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Dr David Pugh MBBS MRCGP
GMC # 1576221
The Elstree Medical Centre
Borehamwood
Hertfordshire
WD6 3AW
e-mail:Pughelstree@aol.com
March 16th 2003
Dear Parents
The recent programmes on television - 'Today' and 'Tonight with Trevor MacDonald' - have certainly not helped to put my clinic in a good light. These programmes have caused a flood of mail and e-mail and have worried even more parents who are now left doubting whether they should have had 'single' jabs in the first place or should have had the MMR as the Dept. of Health would wish you to have done.
Whatever has been said about my Clinic is one thing, but your decision not to have MMR was and still is, one of the best if not the best decision you have ever made. We have carried out about 40,000 vaccinations over an 8 - year period at the clinic - and have had no reported cases of Autism or Crohn's disease in those children. By rights, we should have had between 16 and 40 cases. Until the Mail on Sunday were 'leaked' the story of our lack of registration, we had not received any reports of any children we had vaccinated subsequently catching the disease against which they had been vaccinated. Now there is at least one story of a boy vaccinated against Measles by us who was admitted to The Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London. They treated him for 3 days for suspected Meningitis, and then decided he had Measles - the first question is - why could they not diagnose Measles? - they are the premier Children's hospital in the United Kingdom, if not the World and should be able to distinguish Measles from Meningitis. The second question, or point to be made is that the child was admitted to hospital with a 'purple blotchy rash'- this is not a typical rash of Measles and raises a third question as to why did it take 3 days to suspect Measles? Most if not all GP's could give that diagnosis within minutes of examining a child, and were appropriate blood tests done to confirm the diagnosis? I don't know the answers to these questions at the moment - but I will find out.
The truth is that no vaccine is 100% guaranteed to protect every child - the manufacturers of the vaccines claim 90 - 98 % success in immunising a child - there are studies in America (http://www.kidshealth.org and others) which have shown that the single vaccines are in fact successful in 85% of children and these figures are exactly the same as the success rate for MMR. In other words, the chances of your child not responding to single Measles, Rubella or Mumps are the same as their chances of not responding to MMR. What is different is that the single vaccines are not associated with Autism or Crohn's disease of the bowel.
These figures for 'success' rate - 85% - mean that for every 100 children vaccinated with either MMR or single vaccine, up to 15 will not be immunised. There are therefore somewhere in the region of 6000 children with no protection against the diseases we have vaccinated them against. We can do no better than the vaccines - we have never claimed to be able to.
What we can state is that no child has ever been put at risk through our vaccines - we have never had any report from any parent that any child has become unwell after our vaccine (except for the expected side-effects of the vaccines). No child has ever - to our knowledge - been admitted to hospital with an infection after any vaccine we have given - and we would have heard about that if it had happened. If you inject a contaminated vaccine into a child, then within 1 to 3 days that child would develop signs of infection - either an abscess (boil) at the point of injection or - far more serious - infection in the blood (Septicaemia). These children would have to be admitted to hospital for either surgical treatment of the abscess or intravenous antibiotics for Septicaemia.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the value of the blood tests in determining whether a child has been successfully immunised against Measles, Rubella or Mumps. The fact is that it can take from 3 weeks to 12 months for a blood test to show whether a child has been successfully immunised. (Please look up http://www.aruplab.com) The Public Health Department have stated that these tests are 'unreliable' and in this respect, I agree with them. One thing is clear, if you as parents have doubt whether your child has been successfully immunised, then your best course of action is to have them re-vaccinated. The statistics are that if 85% of children are successfully immunised the first time - this leaves 15% not immunised - and if those 15 children are vaccinated a second time then 85% of them will be successfully immunised second time around - that's a further 13 children - this leaves only 2 out of the original 100 children not protected. This avoids the trauma of a blood test and the doubt about how reliable the blood test is. We were doing this before the National Care Standards Commission forced us to close.
A word about the National Care Standards Commission (NCSC for short). The NCSC started its work in February 2002 (http://www.carestandards.org.uk) and it was their duty to notify private health care establishments, including ourselves and Desumo of the need to register. They were supposed to send us registration forms for completion. The registration date was April 1st 2002. In a 'Press release' of 20th February 2002 they state that 'The NCSC today announced that the distribution of more than 10,000 Application for Registration packs, to social care services and private and voluntary healthcare services in England is well under way'. This was simply not the case as the NCSC freely admit that they 'forgot' to send out these registration packs to over 200 practices and clinics - and it is 100% true that none of the clinics offering single vaccines was sent a registration pack. How convenient. The only clinic that has managed to become registered is Direct Health 2000. Any National Health GP who offers single vaccines is not required to register, so Dr Halvorsen in Islington does not have to register.
A week after the NCSC forced us to close, they did the same to Desumo - a clinic in Gloucestershire who had applied in May 2002 - a month 'late' - for registration. The NCSC 'sat' on their application for 3 months, then returned the forms for alteration, then sat on the forms for another 4 months and then shut the clinic for not being registered, a week after they shut us down! This surely tells you something? - The NCSC is acting as a 'hatchet - man' destroying any opposition to MMR. The whole objective is to undermine public confidence in single vaccine clinics and push parents down the road to MMR. They and the Mail on Sunday have done a very good job so far, but beware - your choices are being removed day by day and eventually all single vaccine clinics could be shut in this way and then you will have no choice at all.
The principle of choice is fundamental to Democracy - we are supposed to be a Democracy - you are supposed to have freedom of choice. When I first started to offer single vaccines 8 years ago, parents were taking their children to France for the day and having their children vaccinated there. Let's not allow that to be the only choice again! So far there is no evidence that children vaccinated by us, or anyone else has not been protected as far as the vaccines will allow. There are stories of children not immunised but these are bound to happen because of the numbers of children vaccinated.
If you feel strongly that your freedom of choice is being taken away - and believe me, it is - then can I recommend an e-mail address to contact Choice@fsmail.net - this is a parent's self-help organisation in Sheffield - and has nothing to do with me - it is a forum in which to express your views and exchange ideas. I understand that they are working on a web-site.
Our vaccines were spectacularly called into question by the media - but have you read the articles in the Daily Mail last week? These were written by Melanie Phillips, and dealt with the cover-up over MMR and the possible side-effects and how Dr Andrew Wakefield's studies were suppressed and how he was eventually forced to continue his work in the USA. He is soon to publish further evidence including the effect that the pre-school MMR might have on your child. Melanie Phillips also pointed out that 9 experts on Government Committees or involved in Government research are or have been consultants to Glaxo Smith Kline who make MMR vaccine. She questions how 'neutral' they can be when deciding what side-effects MMR might cause.
I have been treating Autistic children for the past 8 years and have listened to literally thousands of parents who associate the onset of their child's Autism with the MMR vaccine. This was why I refused to give MMR and offered the single vaccines instead. Ask yourself why would I refuse to give MMR and instead give an ineffective or contaminated vaccine? It would not make sense to do so, and I would not compromise children's health or safety by doing so. I gave my own son exactly the same vaccine I gave your children.
In the late 1990's the MMR in use, with the approval of the Department of Health was found to cause 'Aseptic meningitis' in a small percentage of children. The DOH were told of this risk and yet they continued to allow it to be used for 3 years! You the public were not advised of this risk and the DOH attitude was that the risk was 'acceptable'. No risk to children is 'acceptable' - and who in authority has the right to decide that for you? Yet, even when the risk was known there was no outcry by the public - because the number of children affected was 'minimised' to make it look as if there were only a very few - some researchers have said that as many as 8,000 children were affected by Aseptic meningitis, some suffering severe brain damage. And what of SSPE? - a rare but deadly complication of MMR vaccine where the vaccine causes progressive destruction of the child's brain. These children always die but that can take years - they become progressively disabled, deaf, blind and eventually die from infection or massive brain damage. Is this risk 'acceptable'? No - and again - who has the right to decide for you that it is? Yet let the Department of Health push you into MMR and this is what will happen
The 'Tonight with Trevor MacDonald' programme showed the clinic at the Hillsborough Stadium as a 'cattle market'. The truth is that it was never designed as a vaccination centre, it is a sports stadium. We never anticipated the demand for single vaccines, it just grew. We chose the Hillsborough Stadium because it was inexpensive to hire and that helped us to keep the cost as low as possible. Those of you who read the Mail on Sunday would have noticed that there was a comparison of our costs for vaccine against other clinics. Our charges were the least of all clinics bar one, and since we have been shut down almost all of the remaining clinics have increased their prices! On the one hand you have the Department of Health trying to push you into MMR and on the other you have private clinics cashing in on your predicament. My advice is to stand firm - don't be panicked into anything. Let the 'dust' settle and then hopefully we can resume our work.
Where do we go from here?
Until we were forced to close by the NCSC we were offering a second vaccination to any child whose parents wanted to be 'sure' their child was protected. We cannot do this again until we are registered by the NCSC. This may take from 3 months to never - because the NCSC can refuse to register a clinic because they have traded illegally. I have Lawyers working to overturn this at the moment and they are hopeful of finding a way out of this situation. Once we have managed to do this, we plan to find another venue in or near Sheffield where we can operate. The Hillsborough Committee wrote to us soon after the original article appeared in the Mail on Sunday and withdrew our use of the stadium so we could not get to Sheffield and help parents there. We appealed against their decision but they refused to re-consider. If anyone knows of a suitable venue that might allow us to operate there - please let me know and I will approach them.
In summary -
We were shut down - not because of the vaccines but because of a legal 'loophole' - we are trying to reverse this decision
No child to our knowledge has ever been harmed in any way by our vaccines
All vaccines fail to immunise sometimes - our results are no worse that the manufacturers' claim them to be
We have vaccinated about 40,000 children in 8 years - I only know of two possible cases of children catching the illness (Measles) after vaccination - 2 out of 40,000!
There will always be reports of children having blood tests that don't confirm immunity - the vaccine fails to immunise about 10 to 15 out of every 100 children - that's 4,000 to 6,000 children in total. So far I have had less than 100 confirmed negative blood tests.
The blood tests are not 100% reliable - nothing in medicine is ever 100% guaranteed. The blood test can take up to a year to confirm immunity.
If you want to be as certain as possible of giving your child full protection against Measles, Mumps or Rubella - the best course of action is to do the vaccines again. This will not cause your child any harm.
Whatever else you do - DON'T have MMR.
Since we can only treat patients in their own homes until we are registered, we are setting up a home vaccination service - it will take longer to get the job done, but it is better than doing nothing while we wait for the NCSC to register us.
More information can be obtained by e-mailing to vaccinesathome@aol.com
- and don't forget to contact Choice@fsmail.net to express your views about your fundamental right to choose what you think is best for your child.
Thank you for reading this letter - if you have any queries please contact me at Pughelstree@aol.com and mark the e-mail 'Enquiry' and I will answer you as quickly as I can.
Yours sincerely,
David Pugh
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