Feeling Prepared?

If you did good work on your Proposal plus 5 Sources assignment several weeks ago, you are halfway toward producing a good Annotated Bibliography, an important component of your Portfolio.

On the other hand, if I gave you feedback warning you to eliminate the “about” language in your Background notes, or advising you to make specific claims about the specific arguments you’ll make (and for which the sources you cite here will provide support, or refutation), then you still have work to do.

As promised, I am providing a model Annotated Bibliography in advance of your deadline to help you produce more pertinent bibliographies of your own.

 Reminder Instructions

The Zero Entry below reminds us how to format and phrase the entries. From Source 1 on, I provide good models of Background and How I Intend to Use It entries.

0. “Replace with Actual Linked Title”

Background: Provides the specific information, concepts, data, illustrations, or opinions that make the source relevant to my research argument. Avoids general “about” language in favor of specific claims.

How I Intend to Use It: Again avoids general “will be useful as background” statements and their like, again in favor of identifying the specific claims the source will support (or refute).

 Modeled Annotated Bibliography Entries

1. “Measles Resurges, and With Far Deadlier Effects”

Background: In the 1960s in America half a million cases of measles per year was common. By 1983, following two decades of massive immunization campaigns and a new vaccine, the number was down to 2,000. Continued progress might have wiped it out for good in the US, but the disease has resurged since, and as early as 1990, the number had risen again to more than 26,000, demonstrating that without continued vigilance, diseases once thought to be controlled or contained can easily make a comeback.

How I Intend to Use It: This source doesn’t demonstrate that a lack of vaccination compliance causes the disease to resurge. However, I will use it to demonstrate the danger of becoming complacent about diseases that can easily be controlled. Until they’re completely eradicated, where that is possible, we must be vigilant against illnesses.

2. “4 Diseases Making a Comeback This Year Thanks to Anti-Vaxxers”

Background: That “measles comeback” scare of 1990 sparked renewed efforts to enforce strict policies in public schools that all children be vaccinated against “childhood diseases” in order to attend classes. By 2000, measles was “considered wiped out” in New York City and widely across the country. Says Time: “The emergence of these diseases — especially measles — is alarming, and mostly due to parents in the U.S. not vaccinating their kids.” A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control warns that unvaccinated kids who come into contact with measles are overwhelmingly likely to contract it. While Time seems comfortable that 90% of kids entering kindergarten in 2012 had been vaccinated, that still means half a million kindergarteners have not been. Since 2010, only 60 or so cases have been reported in the US per year, but a new outbreak in New York City in March 2014 has already infected 10 adults and 9 children.

How I Intend to Use It: This source still doesn’t provide a causal link between the spread of a sometimes deadly disease and the failure to vaccinate, but it’s a fairly reliable source that makes the claim that the outbreak is the result of “parents in the US not vaccinating their kids.” I don’t need to prove the causation for my paper, just make a persuasive case of the connection, so it will serve my purpose. I don’t know yet whether measles (like polio) could be eradicated from the planet once and for all, or whether I’ll need to prove that, but some other source will have to provide that support if I do need it.

3. “Poliomyelitis: Center For Disease Control ”

Background: In its description of the history and background of the poliomyelitis virus and the disease in humans, the CDC reports just 152 confirmed cases of polio between 1980 and 1999 in the US (which was declared polio-free in 2000). Tragically, 95% of those cases (144/152) were vaccine-associated paralytic polio cases, meaning they were caused by live polio vaccine. In other words, our attempt to vaccinate children against polio crippled them. In a very terse statement that obscures some sad political realities, the ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices) “recommended in 2000 that IPV [inactivated polio vaccine] be used exclusively in the United States.” During the two decades before the development of the much safer IPV vaccine, a live polio vaccine had been “the vaccine of choice,” and the cause of those predictable but unintended cripplings. 

How I Intend to Use It: This story needs to be told because it provides opponents of mass immunizations a very strong argument against them. It cannot be denied that the attempt to eradicate polio will infect some children. While they won’t necessarily be paralyzed (prompt antivirals can prevent paralysis), some almost surely will, given the sheer numbers of children immunized in the largest campaigns. We also need to acknowledge that while the inactivated vaccine is now the “gold standard,” mass immunizations still utilize the older, discredited, much much cheaper live virus type, which can be very easily administered by non-medical volunteer personnel, orally, with a dropper on the tongue. God forgive me I would still do this to rid the world forever of a disease that before the eradication programs paralyzed about 20 million people, but the cost has to be faced and owned.

ASSIGNMENT DETAILS

DUE: NOON TUE APR 29.

• Publish your assignment in two categories: A14: Annotated Bibliography and the category for your Portfolio under your own name.
• Give your post the title Bibliography–Student Name substituting your own name, of course.
• Word count is irrelevant, but complex ideas briefly expressed are rewarded best.
• You will receive a Research Process grade for this post, which will also become an important component of your overall Portfolio grade.
• Customary late penalties. (0-24 hours 10%) (24-48 hours 20%) (48+ hours, 0 grade).
• Research Process category (10%)