Dr. Casey Means is President Trump’s nominee for U.S. Surgeon General. She is 38 years old, a graduate of the Stanford School of Medicine who abandoned her residency training before completion, and has spent the last six years as a wellness influencer and tech company founder. She is an entrepreneur who has promoted health by selling dietary supplements, creams and teas.
Means co-authored a book with her brother, Calley Means, who works for the Trump administration as a close advisor to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The book, titled “Good Energy,” is about diet and metabolic health. It recommends lifestyle change and alternative medicine, approaches not evidence based. Her message tends to echo Kennedy’s in the Make America Healthy Again movement.
She had a “functional” medical practice in Oregon for a few years, but never became board certified and her medical license has been inactive since 2019. She has no experience as a leader or clinician, so important to the surgeon general’s job. The surgeon general serves in the Department of Health and Human Services leading more than 6,000 members of the U.S. Public Health Service which include physicians, nurses and scientist.
As the “nation’s doctor,” the surgeon general is meant to be a trusted voice guiding Americans on matters concerning their health. In a chapter titled “Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor,” Means writes, “when it comes to preventing and managing chronic diseases, you should not trust the medical system.” Although she preaches disease prevention, she raises concern about childhood vaccines, which have saved an estimated 146 million children’s lives under the age of 5 in the past 50 years.
Means is right to criticize medicine for not looking harder at “diets that make us sick,” but her belief that unhealthy foods explain the nations health problems is far too simplistic. She completely dismisses the social disparities that are health determinants, like the inability of many to access care. Her rhetoric fails to explain why black women have a 40% higher death rate than white women from breast cancer.
More than ever, America needs a surgeon general who can communicate evidence-based
health facts to the public. Misinformation spreads fast when the public trust in science becomes fragile. Medical information made public must speak truths not falsehoods. We cannot allow science to be the entangled with politics.
Last week Dartmouth held a symposium titled the “Global Mental Health Crisis.” Six past surgeons general comprised the panel. Their credentials were extensive, all experienced clinicians, teachers and leaders with a deep understanding of population health. I was most impressed with their humility.
One of these surgeons general, Dr. Jerome Adams, who served as U.S. Surgeon General in the first Trump administration wrote, “The Senate’s likely confirmation of Casey Means as Surgeon General, an individual who never completed her medical training, would mark a disastrous precedent for the nation’s top public health role … Confirming Means reflects a capitulation to political pressures, not a desire to get the best person for the job.”
Our country needs to fill the position of U.S. Surgeon General with a person of integrity, who respects the science of medicine and wants to serve the people for whom she/he has cared.
Oge Young is a retired OB-GYN. He practiced in Concord for more than 30 years, was the president of New Hampshire Medical Society and was a member of the general council representing New Hampshire obstetricians.