This Anti-Vaccine, Birth Control And Autism Conspiracy Theorist May Be The Next Surgeon General
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his new nominee for surgeon general would be Dr. Casey Means, a wellness influencer with an inactive medical license who dropped out of her residency program.
'Casey has impeccable 'MAHA' credentials,' Trump wrote in the announcement, referencing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's 'Make America Healthy Again' slogan. The president promised that Means will 'ensure a successful implementation of our Agenda in order to reverse the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and ensure Great Health, in the future, for ALL Americans.'
Trump's announcement comes a day before confirmation hearings were set to begin with his first surgeon general nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a family medicine physician and former Fox News contributor. She'll work with Kennedy 'in another capacity at HHS,' Trump said.
Here's what you should know about Means.
When Trump took a reporter's question about Means from the Oval Office on Thursday morning, he confessed he doesn't know her.
'Bobby really thought she was great,' he said, referring to Kennedy. 'I don't know her. I listened to the recommendation of Bobby. I met her yesterday and once before.'
Trump also boasted that Means 'graduated first in her class at Stanford' ― though HuffPost could not find any instances of Means claiming this. Stanford does not publicize its highest academic achievers from each class, and when asked to verify Trump's claims, the university would only confirm that Means finished Stanford undergrad with honors in 2009 and graduated from its medical school in 2014.
After finishing medical school, Means dropped out of her residency ― the multiyear post-graduate medical training program most doctors need to complete to get their medical license.
'There was something inside of me that was whispering and then speaking a little louder, and then finally was a deafening call to me that something is not right,' she said on Joe Rogan's show last fall.
'When you pop up for just a second and look around at what is happening to American health ... it's a disaster, it's literally a disaster,' she continued, explaining her decision to discontinue residency in head and neck surgery and begin practicing so-called functional medicine ― a holistic approach to health care focused on finding the root causes of disease.
Means' Oregon medical license is listed as 'inactive' as of January 2024.
Kennedy is already defending Means' background.
'The attacks that Casey is unqualified because she left the medical system completely miss the point of what we are trying to accomplish with MAHA,' he wrote on social media.
Currently, Means runs her company Levels, a wearable glucose monitor startup, and promotes her self-help wellness book, 'Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health.'
Means far more closely aligns with Kennedy's anti-vaccine views than Nesheiwat, who's praised the COVID-19 shot as a 'gift from God,' though she has pushed back against vaccine mandates.
In an appearance on Megyn Kelly's podcast last year, Means accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of 'jamming a vaccine schedule down our throat' and claimed the Food and Drug Administration couldn't be trusted to regulate vaccines because some of its top employees now work in the pharmaceutical industry.
'We can't question it or else we're shamed for being terrible, anti-vaxx people,' she continued.
Means also linked autism and vaccines when she appeared on 'The Joe Rogan Experience,' saying, 'It's like, yeah, I bet that one vaccine probably isn't causing autism. But what about the 20 that they're getting before 18 months?'
In an Instagram post last year railing against sugar cereals, Means claimed that autism and other conditions are caused by 'artificially colored, toxin infused, pesticide covered Frankenfood that's poisoning their poor little bodies.'
Means heavily leaned into some of the anti-reproductive rights movement's rhetoric around birth control, calling its use a 'disrespect of life' during an appearance on Tucker Carlson's show.
'You've got these medications that are literally shutting down the hormones in the female body that create this cyclical, life-giving nature of women,' she said. 'We basically told women, 'These hormones don't matter. Your ability to create the most miracle of any miracles, which is create life, just shut it down, there's no impacts.''
Means is sounding a dog whistle for the conspiracy theory that hormonal birth control use has a long-term impact on women's future fertility, something the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has called a 'myth.'
Means' claims could help normalize the Republican party's attacks on birth control access. Project 2025 laid out a pathway to make it easier for employers to refuse contraceptive coverage in their employees' health plans, and during Trump's first three months in office, one report found, 11.7 million women and girls around the world were denied birth control due to his dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Nicole Shanahan, the billionaire Kennedy tapped as his running mate when he was a presidential candidate, has spoken out against Means' nomination, saying she made Kennedy promise her he'd never give her or her brother, entrepreneur Calley Means, a job.
'I was promised that if I supported RFK Jr. in his Senate confirmation that neither of these siblings would be working under HHS or in an appointment (and that people much more qualified would be),' she wrote on X. 'I don't know if RFK very clearly lied to me, or what is going on.'
She described the siblings as having 'something very artificial and aggressive about them.'
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