laws regulate who may transport the sick.

Spoja said the whole thing boils down to money. For about $1,000, he can pick up the remains of the dead, refrigerate and incinerate them. Many funeral homes charge considerably more than that for their services, he said.

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/02/01/news/state/50-legimorticians.txt