Topeka ? A bill to license naturopathic doctors may be dead for the legislative session.

The measure has Senate approval, but on Thursday a key legislator in the House announced his opposition.

Rep. Garry Boston, R-Newton, chairman of the House Health and Human Services Committee, which has been conducting hearings on the bill, said he opposes the main components of the legislation.

The measure would regulate naturopathic physicians, setting educational standards and detailing what they could and couldn’t do in their practices.

Boston said he is not comfortable with licensing naturopaths. He said he would like to set up a temporary system to register naturopathic physicians and have the Kansas Board of Healing Arts, which regulates health care professionals, set up the qualifications needed for licensure.

He said that process could be completed in one or two years. During this period, he said, he would want to prohibit naturopaths from drawing blood or administering intravenous therapies.

But naturopathic doctors, such as Mehdi and Farhang Khosh of Lawrence, said they would oppose that proposal, noting that the Board of Healing Arts is made up of medical doctors, a group that has opposed licensing naturopaths.

The Khosh brothers say they have studied the same basic science as medical doctors but have also spent years studying alternative therapies.

The Khoshes have pushed for licensure, saying that without state-held standards for naturopaths, Kansans are at risk of being treated by people who call themselves naturopaths but lack proper training.

Sen. Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican and sponsor of the bill to license naturopaths, said she would oppose Boston’s idea.