ABSTRACT
The British Dr. Andrew Wakefield sparked the current anti-vaccine movement when he claimed, incorrectly, that the vaccine for measles, mumps, and whooping cough caused autism. The University of Utah history professor, Nadja Durbach, has argued that this largest of all medical resistance campaigns ever mounted in Europe was about working-class resistance to the intrusion of the modern state into one's private life. The polymath Herbert Simon is credited with developing the theory of bounded rationality. He was one of the first to recognize that we humans are only partly rational. The California Legislature decided to act and push back against the growing number of Californians, particularly the affluent, who were choosing not to vaccinate their children. Public interest in autism and a better understanding of its nature spiked with the 1988 movie, The Rain Man. The anti-vaxxers, because of closed and dense networks which exist on the web, find only reinforcement for their theories.
