We really like this product, so much that we've recently affiliated with the GM website to provide our Aware-o-philes easy access. Besides being excruciatingly cute, these plush little polyesters are great educational tools - for kids, Moms and Dads, alike. The products are high quality and high value, and the hang tags provide great descriptives of the microbial world we share.

Check 'em out here, and start building your collection!

Fomites, that is. Hotel rooms. Inanimate objects. Desktops, door knobs, remotes, phones, light switches. Think... who and with what, slept here! And how long ago? Recent studies indicate that our old friend, RHINOVIRUS (the common cold), can survive a full day on a fomitic-friendly surface. Of course, it has to thumb a ride north to nose or eyes, not usually a problem when fingertips are in the area. Always did wonder why Mom crop-dusted hotel rooms with Lysol before giving the family all-clear. Moms know.

Check out the IA Kleenex-Free version. Fomite-Friendly with Flair.

Reports are surfacing of people attempting to achieve a buzz by DRINKING hand sanitizing gels! Not only is it hard to get one of those little umbrellas into the tiny dispensers, it also happens to be akin to slugging down a concentrated poison. (Chem 101 review: fermented ethanol is for Fridays - isopropyl is for swabbing, and can seriously depress the heart and CNS.) Consider the prisoner in Maryland who went ballistic, prompting a call to Poison Control: the prisonut was apparently drinking from a gallon container of the sanitizer! No report of how many brain cells he lost, assuming he had any, going in.

Take away: we have yet to plumb the depths of dumb; and a reminder to parents that little Billy doesn't know about altered hydroxyl groups yet, so judicious use and limited accessibility, rules.

Amidst our standard gloom and doom reportage (please see next story for convenient example), have you noticed that fewer people are dying of: Polio (1955); measles (1963); rubella (1969); meningitis (1975); pneumococcal pneumonia (1977); hepatitis B (1982); hepatitis A (1995); shingles (2006); HPV (2006). Dates refer to the introductions of vaccines that have dramatically altered the impact of these infectious diseases. Hopefully, the politics and economics of vaccine production will continue to improve, so that many of the scourges that remain, go down!

Point made: Nearly 40 million people are living with HIV, with 4.3 million new infections this year alone. TB, Malaria,et al...

The 1918 Spanish flu virus killed in the neighborhood of 40 million people worldwide. Not a good neighborhood. Few of us remember this dreadful time, so we tend to dismiss the pandemic as so much ancient history. Could be a big mistake. Researchers have recently applied historical data to current population trends, and estimated that as many as 81 million deaths could result from a resurgence of a deadly influenza strain. Anybody listening?

Alert: Watch for a new IA Immunization/Flu Vaccination design, Summer, 2007, a handsome, evergreen reminder of the critical and under- appreciated contributions of immunization to global public health.

Recent outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever among people in Africa also killed thousands of gorillas, according to researchers from Spain. Epidemics in Congo and Gabon during the first five years of this century have exacted a serious toll upon the gorilla population. In one 2003 study, 91 of the 95 animals surveyed were killed by this scary, take-no-prisoners virus.

Our Ebola pattern is a very accurate reproduction of the "shepard's crook" appearance, as exhibited in Dr. Frederick Murphy's classic 1976 micrograph of this mysterious killer.

Click Image for Ebola

Watch for Immunization/1918, WaterBorne Ballet, Chilling Out (Melatonin/REM) and HeartHealth(Athero) designs percolating for fall.