HONOLULU -- A Pearl City gynecologist has landed in trouble with the state Health Department after he took out a newspaper ad advocating an alternate way of giving people the H1N1 flu vaccine.

Dr. Rick Williams said he faxed the Department of Health several times in the last couple of weeks but never got a response until he spent $2,000 on a newspaper ad.

Williams' ad stated that five times as many people could be vaccinated by injecting the swine flu vaccine under the skin, instead of into the arm muscle or spraying it into the nose.

"This was a last-ditch effort to try to open up dialogue, because I am sure that they are wasting vaccine," Williams said.

The state epidemiologist said there are only two approved ways to give patients the H1N1 vaccine.

"Through your deltoid muscle, or intranasally through both nostrils, half the dose in each nostril. That's the only accepted route of administration for either seasonal flu vaccine or the H1N1 vaccine," Dr. Sarah Park said.

"They're unwilling to take a deep breath and say, 'Well, you know, since there's such a shortage, maybe we should consider relying on other studies of flu vaccines,'" Williams said.

Williams showed KITV a 2004 study of regular flu vaccine reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that found one-fifth of the dose injected under the skin could be just as effective as a regular shot in the arm.

Like more than half the health providers who've asked for the H1N1 vaccine in Hawaii, Williams has yet to receive any and now the state said it has put Williams' allotment on hold because of his ad.

"What I worry about is that patients out there might read this kind of thing and assume that this is accepted and might force or pressure their doctors needlessly," Park said.

"I hope that I'm still going to be able to get my supply of the H1N1, and I hope that nobody would be so petty as to take it out on my patients when all I tried to do was ask a question and start a dialogue," Williams said.

Williams said he will administer the vaccine as required by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is into the arm or into the nose.

It is not the first time this doctor has been the subject of controversy. Williams made headlines 20 years ago when he was indicted on charges of sexually assaulting and kidnapping a woman in Hawaii.

He later pleaded no contest to a sexual assault charge and prosecutors agreed to drop other charges in the case, as long as he stayed out of trouble for 10 years.

Williams told KITV he is now semi-retired but still has a medical practice concentrating in fertility and adolescent gynecology.