Complete VPD Wanted Poster Lineup

I hope you enjoyed the Vaccine Preventable Disease Wanted Posters and found them informative. They are meant to be educational materials, presented in an easily approachable manner. As I mentioned before, if you would like a print version of the posters, either as a poster or as a card, please let me know.

For ease of reference, here are all 16 posters (after the break).

Wanted: Rubeola morbillivirus

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Rubella virus

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Mumps

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Influenza

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information. I can also provide it in electronic format for printing on regular 8.5"x11" paper.

Wanted: Varicella zoster virus

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Poliovirus

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Parental Age, Autism and Schizophrenia

I first heard about some interesting news a couple days ago on Twitter. An acquaintance of mine, @UAJamie posted a link to a New York Times article reporting on some very recent research into possible causes of disorders like autism and schizophrenia. In the past year or so, there have been studies suggesting that the age of the parents may play a role in the risk of autism, but no clear connection has been made, let alone any reason that such should be the case.

In "Father's Age Linked to Risk of Autism and Schizophrenia", we learn about a new study finding that the older the father (but not the mother) is, the greater the risk of autism and schizophrenia. The reason? The older the father is at the time the child is conceived, the greater the number of genetic mutations. A very interesting finding, but it raises some questions. Unfortunately, the full article published in Nature, Rate of de novo mutations and the importance of father's age to disease risk, is behind a pay wall, so I have to rely on the abstract and news reports. With that in mind, let's dig in.

Wanted: Streptococcus pneumoniae

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Neisseria meningitidis and Human papillomavirus

Neisseria meningitidis image from the Public Health Image Library. Human papillomavirus image from NCI Visuals Online. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Mark "Castrate 'Em" Geier's License Suspended - Part 7

The bad news just keeps coming for Dr. Mark Geier and his son, David. I recently wrote about the Maryland Department of Physicians finding that David Geier practiced medicine without a license and was fined $10,000 (with, in my admittedly non-expert opinion, the potential for further fines and jail time), as well as Dr. Geier's license being challenged in Hawaii and his application for a license in Ohio rejected.

Catherina at Just the Vax alerted me to some very recent news. Today, she posted some excerpts from meeting minutes of the Florida Board of Medicine. It looks like Florida is the latest state to suspend his license (Final Order here; if the link doesn't work, you can look up the documents here), including administrative and punitive fines. It appears that Dr. Geier entered into a settlement with the state of Florida, agreeing to abide by their suspension of his license and waiving all rights to further appeal or challenge of their decision.

Wanted: Hepatitis B

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Hepatitis A

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Rotavirus A

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Haemophilus influenzae type B

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

The Fall of the Geiers Continues Apace

A brief break in the posters to bring you some updates on the Geier front. As you have no doubt read by now, David Geier, son of Dr. Mark Geier, has been found by the Maryland Board of Physicians (PDF) to have practiced medicine without a license. His penalty? A $10,000 fine. As Dr. Steven Novella wrote at Neurologica Blog, this is not a huge sum of money, as far as penalties go. The order mentions that the Board took into account:

Wanted: Clostridium tetani

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Corynebacterium diphtheriae

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Wanted: Bordetella pertussis

Image from the Public Health Image Library. Logo design by Maggie McFee. More VPD Wanted Poster details here. If you are interested in a print version (16"x20" poster or 4"x5" card), please email me for more information.

Getting to Know You - Pathogen Edition

August is Immunization Awareness Month, and I've admittedly been slacking off on the posts this month, largely because I've been very busy, but also due to a project I've been working on for all of you. There's a lot going on. If you haven't heard, there's a pertussis epidemic in several states, driven by a variety of factors (adults not getting boosters, teens whose immunity has lapsed, people refusing vaccines etc.). In West Virginia, several families are suing the state Department of Health and Human Services over a new requirement that high schoolers be required to get a Tdap booster, despite the secretary having the authority to propose rules regulating the "sanitary condition of all institutions and schools" (WV Code 16-1-4), not to mention being charged with the responsibility of controlling communicable diseases (WV Code 16-3), which includes the compulsory immunization of children, unless they have a valid medical reason to not be immunized. Then, of course, there was the recent court decision, throwing out Wakefield's libel suit against Brian Deer, Fiona Godlee and the BMJ on the grounds that Texas has no jurisdiction to hear the case. Not to mention elsewhere in the world suffering from outbreaks of preventable diseases that kill.

So like I said, there's a lot going on in the world regarding vaccines. I figured that Immunization Awareness Month presented an excellent opportunity to finally finish and release the project I've been working on. As important as it is to understand and be aware of the routine vaccines that are on the recommended list in the U.S. and elsewhere, it's also important to understand the diseases that these vaccines prevent. To that end, I've compiled information on the 16 diseases we are currently able to prevent through immunization, much of the information culled from the CDC's Pink Book. Every week day, for the rest of August, I will be posting a wanted poster for each disease at noon, EDT. I hope you find them useful and informative. And, if anyone is interested in print copies, I will make them freely available (though I'd see it as a kindness to send in a donation to an autism charity, such as the Autism Science Foundation, the Lurie Center for Autism, or to support vaccine research like that done at the Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center) in either 16" x 20" poster form or 4" x 5" card format. Just use the email link over to the right to get in touch with me. It would also be great if you could share the posts far and wide via Twitter, Facebook and whatever other social media you enjoy.

Special thanks to Maggie McFee for helping me with the logo design. Thanks also to the folks at the Public Health Image Library for keeping such a wonderful collection of images.