The appropriate use of medical humor could (and should) have an important role in medical education and public awareness. And although I do think everyone’s going a little overboard with their worries about H1N1, I applaud the effort of the United States Department of Health and Human Services in soliciting the public’s help in alerting the public on the importance of washing hands. The 2009 Flu Prevention PSA Contest had over 200 entries this month – some funny, some serious.

On September 22nd at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the winner of the H1N1 Public Service Announcement Contest. Congratulations to Dr. Clarke of Baldwin, New York for his winning video H1N1 Rap. You can see his video here:

Dr. Clarke… if you’re reading this… First, great job on the video… Second, some advice… if you make a video for Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, then be sure to lose the hand gestures.

The top ten videos from the contest can be found...

You will be as happy as a pig in mud to know up front what this post is NOT going to be… It will not have jokes about BMI or obesity. There will be no mention of police officers… no talk of bringing home the bacon. Even if swine flew, I would have nothing to say about government spending or the fat cats on Wall Street. You can wait until the mad cows come home and there will be no mention of mast cells with heparin… and certainly no talk of an Aporkalypse.

So, here’s my public service announcement: Don’t panic… although the pig is out of the bag, so to speak, have you ever stopped to wonder what would happen if we did a news media play-by-play of the spread of any normal flu season? I bet it would be pretty scary. A play-by-play in sports is exciting… in infectious disease news it’s frightening.

Anyway, I really hesitated to post this swine flu comic in case it does become worse than most of us in healthcare think it will be. The pig had my tongue, but here it goes. I’ve chosen to ba...