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Annotated Bibliography

What are the effects of the Anti-Vaccination movement in the United States?

Sara Harbin

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1103

October 16, 2019

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Annotated Bibliography

Green, David. “Why Aren't Parents Getting Their Children Vaccinated?” ​Weekend Edition.

National Public Radio, 29 Apr. 2019. Transcript,

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/29/718165015/why-arent-parents-getting-their-kids-vaccina

ted, Accessed 15 Oct. 2019.

This is a transcript of an interview between David Greene and Jennifer Reich. David

Greene is a highly respected journalist that has won awards and is a ​New York Times b​ est

selling author. He wrote the best-selling book ​Midnight in Siberia​, capturing Russian life

on a journey across the Trans-Siberian Railway. He is known for being the National

Public Radio receptor for the White House during George W. Bush’s second term.

Greene interviews Jennifer Reich a Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado

Denver. Reich does research in Social Policy, Healthcare, and Qualitative Social

Research, with her most recent study being “​Reproductive Justice, Vaccine Refusal, and

the Uneven Landscape of Choice​.” Reich is also the author of the book "​Calling The

Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines.​ " In the interview, Reich explains the motivation

behind parents who have “vaccine hesitancy” and argues that although the parents are not

helping society as a whole through their vaccination policy, they are doing what they

believe is best for their kids. While she doesn’t necessarily defend the parent’s ideas she

tries to give the listener a deeper understanding of what the “Anti-Vax” community is

actually like. I believe that this is an extremely objective source that really goes in-depth

of what the reality of these unvaccinated kids and families’ lives are like. National Public

Radio is a fairly objective organization that is somewhat left-leaning but tends to just tell
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the facts. The audience of this interview would probably be parents who are trying to

learn more about the thought process behind not vaccinating your kids in an objective

way. I believe this interview was an invaluable source in this annotated bibliography.

Hussain, Azhar, Syed Ali, Madiha Ahmed, and Sheharyar Hussain. “The Anti-vaccination

Movement: A Regression in Modern Medicine​.​” ​Cureus. ​The National Center for

Biotechnology Information, 3 July 2018. Academic Study,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6122668/, Accessed 16 Oct. 2019

This is an academic study that analyzed the recent increase of parents who are not

vaccinating their children in the past 25 years. The authors’ point of view is a scientific

one, with them explaining the possible consequences of western mothers not vaccinating

their kids. They analyze the effects of Andrew Wakefield’s study, which concluded that

the measles, mumps, and rubella combined vaccination (MMR), causes Autism. This

study analyzes how even though there is clear scientific evidence that the MMR vaccine

is efficient and has no long term side effects, people still refuse to use it. The authors

provide a lot of statistics on the matter and make their analysis very straight forward. This

leads to a very straight-forward written article that highlights all of the proven evidence

against the Anti-Vaccination movement. The authors are all professors of medicine and

psychology at varying universities. This study was written in a matter-of-fact way

making it not very biased. There is some bias since the authors do not really consider the

parents of these children who are not biased, thus only showing one aspect of the topic,

but since it is a scientific study there is no real need to show opinions. The audience of

this piece other academic minds such as professors or doctors, and also parents who are
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considering what to do for their kid’s vaccinations. This source is definitely a more

academic source when compared to my other sources. I believe this source is providing

an academic mindset for my research and it has hard evidence to prove the point that

vaccinations are necessary.

Measles and Rubella Initiative. ​American Red Cross, 2012, https://measlesrubellainitiative.org/.

Accessed 16 Oct. 2019.

This is a website that’s main goal is to have every child across the world to have the

Measles and Rubella vaccination. It is run by the American Red Cross association which

is a very reliable source especially when it comes to the likes of vaccines and medical

issues in the world. Their stance on the matter of vaccination is to prevent anyone from

dying from these diseases and to inform the public about the benefits of the vaccine. The

site does not comment too much on the recent drive of western mothers to not vaccinate

their kids and focuses more on how the entire world is suffering from Measles and

Rubella. Although this website does not directly apply to the topic, it still provides

information about the MMR vaccine and the many many benefits of vaccination. This

website is also supported and funded by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the World

Health Organization, the United Nations Foundation, and UNICEF. All of the listed

organizations are non-biased reliable sources when it comes to information around the

globe, making this website a very valuable source. This source was helpful in my

research, but I am not sure if it will appear in the Extended Inquiry paper. This is due to

the fact that it has a more broad view of vaccines than I’m looking for. I would like to

focus on the United States and developed countries, but this website focuses on mostly
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non-developed countries. This was overall a valuable source though since it provided a

global perspective on vaccines, and how third-world countries are struggling to beat these

diseases with vaccines.