It has been reported that the US surgeon general nominee, Casey Means, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting supplements and other health and wellness products, details likely to invite new scrutiny about potential conflicts of interest for the author and entrepreneur.
Means, a close ally of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the sister of White House adviser Calley Means, has not yet been scheduled to appear before Congress for her confirmation hearing. But a filing dated Sept. 10 and posted by the Office of Government Ethics suggests her nomination cleared conflict-of-interest checks within the federal government.
The supplements industry has ties with several members of the Trump administration, including Medicaid director Mehmet Oz and health adviser Calley Means. An AP investigation this summer found that Casey Means had repeatedly failed to disclose her partnerships with supplements companies and other businesses promoted in her
newsletter, social media accounts, and elsewhere.
Among the payments included in the new disclosures for newsletter sponsorship and partnership fees are $12,000 from herbal remedies firm Apothekary; $27,431 from algae supplements company ENERGYbits; $16,461 from fiber supplements company Florasophy; $27,000 from probiotics company Pendulum Therapeutics; $46,000 from
supplements company Pique; $536 from prenatal vitamin company WeNatal; and $16,104 from basil seed supplements company Basil Seed Works. Means received a total of more than $130,000 in sponsorship fees from supplement company Amazentis, including a $55,000 book tour sponsorship.
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In May this year, I wrote this about Means:
RFK Jr wrote on X: “The Surgeon General is a symbol of moral authority who stands against the financial and institutional gravities that tend to corporatize medicine. Casey Means was born to hold this job. She will provide our country with ethical guidance, wisdom, and gold-standard medical advice.” Yet her suitability for Surgeon General is a contentious issue.
Means holds a 2014 MD from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in human biology. She is an advocate for addressing chronic diseases through nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle changes. Her book “Good Energy”, co-authored with her brother Calley, argues that metabolic dysfunction is a root cause of most chronic illnesses. As a “wellness influencer”, Means has demonstrated an ability to communicate health concepts to a broad audience.
Critics point out that Means dropped out of her residency at Oregon Health & Science University months before completion. This means she is not board-certified and has very limited clinical experience; for instance, she never saw patients without supervision. Her medical license has been inactive since 2024, and she has done as good as no own original research. Unlike past Surgeons General, who had extensive backgrounds in public health administration and infectious disease, Means has no government or public health leadership experience. Her focus is on functional medicine and wellness, both areas that lack rigor and are close to quackery.
It gets worse: Means has expressed skepticism about vaccines, suggesting in a 2024 newsletter that the current vaccine schedule contributes to the decline of pediatric health. Her endorsement of dangerous nonsense like energy healing and raw milk seems worrying. Moreover, Means also co-founded Levels, a company selling continuous glucose monitors to non-diabetics, and markets supplements and other dubious health products. RFKJr’s claim that Means will offer “ethical guidance” seems particularly odd: she has no training in medical ethics and some of her past actions are outright unethical. Physicians like Dr. Neil Stone have therefore called Means “grossly underqualified”.
The Surgeon General must provide science-based guidance, oversee >6,000 officers, and address diverse and serious public health issues. Means’ inexperience and narrow focus limits her effectiveness. Crucially, her history of promoting of vaccine skepticism and quack medicine undermines trust in science-based policies.
In summary, Means seems wholly unsuited for the job of Surgeon General. In the interest of the US public health, her appointment should not be confirmed by the Senate.
SAY NO MORE!
10 Responses to The US surgeon general nominee, Casey Means, is a ‘snake-oil saleswoman’
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Why am I not surprised??
Intelligent experienced bosses hire even superior experienced employees.
Dumbsters hire the even more dumb!
And since Trump hired RFK….
@Rolf Stolt-Bechtold
Exactly.
I think that the US is heading for a total Dunning-Kruger collapse: a president who is already so deeply stupid that he is utterly incapable of appreciating or even recognizing intelligence, yet believes that he knows best about everything, hiring people who are even stupider than him (which is in fact unavoidable, as no-one with even two functioning brain cells would want to work for Trump).
And sure enough, ALL these people turn out to be bumbling idiots when questioned by Congress about their work – yet the GOP won’t dismiss or even criticize any of them because they were hand-picked by the Dear Leader, who still maintains that “they’re doing a great job”. Which in a way is true, assuming that the job entails sucking up to Trump and indulging his every whim.
Whatever they do, actually running the country to the benefit of its citizens does not appear to be on their list.
https://www.caseymeans.com/
She looks pretty impressive to me.
Take a look at her website and list of accomplishments, books, interviews, and publications.
Listen to some of them.
Seems to me that the supposedly great intellectuals that have been running many of the health-related agencies are the ones not operating in the public’s best interest and, in fact, were allegedly breaking laws/science-ethics. RFK Jr was exactly right to clean house at the CDC and I hope he continues to gut every agency to cut the cancer out.
We need a businessman like Trump to guide this country back to fiscal responsibility. Why are you so biased about success and winning? Do you not like rational foreign and domestic policy?
How about “Pray for the USA”? My surmise is that you’d be opposed to that too.
“We need a businessman like Trump”
But instead you got a corrupt felon who even managed to bankrupt several casinos.
I do understand why you feel the need to pray for the USA.
Oh, it’s RG … welcome back, I guess.
First off, running a country is not like running a business at all. If you run a country like a business (read: for short-term profit), you will seriously harm the majority of people. Public services and public benefits are not profitable, especially in the short term; also see further down. If you want to destroy a country, run it like a business.
Second, Trump was a horrible businessman, with a lot of his ‘success’ achieved by lying, cheating, corruption and fraud, and threatening and stiffing his contractors and creditors – basically just like he is behaving now. Even as late as 2018, a lot of his wealth was imaginary, consisting of about half a billion dollars in precarious loans, obtained under fraudulent pretences by hugely exaggerating his wealth that served as collateral.
And handing out an utterly unprecedented 4 trillion dollars in tax cuts to billionaires and wealthy Big Tech is not exactly an example of ‘fiscal responsibility’.
A few more examples of Trump’s ‘fiscal responsibility’:
– Destroying all sorts of often essential federal agencies and services under the pretence of fighting ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ – with the net result that hundreds of billions of dollars in worth have been destroyed, hundreds of thousands of workers have become unemployed (many of whom still have no work and are now relying on social service), with only a few billion dollars in actual savings. Not to mention countless people abroad who were relying on USAID, and are now dying. AND of course tens of thousands of US farmers growing the food distributed by USAID, and who are now mostly on the brink of bankruptcy.
– Destroying hundreds of billions in economic value by instating consumer taxes (a.k.a. tariffs) that will seriously hurt especially low and middle income Americans, but also most businesses. But hey, those trillions in tax cuts for the ultra-rich must of course come from somewhere …
– Wasting $170 billion of taxpayer money on a secret police force (ICE), the official purpose(*) of which is to kick millions of hard-working foreigners out of the USA. Those workers ARE hugely profitable: not only are they very productive in terms of work vs, wages, but the illegal immigrants among them pay taxes, yet have no right to healthcare and social security. Only a very stupid president would kick these people out. QED.
– Accepting a $400 million
bribe‘gift’ in the form of an airplane that will require another estimated $500 million to $1 billion of taxpayer money in retrofitting it for its task as Air Force One.– Wasting $200 million of taxpayer money on a White House ballroom that nobody needs seems almost insignificant in comparison …
*: Of course with the unstated purpose to serve as Trump’s personal gang of thugs, intimidating and roughing up protesters and anyone else objecting to foreign-looking people being plucked from the streets and deported to hellhole prisons without any warrant or due process.
@Ace Kenton
Take a look at her website and list of accomplishments, books, interviews, and publications.
I am not impressed. There is a lot of advertising blabber on Means page. A wall of text designed to overwhelm you. She is a doctor with average skills, who dropped out of her training half a year before finish because it was “too stressful”. Instead, she opened a practice for alternative medicine, which has since been liquidated. Her medical license in inactive.
Means wrote a book that sold very well. She was invited as a speaker and has done countless interviews. She wants to rake in as much fame and money as possible with as little effort as necessary. A typical snake-oil peddler.
I do not see any ability in her to lead and represent an agency with tens of thousands of employees.
hear, hear!
PS: I am adding Means’ Wikipedia article, if someone doubts my statements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Means
@RPGNo1
I have had enough with you all bad mouthing a good doctor. I present evidence in support of Dr. Means’s extraordinary career as a doctor. We in US deserve her leadership.
MAHA!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3lzfH86avIc&t=732
I just picked this up on facebook:
The Trump administration has reportedly pulled Casey Means’ nomination for surgeon general, and many of us in public health are exhaling (at least temporarily). From the moment her name surfaced, it was clear that this nomination prioritized wellness branding over public health credentials.
Her confirmation hearing only confirmed those concerns when she dodged direct questions on vaccines, mifepristone, and contraception, and retreated again and again to vague “root causes” and “informed consent” framing, which are problematic for reasons we have discussed many times previously
The surgeon general is the nation’s top public health communicator. That role demands clarity, scientific rigor, and the willingness to say plainly what the evidence shows. Whatever comes next, the bar for the next nominee should be exactly that. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the role gets filled by someone with those required traits!