To think my doctor has overstepped the mark by sending me this letter?

[evilplaguerat]

I am a regular but I'm afraid I have namechanged because there WILL be hostility on this thread

Basically my ds2 hasn't had all his preschool immunisations, because when we received his initial appointment we deferred it because we really weren't sure we wanted him to have the MMR booster (I KNOW what many people think of this attitude, I really do)

I've just had a letter from our GP which starts

"Dear Mum and Dad

It is with some alarm that I've heard from our practice nurse that XXX has not attended multiple appointments for his preschool immunisations"

whatever you think about children not being immunised - does my GP have the right to order me to immunise him? Or am I right in feeling that it's legally our decision and the letter is inappropriate?

To be clear - I'm not asking for views on parents deciding not to immunise (although I realise I am going to get them anyway), I'm asking about the legal position of the parents and the GP and whether he can in fact strong-arm us into having them if we don't want to.

Parent(s)/guardian is surely for ease as not all children have a mum and dad.

Goodness me... I haven't read all the posts, but it seems to me that Doctors can't win in this PC world.

I don't like Mr & Mrs, or X's mum... but I don't expect the Doctor/GP practise to try and account for everyone's preferences in addressing the letter.

And yes it is annoying when names are spelt wrong....

But part of their job is to remind people of missed appointments whether it is for injections, smears, diabetes tests etc etc. It might be part of achieving targets, but it might be because they want to ensure we are in the best health we can be.

Enjoy the sunshine, and bin the letter.

Just please, it is difficult to get a doctors appointment anyway, please don't take up too much of their time (or you time), worrying about whether it is addressed to "mum and dad"

He is just letting you know that the surgery is in favour of immunisation and that they are aware that your DH hasn't been. Not forcing you to do anything.

....and it is pretty much impossible to know excactly what the parent and guardian are called. Not every couple is married, so do I address the letter as Mr and Mrs Hisname, or Mr. Hisname and Ms. Hername? Some kids will have different names to either of the resisdent parents, some will have only one resident parent, some, neither.Another problem is children who are referred for treatment or screening, prior to the birth being registered. So, they leave hospital as Baby hername, and then are registered as Alphonse Horatio Hisname. It's a fecking nightmare, and you can't get it right.

JoPie sorry don't get your post at all.

The site I linked to is Age of Autism, it is an online newspaper not a scientific journal. It does not claim to be scientific but to be journalistic. The writers report on scientific events that concern autism in vaccine damaged children. Are you suggesting that they are making things up? If you have evidence that the mumps unit dosage of Merck's MMR never changed then please feel free to post it and contradict Mr Dan Olmsted who has been investigating and writing about these issues for years. His work has been presented to the US House of Representatives by Rep Carolyn Maloney as part of a bill to mandate research on vaccinated and unvaccinated populations so it does seem that the US federal government take him seriously even if you don't.

Dan Olmstead and Dr Wakefield are collegues and friends, not sure why that bothers you. They work in the same highly specialised field along with many other researchers, scientists and journalists.

Also don't quite understand why you put Dr in inverted commas, would you care to explain? Are you suggesting that Dr Wakefield is not a qualified doctor? That would be a pretty ridiculous, indeed, libellous claim to make.

You mention Maurice Hilleman and AIDS, I'm not really sure what that has to do with the specifics of the unit dosage in the MMR.

However I'm guessing that you are refering to this article (you don't provide a link to back up what you say unfortunately).

Age of Autism does not allege that Hilleman brought AIDS to the US, rather it reports on a documentary made by Harvard medical historian Prof. Edward Shorter in which Hilleman himself is interviewed saying that it is his view that the AIDS virus reached North America via African Green monkeys used in polio vaccine production.

Could you elaborate on 'bullshit' and 'bunkum' because I have no idea whether you are actually criticising the documentary, the article, the entire contents of the site, the article I linked to or what?

Haven't read the whole thread, as I need to pee , but, EPR, you say

"being "alarmed" at something you have no legal authority in isn't professional, it's personal, and it's not appropriate IMO".
Surely we want our GPs to treat us personally, and not like stats.
They may very well be alarmed too.
You should talk to them and explain your concerns. If you don't know your GP, you could be a neglectful mother for all they know.

Haven't read the whole thread, as I need to pee , but, EPR, you say

"being "alarmed" at something you have no legal authority in isn't professional, it's personal, and it's not appropriate IMO".
Surely we want our GPs to treat us personally, and not like stats.
They may very well be alarmed too.
You should talk to them and explain your concerns. If you don't know your GP, you could be a neglectful mother for all they know.

I would consider "Age of Autism" a more reliable source if it were not sponsored by "Lee Silsby Compounding Pharmacy. The leader in quality compounded medications for autism" and if it didn't carry adverts for blatant woo "Kirkman, Nordic, Houston, Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, Bio-Ray and many more!

Buy your autism supplements... Here"

But then I'm a bit cynical that way.

Apologies for the slight hijack.

Well that simplifies things nicely doesn't it?

No need to actually read anything or check facts for oneself. Much simpler to dismiss the entire contents of a site on the basis of an advert. Jolly good, that's that sorted. (Oh shit, hang on though, loads of medical journals carry advertisements for wonder products so where does that leave us?)

Do you actually know anything about what you insultingly term woo (did you copy that term from the ghastly Goldacre?) or, what people who bother to investigate the myriad of health problems many autistic children have, term 'biomedical intervention'?

So would anyone actually like to discuss the fact that viruses in vaccines have a documented synergestic effect on each other?

I repeat feel free to post evidence that contradicts Mr Olmsted's findings about the unit dosage of the mumps element of MMR.

I'm glad you came on and said something Beachcomber - I was trying to think of an appropriate post there but you did it for me.

It would be difficult for a genuinely rigorous scientific study to refute a statement published just this past January, no? Scientific research tends to take a little longer than that - although Olmsted is seemingly a journalist, not a scientist, let alone an epidemiologist. And Olmsted's last effort - the Amish/Chicago controversy - was discredited by scholarly, peer-reviewed medical research. Furthermore Olmsted was accused of having initiated the study intending to achieve the result, which is one of the worst things you can say about any medical research - albeit the norm for a journalist's reporting.

The data from the Japanese MMR hooha indicated that autism rose when the MMR was withdrawn, and many people opted just for single jabs of the rubella/measles component. (Children also started dying of measles complications; none had died from the alleged MMR reaction, so any synergestic response to the MMR is apparently a useful one.) If the mumps component of the MMR is being fingered as the culprit for an increased rate of autism, why was it that autism levels actually increased at a time when much of the population wasn't being vaccinated against mumps at all?

I genuinely find it strange that people are willing to trust a few, largely discredited, scraps of evidence in an online newsblog while dismissing wholesale a far greater body of extremely credible, peer-reviewed, medical research. I find it odd that people choose to risk their own and other people's children when every reputable public health body in the world is telling them differently. There is no evidence that convinces any health organisation of note on this planet that the MMR, or vaccination in general, is anything other than a public health godsend. Selectively quoting from a few zealots does not constitute a respectable argument. Nor does calling a journalist who points this out, instead of echoing your own prejudices, "ghastly".

ASD are in my family in at least 2 generations. My son will, nonetheless, be vaccinated with the MMR, and I am not remotely worried about that decision. I see no risk because none has ever convincingly been shown, and I will not risk my son's health, nor the health of a lot of other people, because I think I can somehow interpret and weigh the data better than the epidemiologists working for the National Institute of Health, The US Center For Disease Control, and the World Health Organisation.

I think you're being unreasonably annoyed it will be a form letter his 'alarm' is containable.
Have you really missed 'lots' of appointments or just not made one for MMR? Are their other jabs dcs are missing?
Not expecting an answer to these BTW it's just comments

I do agree that being called 'Mum' on form letters is a bit yuck all part of the dumbing down of society IMHO

(On a slightly selfish note at least you can get appointments for jabs I just get the we're all full for the next 3 months you will have to ring back on the 6th Tuesday of any month between 8.30 and 8.40 AM so your GP would find me very alarming I'm afraid)

I think jabs are still QOF'd ladi

qally I think the BMAs stance that it wants the requiremtnt to do the work abolished yet Docs still to get paid for it takes some of the power out of their argument!

1dilemma - yeah, I'd agree with that! But the BMA is effectively a union, so you'd hardly expect anything else, would you? I still think removing that link would be a seriously good idea, because people couldn't insist that that was why doctors promoted it. (I find it hard to imagine that many GPs are firmly convinced the MMR causes autism, and are twirling their moustaches of evil while jabbing toddlers regardless, just for the cash.)

Oh I agree with you re the GPs.
Rather sadly I think mine has just given up since he knows he wont meet his targets so there is no incentive for them to provide extra appointment slots.

I think most objections are based around autism/claiming damage etc rather then the money thing though? At least it seems like that on here. I'm not actually aware whether my friends vaccinate or not I would guess yes but they might not discuss it if not.

I get letters like this constantly from my GP. My older 2 were finally given the MMR at 4 (I wanted them to have perfect speech before I immunised them), so the letters stopped for a while. Since DD2 turned 1 last year, I've been getting them again plus calls from the GP practice (I see the number on the caller ID so I don't answer because I know that's what it's about!)

Well written, Qally. I completely agree with everything you wrote (not to mention impressed by its eloquence)

Well written, Qally. I completely agree with everything you wrote (not to mention impressed by its eloquence)

your doctor is just doing his job...i agree with him. the MMR is safe, always has been, but i understand parents concerns.

i've heard that some nurseries wont take children who haven't been vaccinated...they're putting other children at risk.

make an appt with your GP and talk through your concerns.

good luck

Qually could you link to the peer reviewed research that shows Olmsted's reporting on the Amish to be false or to have made false claims please? Thanks.

There seem to be quite a few misconceptions about what Olmsted did. He never claimed that the Amish do not vaccinate and he never claimed that they have no cases of autism. What he found was that they have lower (although increasing) rates of vaccination and lower rates of ASD than the general population. He suggested that these intial findings were worthy of further study. That's all.

He then went on to examine the population who use the Homefirst Health Services in Chicago and found similar results; low vaccination rates and low ASD (and asthma) rates. He suggested that these intial findings were also worthy of further study.

That's all, but it seems to have made him a pretty unpopular guy in certain circles. He didn't design a study, he just went looking for a population with lower vaccination rates to see what the deal was with ASD within that population.

Funny that you should mention designing a study with the aim of achieving an intended result because that is exactly what critics of the fatally flawed Japanese study you cite say. These same critics use the Japanese study as evidence of a vaccine/ASD link. Indeed this study is actually pretty explosive evidence of a link between vaccination rates and ASD rates. MMR vaccination was replaced with single vaccines given on the same day or very close together in Japan and ASD rates have a stastically significant correlation to vaccination rates as shown by this study.

Rutter, one of the study's main authors, has serious conflict of interest issues as he is an expert witness in the GMC Wakefield et al hearing and one of the expert witnesses for Glaxo in the MMR litigation. He failed to declare both of these conflicts when publishing the Japanese study.

You see people don't generally make important decisions about their children's health on the basis of a quick google or some blog. People don't think they are clever clogs who know better than the CDC, WHO the IOM etc. How funny. You think the CDC et al don't know about the vaccine/ASD connection? If they don't know then why are they working so hard to try to cover it up with studies such as those by Honda/Rutter, Fombonne, Verstraeten, Madsen, etc?

None of these much touted, peer reviewed studies stands up to close scrutiny in terms of exonerating vaccines in having a link to ASD. Yet, they have all been tumpeted and touted as having done so. Why?

Those pesky folks at Age of Autism are going to be having a good look at these much touted studies over the following months. I'll probably start a thread about it in Vaccinations.

(And Goldacre is ghastly, cunning, dangerous and clearly working to an agenda, no doubt through his connections with Wessely, Rutter and the Institute of Psychiatry.)

Interesting links - apparently "Psychiatrists are not usually also trained scientists and normally lack scientific qualifications."

Says all I need to know, really. It's certainly not difficult to find information on the Blessed fuckwit Olmsted.

Wow that's like really incredible OldLady, you are able to find all you need to know about a more than decade long controversy and the health problems of thousands of children from one sentence out of millions that have been written by thousands of people. Astounding!

Why don't you post something on Olmsted that challenges his work rather than just calling him a fuckwit? Have you read his work? Have you read the work of those who challenge it?

Why do people who seem convinced that vaccines have been exonerated of any possible role in ASD rates never actually post anything of substance or link to any robust impartial science?

Serious question to those of you who are convinced that all is AOK with the increasingly heavy and unstudied for safety vaccine schedule; have you actually read any of the science that you dismiss as discredited and have you read any of the science that you seem so convinced shows there to be no MMR/ASD link?

Yup, I'm brilliant, I am. I can spot hucksters conmen shysters fakes hysterical bollocks snake oil fuckwits salesmen from a good distance away these days.

Your suggestion that people who set up websites to examine and discuss the issues of children who have been damaged by vaccines are 'hucksters, conmen, shysters, fakes, hysterical, bollocks, snake oil fuckwits' is offensive and ignorant in the extreme. How patronising. How pointless. How 'hors sujet'.

Keep your distance from us if you don't mind.

(Sorry Greensleeves if I have played a role in the degeneration of your thread. I just wanted to post something in answer to nappyaddict's question because it reminded me of something I read recently. Didn't mean to turn this into a pointless slanging match. I shall repeat that you are NBU, wish you luck with your decisions and parp myself off this thread.)

LOL at the notion you can tell me not to post because you're offended!

Credulity and gullibility offend me, is that OK?