Vaccines don’t cause autism — the science on the question is clear. But Donald Trump evidently thinks he knows better than the entire scientific community and took to Twitter to suggest otherwise:

Massive combined inoculations to small children is the cause for big increase in autism….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2012

…Spread shots out over long period and watch positive result.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2012

The number of people who share of Trump’s view — which, again, is entirely unsupported by the relevant science — could be already be having pernicious consequences. For example, the U.S. is facing the worst whooping cough epidemic in 50 years, a disease easily prevented by vaccine. While budget cuts to state-level health organizations have exacerbated the epidemic’s spread, there are concerns that fears about the mythical autism-vaccine link are helping to increase the number of whooping cough cases as some children are not vaccinated.

This isn’t the first time Trump has expounded nonsense on vaccines and autism. However, the timing is especially sensitive given that Trump has been given a special “suprise” role in the upcoming Republican convention in Tampa by its organizers.

Since Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) outrageous assertion that “legitimate rape” doesn’t lead to pregnancy, Mitt Romney has been trying to distance himself from Akin’s far-right views on women’s issues. Unfortunately for Romney, however, the running mate he selected for his presidential ticket isn’t actually far removed from Akin’s radical anti-choice positions at all.

Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan agrees with Akin that rape is not a valid reason to seek an abortion, a position he has publicly held as far back as 1998. Ryan actually has a slightly more extreme record on anti-abortion legislation than Akin does, earning an 100 percent pro-life rating from the National Right to Life Committee for his anti-choice votes in Congress while Akin earned a 90 percent rating during the same time period. Every single piece of anti-abortion legislation that Ryan has supported has been a bill co-sponsored by Akin. And the two have co-sponsored a considerable number of radical anti-choice measures together:

Despite the fact that Republicans want to pretend that Akin is the exception rather than the rule, his deeply anti-choice views permeate the widespread policy positions of the GOP party. Romney chose to align himself with a far-right lawmaker who has helped Akin lead the way in Congress to restrict women’s rights, and it’s not a stretch to imagine that a Romney-Ryan ticket would take steps to legislate women’s health based on Akin’s woefully misguided junk science.

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) wants Americans to be able to buy insurance the same way they buy lawnmowers — without government regulation. In a radio interview with WIXK’s Jeff Patterson, the freshman congressman said consumers know exactly what they’re going to spend when they buy a lawnmower, but they have “no clue” what they would pay for a colonoscopy.

Competition and transparency would help the market for health care, Duffy said:

“You’re talking about cost controls,” Duffy said. “First of all, do we have cost controls on lawnmowers?”

Patterson noted that a lawnmower is different from heart surgery, for example.

“Because you have competition,” replied Duffy. “And so if you have competition within the plans, you have a right to purchase in the exchange of Medicare, we believe that that competition drives prices down. And when we see markets work in competition in any sector of the economy, we see higher quality and lower prices. And that’s what we’re advocating for within health care.”

“This is not a market that actually works because people can’t shop on price and service because they can’t get that data,” he added.

But the problem with Duffy’s lawnmower comparison is that people don’t buy a lawnmower not knowing when they need it. They buy them to mow their lawns and take time to comparison shop to get a good deal. Instead, when it comes to health insurance, consumers have to rely on employer-provided plans or shop for expensive plans on the individual insurance market where one-fifth of applicants are denied coverage. And the version of “consumer-driven health care” that Duffy seems to be supporting is rooted in the idea that patients will act like consumers and compare quality and costs of medical procedures, negotiating lower prices as needed.

While in theory, it should give people more control over their health coverage, the high-deductible health plans lead people to purchase coverage that might be inadequate for their needs. Consumer satisfaction for the “consumer-driven” plans is low, and patients are unlikely to comparison shop for health services because doctors still have primary control over health care. Instead of helping, Duffy’s hope that buying insurance can be just like buying a lawnmower would only increase costs and hurt consumers.

Addressing the controversy surrounding Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) offensive comments that “legitimate rape” doesn’t lead to pregnancy, President Obama joked last night at a fundraiser that the Missouri Senate candidate must have “somehow missed science class.” Obama’s point that Akin must not be aware of the actual science behind female sexuality, conception, and sexual assault is well-taken. However, the uncomfortable reality is that an entire generation of current Missouri students are likely to be just as uninformed about the same subjects.

Missouri is one of the 29 states across the country that do not mandate comprehensive sex education to inform public school students about the very issues that Akin needs to brush up on. In fact, Missouri goes a step further than merely failing to require sex education instruction in every school — if a school district does voluntarily choose to include some sort of sexual education curriculum, the course is required to use an abstinence-only program to instruct students.

Abstinence-only programs don’t work. They fail to give students the full range of information about sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy, and they don’t discuss accurate information about preventative measures like condoms or birth control. One abstinence education program in California teaches students to prevent STDs by “getting plenty of rest,” even after the state’s recent jump in STD rates suggests that information about condoms is more important than ever. On a national level, studies report that abstinence education has contributed to the fact that 60 percent of young adults are misinformed about birth control’s effectiveness, believing they don’t need to use it because it won’t make much of a difference in preventing pregnancy. Unsurprisingly, states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy are the same states that push abstinence policies.

Missouri itself has a higher rate of sexually transmitted diseases — 119.6 cases of STD infections per 1,000 young women between the ages of 15 to 19 — than the national average of 100.8 among the same demographic. And Akin, himself a product of Missouri-area schools (although he attended private institutions), may actually represent the standard lack of knowledge among the state’s current students, who continue to be denied the comprehensive sexual education information that could help them distinguish Akin’s junk science from real facts.

If President Obama and other elected officials are serious about their desire to fully educate Americans about the facts on human sexuality in their high school classes, they have to stop supporting abstinence misinformation campaigns. Until schools in states like Missouri are required to teach students the reality about human physiology and sexuality, they may continue to inspire future generations of Akins.