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Associated Press
15-05-2025
- Health
- Associated Press
New Consensus Statements on Impact of Genital Psoriasis on Patients from Genital Psoriasis Wellness Consortium Published in Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology Clinical Practice
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif., May 15, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arcutis Biotherapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARQT), a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing meaningful innovations in immuno-dermatology, today announced the publication of 14 consensus statements from the Genital Psoriasis Wellness Consortium on the impact of genital psoriasis on patients in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (JEADV) Clinical Practice. The consensus statements are aimed at providing expert, multidisciplinary guidance in three key areas: (1) physical diagnosis and patient conversations, (2) impact on quality of life and interpersonal relationships, and (3) treatment decisions. 'Despite affecting an estimated six million Americans, genital psoriasis is often underreported and undertreated due to the uniquely sensitive and private nature of the afflicted areas, and uncertainty for how to begin the conversation. Relative to psoriasis in other areas of the body, genital psoriasis also has a greater impact on psychological well-being and quality of life, interpersonal relationships, intimacy, feelings of stigmatization, and rates of depression,' said Jennifer C. Cather, MD, FAAD, Medical Director and Founder of Mindful Dermatology and Modern Research Associates in Dallas, Texas, Genital Psoriasis Consortium member, and manuscript author. 'With the current lack of formal guidelines around genital psoriasis, the goal of convening the Consortium was to bridge the gaps in clinician-patient communication, develop tools and processes that aid in identification and diagnosis, and better-informed shared treatment decisions.' To formulate the consensus statements, a PubMed literature search was conducted, and a total of 78 unique publications were reviewed. Consortium members used a modified Delphi process, including a nominal group technique. The process included two rounds of virtual subcommittee meetings focused on the three key areas, followed by surveys to obtain anonymous feedback, and concluded with a final meeting to discuss and finalize the language of the consensus recommendations. 'Normalizing conversations and improving shared decision-making are critical first steps to improving outcomes. Implementation of the Consortium's new guidelines could provide consistent, streamlined care practices that don't currently exist for this condition,' said Patrick Burnett, MD, PhD, FAAD, chief medical officer of Arcutis. 'Arcutis is proud to support the Consortium's efforts to challenge the status quo to improve care for those with genital psoriasis.' Below are the 14 consensus statements outlined in the publication: About Arcutis Arcutis Biotherapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARQT) is a commercial-stage medical dermatology company that champions meaningful innovation to address the urgent needs of individuals living with immune-mediated dermatological diseases and conditions. With a commitment to solving the most persistent patient challenges in dermatology, Arcutis has a growing portfolio of advanced targeted topicals approved to treat three major inflammatory skin diseases. Arcutis' unique dermatology development platform coupled with our dermatology expertise allows us to invent differentiated therapies against biologically validated targets, and has produced a robust pipeline with multiple follow-on clinical programs for a range of inflammatory dermatological conditions including atopic dermatitis and alopecia areata. For more information, visit or follow Arcutis on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and X. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. For example, statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the Company's current beliefs and expectations. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the potential real-world use results of ZORYVE foam and the potential for ZORYVE to advance the standard of care in plaque psoriasis, atopic dermatitis and seborrheic dermatitis. These statements are subject to substantial known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ include risks inherent in our business, reimbursement and access to our products, the impact of competition and other important factors discussed in the 'Risk Factors' section of our Form 10-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 25, 2025, as well as any subsequent filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements that the company makes in this press release are made pursuant to the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, and speak only as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to revise or update information herein to reflect events or circumstances in the future, even if new information becomes available. † Subject to eligibility criteria and maximum program limitation. This offer is not valid for patients without commercial drug insurance or whose prescription claims are eligible to be reimbursed, in whole or in part, by any government program. ‡ Subject to financial eligibility requirements. Other terms and restrictions apply. Contacts: Media Amanda Sheldon, Head of Corporate Communications [email protected] Investors Latha Vairavan, Chief Financial Officer [email protected]
Forbes
14-05-2025
- Forbes
AI Is Rewriting Reality, One Word At A Time
Language is the foundation of business, culture, and consciousness. But AI isn't just using our words—it's reshaping them. Quietly, subtly, it's dismantling the architecture of thought by eroding what we used to think: nouns. We used to believe that naming something gave it power. Giving a thing a noun means tethering it to meaning, identity, and memory. But in the age of AI, nouns are dissolving—not banned, not erased—but rendered functionally obsolete. And with them, our grasp on reality is starting to fray. AI doesn't see the world in things. It sees the world in patterns—actions, probabilities, and prompts. A chair is no longer an object; it's 'something to sit on.' A self is no longer an identity; it's 'a collection of behaviors and preferences.' Even brands, once nouns wrapped in mythology, are being reconstituted as verbs. You don't have a brand. You do a brand. This linguistic shift isn't neutral. It's a collapse of conceptual anchors. In generative systems, nouns aren't centers of gravity. They're scaffolding for action. This reflects a broader trend in how generative AI is reshaping communication across every industry. As they fade, so do permanence, authorship, and the idea of fixed meaning. Recent research supports this trend. A study titled Playing with Words: Comparing the Vocabulary and Lexical Richness of ChatGPT and Humans found that ChatGPT's outputs exhibit significantly lower lexical diversity than human writing. In particular, nouns and specific, stylistic words are often underused, suggesting that generative systems prioritize predictable, commonly used language while deprioritizing less frequent terms. Further analysis of 14 million PubMed abstracts revealed a measurable shift in word frequency post-AI adoption. Words like 'delves' and 'showcasing' surged, while others faded—showing that large language models are already reshaping vocabulary patterns at scale. Sound familiar? It should. To understand their relevance, it helps to recall what George Orwell and Aldous Huxley are most famous for. Orwell authored 1984, a bleak vision of the future where an authoritarian regime weaponizes language to suppress independent thought and rewrite history. His concept of Newspeak—a restricted, simplified language designed to make dissent unthinkable—has become a cultural shorthand for manipulative control. On the other hand, Huxley wrote Brave New World, which envisioned a society not characterized by overt oppression, but rather by engineered pleasure, distraction, and passive conformity. In his world, people are conditioned into compliance not through violence but through comfort, entertainment, and chemical sedation. Both men anticipated futures in which language and meaning are compromised, but in radically different ways. Together, they map the two poles of how reality can be reconditioned: by force or indulgence. Few realize that George Orwell was once a student of Aldous Huxley. In the late 1910s, while Orwell (then Eric Blair) studied at Eton, Huxley taught him French. Their relationship was brief but prophetic. Decades later, each would author the defining visions of dystopia—1984 and Brave New World. After reading 1984, Huxley wrote to Orwell with a haunting message: And that's precisely where we are now. Orwell feared control through surveillance and terror. Huxley feared control through indulgence and distraction. Generative AI, cloaked in helpfulness, embodies both. It doesn't censor. It seduces. It doesn't need Newspeak to delete ideas. It replaces them with prediction. In 1984, language was weaponized by force. In our world, it's being reshaped by suggestion. What we have is not Artificial Intelligence—it's Artificial Inference: trained not to understand but to remix, not to reason but to simulate. And this simulation brings us to a more profound loss: intersubjectivity. Humans learn, grow, and build reality through intersubjectivity—the shared context that gives language its weight. It allows us to share meaning, to agree on what a word represents, and to build mutual understanding through shared experiences. Without it, words float. AI doesn't participate in intersubjectivity. It doesn't share meaning—it predicts output. And yet, when someone asks an AI a question, they often believe the answer reflects their framing. It doesn't. It reflects the average of averages, the statistical ghost of comprehension. The illusion of understanding is precise, polite, and utterly hollow. This is how AI reconditions reality at scale—not by force, but by imitation. The result? A slow, silent attrition of originality. Nouns lose their edges. Ideas lose their anchors. Authorship bleeds into prompting. And truth becomes whatever the model says most often. In one recent public example, Air Canada deployed an AI-powered chatbot to handle customer service inquiries. When a customer asked about bereavement fare discounts, the chatbot confidently invented a policy that didn't exist. The airline initially tried to avoid responsibility, but the court disagreed. In February 2024, a tribunal ruled that Air Canada was liable for the misinformation provided by its chatbot. This wasn't just a technical glitch—it was a trust failure. The AI-generated text sounded plausible, helpful, and human, but it lacked grounding in policy, context, or shared understanding. In effect, the airline's brand spoke out of both sides of its mouth and cost them. This is the risk when language is generated without intersubjectivity, oversight, or friction. It's not just theory—research is now quantifying how generative AI systems are shifting the landscape of language itself. A study titled Playing with Words: Comparing the Vocabulary and Lexical Richness of ChatGPT and Humans found that AI-generated outputs consistently use a narrower vocabulary, with significantly fewer nouns and stylistic words than human writing. Building on this, an analysis of over 14 million PubMed abstracts revealed measurable shifts in word frequency following the rise of LLM use. While many precise, technical nouns faded, terms like 'delves' and 'showcasing' surged. The shift is not random; it's a statistically driven flattening of language, where standard, action-oriented, or stylistic terms are promoted, and specificity is sidelined. Some researchers link this to a broader problem known as 'model collapse.' As AI models are increasingly trained on synthetic data, including their outputs, they may degrade over time. This leads to a feedback loop where less diverse, less semantically rich language becomes the norm. The result is a measurable reduction in lexical, syntactic, and semantic diversity—the very fabric of meaning and precision. The implications are vast. If AI systems are deprioritizing nouns at scale, then the structures we use to hold ideas—people, places, identities, and concepts—are being eroded. In real time, we are watching the grammatical infrastructure of human thought being reweighted by machines that do not think. The erosion of language precision has significant implications for businesses, particularly those that rely on storytelling, branding, and effective communication. Brands are built on narrative consistency, anchored by nouns, identities, and associations that accumulate cultural weight over time. However, as AI systems normalize probabilistic language and predictive phrasing, even brand voice becomes a casualty of convergence. Differentiation erodes—messaging blurs. Trust becomes more complicated to earn and more uncomplicated to mimic. As this Forbes piece outlines, there are serious reasons why brands must be cautious with generative AI when it comes to preserving authenticity and voice. Marketers may find themselves fighting not for attention but for authenticity in a sea of synthetic fluency. Moreover, AI-powered content platforms optimize for engagement, not meaning. Businesses relying on LLMs to generate customer-facing content risk flattening their uniqueness in favor of what's statistically safe. Without human oversight, brand language may drift toward the generic, the probable, and the forgettable. Resist the flattening. Businesses and individuals alike must reclaim intentionality in language. Here's how—and why it matters: If you don't define your brand voice, AI will average it. If you don't protect the language of your contracts, AI will remix it. If you don't curate your culture, AI will feed it back to you—statistically safe but spiritually hollow. Friction isn't a flaw in human systems—it's a feature. It's where meaning is made, thought is tested, and creativity wrestles with uncertainty. Automation is a powerful economic accelerant, but without deliberate pauses—without a human in the loop—we risk stripping away the qualities that make us human. Language is one of those qualities. Every hesitation, nuance, and word choice reflects cognition, culture, and care. Remove the friction, and you remove the humanity. AI can offer speed, fluency, and pattern-matching, but it can't provide presence, and presence is where meaning lives. Emily M. Bender, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington, has emerged as one of the most principled and prescient critics of large language models. In her now-famous co-authored paper, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots," she argues that these systems don't understand language—they merely remix it. They are, in her words, 'stochastic parrots': machines that generate plausible-sounding language without comprehension or intent. Yet we're letting those parrots draft our emails, write our ads, and even shape our laws. We're allowing models trained on approximations to become arbiters of communication, culture, and identity. This is not language—it's mimicry at scale. And mimicry, unchecked, becomes a distortion. When AI outputs are mistaken for understanding, the baseline of meaning erodes. The problem isn't just that AI might be wrong. It's that it sounds so right, we stop questioning it. In the name of optimization, we risk erasing the texture of human communication. Our metaphors, our double meanings, our moments of productive ambiguity—these are what make language alive. Remove that, and a stream of consensus-safe, risk-averse echo remains. Functional? Yes. Meaningful? Not really. The stakes aren't just literary—they're existential. If language is the connective tissue between thought and reality, and if that tissue is replaced with statistical scaffolding, thinking becomes outsourced. Once sharpened by friction, our voices become blurred in a sea of plausible phrasings. Without intersubjectivity, friction, or nouns, we are scripting ourselves out of the story, one autocomplete at a time We are not being silenced. We are being auto-completed. And the most dangerous part? We asked for it. Before we ask what AI can say next, we should ask: What has already gone unsaid? In this quiet war, we don't lose language all at once. We lose it word by word—until we forget we ever had something to say. I asked brand strategist and storyteller Michelle Garside, whose work spans billion-dollar brands and purpose-driven founders, to share her perspective on what's at risk as automation flattened language. Her response was both precise and profound: When it comes to language and AI, that's the line to carry forward—not just because it sounds good, but because it's true.
Hamilton Spectator
09-05-2025
- Health
- Hamilton Spectator
On podcasts, Trump's surgeon general pick touts organics, questions vaccines and talks spirituality
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump's newest surgeon general nominee is a burgeoning health influencer who has shared her approach to health care through appearances on some of the nation's most popular wellness and right-wing podcasts. A sampling of Dr. Casey Means' comments from those interviews over the past year paints a picture of someone who could use the nation's most prominent health care position to focus on diet and lifestyle factors as a way to prevent chronic conditions, while raising questions about pharmaceutical interventions and the vaccine schedule for children. Means, 37, has said she devoted her career to studying the root causes of why Americans are getting sick after dropping out of her residency program. Here's a closer look at what Means' podcast appearances reveal about how she might approach the role as surgeon general: She believes we're treating chronic health conditions the wrong way Means argues that the cause of most health conditions — including cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, erectile dysfunction and infertility — is the 'toxic stew' of harmful products, air pollutants, food additives and technology overload that we are living in. She says those environmental impacts are 'crushing' the body's metabolic system of breaking down food for energy, leading to chronic conditions that are rising significantly in the U.S. 'When you go to the science with a root cause perspective, you go back to PubMed with a slightly different perspective, not how do I treat these diseases once they emerge, but why are they happening, you see a very obvious blaring answer,' she told podcaster Joe Rogan on his show last October in a discussion about public health. 'It's all caused by metabolic dysfunction, a term that I never learned in medical school.' That root-cause philosophy aligns with Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s stated priorities for his job. He has promised exhaustive studies to identify any environmental factors that may cause autism. Means attributes a wide range of chronic diseases to those factors. She argued on 'The Megyn Kelly Show' in September that COVID-19 'was really fundamentally a metabolic disease' that more seriously affected people who were compromised because of 'lifestyle-related and food-related diseases.' Her approach to health care also has made her critical of some popular pharmaceutical products, from birth control pills to GLP-1 receptor agonists such as Ozempic that treat obesity. On 'The Tucker Carlson Show' last August, she said birth control pills have given women 'liberation' but said they are being prescribed 'like candy' and inhibit women from assessing important biomarkers related to their menstrual cycles. 'It's a disrespect of things that create life,' she said. While Means said taking obesity drugs such as Ozempic can help some people jumpstart their way to healthier lifestyles, she also called the drug 'very dark' and said it has 'a stranglehold on the U.S. population, almost like solidifying this idea that there is a magic pill.' She advocates against pesticides, ultra-processed foods and seed oils Means argues that Americans should radically change their diets to improve their health, including sticking to organic fruits and vegetables that have not been genetically modified and avoiding highly processed foods and refined sugars. The 2020 to 2025 U.S. dietary guidelines recommend that added sugars make up less than 10% of Americans' diets. On Jay Shetty's 'On Purpose' podcast last August, Means called for an executive order to reduce that number to zero, or at most 6%. She also said there should be no added sugars in federally funded school lunches. While Food and Drug Administration guidance currently says genetically modified fruits and vegetables are 'as healthful and safe to eat as their non-GMO counterparts,' Means disagrees, saying anything modified to withstand pesticides should not be ingested. 'They wanted to be able to spray it with poison and not kill it,' she said on reality TV star Kristin Cavallari's podcast 'Let's Be Honest' in January. 'That should set off some red alarms.' Like Kennedy and some Republican lawmakers, Means has railed against seed oils , which include common cooking oils such as canola, soybean and corn. Nutrition scientists have pointed out that decades of research confirm the health benefits of consuming such oils, especially in place of alternatives such as butter or lard. Food scientists agree with Means that people should reduce their consumption of ultra-processed foods, which are linked to a host of negative health effects. But they say there's no evidence that the seed oils themselves are responsible for poor health outcomes. In her interview with Shetty, Means said the worst advice she's ever heard is 'all good things in moderation.' 'There are things that we do not want in moderation in our bodies, in our temple, especially in our children's bodies,' she said. She has criticized the children's vaccination schedule Asked by Cavallari about vaccines, Means said that's not her area of expertise but raised concerns about the national vaccination schedule for children. She highlighted the recommendation that newborns be vaccinated for hepatitis B, which spreads through contact with blood and other bodily fluids. 'This is the one that was kind of, like, my gateway to being, like, asking a lot more questions,' Means said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the newborn dose is 'an important part of preventing long-term illness in infants and the spread of hepatitis B in the United States.' Means said she didn't think the vaccine needed to be given so widely to young infants when a test for the disease in pregnant mothers is a standard part of prenatal care. Means also said COVID-19 vaccine mandates 'destroyed so many people's lives' and 'broke something open' among American citizens. 'People started to really see that maybe we shouldn't be, like, trusting the experts blindly,' she said. 'Maybe there is such deep, like, corporate capture of industry and honestly corruption of our medical data and information that like, we have to kind of question everything.' She urges a spiritual approach to solving 'extinction-level' threat to health Means frequently references the current state of the nation's health as an emergency situation. 'We're facing, I would say non-hyperbolically, extinction-level trends in our health right now,' she said on 'The Megyn Kelly Show' last November. She's repeatedly said 'Rome is burning' when talking about the health care system and chronic illness. As a wellness influencer, she also takes a religious and spiritual approach to solving those problems. She urges people to trust their intuitions and view themselves as part of something bigger. 'Do we want to believe that humans are, that life is a miracle, this universe is a miracle, our bodies are miracles, and we want to connect with God in this lifetime and we want to build and respect these temples that are interconnected with the Earth to do that, or do we not?' she asked Rogan last October. 'That's the choice we have right now.' ___ Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about the AP's democracy initiative here . The AP is solely responsible for all content.
San Francisco Chronicle
09-05-2025
- Health
- San Francisco Chronicle
On podcasts, Trump's surgeon general pick touts organics, questions vaccines and talks spirituality
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump's newest surgeon general nominee is a burgeoning health influencer who has shared her approach to health care through appearances on some of the nation's most popular wellness and right-wing podcasts. A sampling of Dr. Casey Means' comments from those interviews over the past year paints a picture of someone who could use the nation's most prominent health care position to focus on diet and lifestyle factors as a way to prevent chronic conditions, while raising questions about pharmaceutical interventions and the vaccine schedule for children. Means, 37, has said she devoted her career to studying the root causes of why Americans are getting sick after dropping out of her residency program. Here's a closer look at what Means' podcast appearances reveal about how she might approach the role as surgeon general: She believes we're treating chronic health conditions the wrong way Means argues that the cause of most health conditions — including cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, erectile dysfunction and infertility — is the 'toxic stew' of harmful products, air pollutants, food additives and technology overload that we are living in. She says those environmental impacts are 'crushing' the body's metabolic system of breaking down food for energy, leading to chronic conditions that are rising significantly in the U.S. 'When you go to the science with a root cause perspective, you go back to PubMed with a slightly different perspective, not how do I treat these diseases once they emerge, but why are they happening, you see a very obvious blaring answer,' she told podcaster Joe Rogan on his show last October in a discussion about public health. 'It's all caused by metabolic dysfunction, a term that I never learned in medical school.' That root-cause philosophy aligns with Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s stated priorities for his job. He has promised exhaustive studies to identify any environmental factors that may cause autism. Means attributes a wide range of chronic diseases to those factors. She argued on 'The Megyn Kelly Show' in September that COVID-19 'was really fundamentally a metabolic disease" that more seriously affected people who were compromised because of 'lifestyle-related and food-related diseases.' Her approach to health care also has made her critical of some popular pharmaceutical products, from birth control pills to GLP-1 receptor agonists such as Ozempic that treat obesity. On 'The Tucker Carlson Show' last August, she said birth control pills have given women 'liberation' but said they are being prescribed 'like candy' and inhibit women from assessing important biomarkers related to their menstrual cycles. 'It's a disrespect of things that create life," she said. While Means said taking obesity drugs such as Ozempic can help some people jumpstart their way to healthier lifestyles, she also called the drug 'very dark' and said it has 'a stranglehold on the U.S. population, almost like solidifying this idea that there is a magic pill.' She advocates against pesticides, ultra-processed foods and seed oils Means argues that Americans should radically change their diets to improve their health, including sticking to organic fruits and vegetables that have not been genetically modified and avoiding highly processed foods and refined sugars. The 2020 to 2025 U.S. dietary guidelines recommend that added sugars make up less than 10% of Americans' diets. On Jay Shetty's 'On Purpose' podcast last August, Means called for an executive order to reduce that number to zero, or at most 6%. She also said there should be no added sugars in federally funded school lunches. While Food and Drug Administration guidance currently says genetically modified fruits and vegetables are 'as healthful and safe to eat as their non-GMO counterparts,' Means disagrees, saying anything modified to withstand pesticides should not be ingested. 'They wanted to be able to spray it with poison and not kill it,' she said on reality TV star Kristin Cavallari's podcast 'Let's Be Honest' in January. 'That should set off some red alarms.' Like Kennedy and some Republican lawmakers, Means has railed against seed oils, which include common cooking oils such as canola, soybean and corn. Nutrition scientists have pointed out that decades of research confirm the health benefits of consuming such oils, especially in place of alternatives such as butter or lard. Food scientists agree with Means that people should reduce their consumption of ultra-processed foods, which are linked to a host of negative health effects. But they say there's no evidence that the seed oils themselves are responsible for poor health outcomes. In her interview with Shetty, Means said the worst advice she's ever heard is 'all good things in moderation.' 'There are things that we do not want in moderation in our bodies, in our temple, especially in our children's bodies,' she said. She has criticized the children's vaccination schedule Asked by Cavallari about vaccines, Means said that's not her area of expertise but raised concerns about the national vaccination schedule for children. She highlighted the recommendation that newborns be vaccinated for hepatitis B, which spreads through contact with blood and other bodily fluids. 'This is the one that was kind of, like, my gateway to being, like, asking a lot more questions,' Means said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the newborn dose is 'an important part of preventing long-term illness in infants and the spread of hepatitis B in the United States.' Means said she didn't think the vaccine needed to be given so widely to young infants when a test for the disease in pregnant mothers is a standard part of prenatal care. Means also said COVID-19 vaccine mandates 'destroyed so many people's lives' and 'broke something open' among American citizens. 'People started to really see that maybe we shouldn't be, like, trusting the experts blindly,' she said. 'Maybe there is such deep, like, corporate capture of industry and honestly corruption of our medical data and information that like, we have to kind of question everything.' She urges a spiritual approach to solving 'extinction-level' threat to health Means frequently references the current state of the nation's health as an emergency situation. 'We're facing, I would say non-hyperbolically, extinction-level trends in our health right now,' she said on 'The Megyn Kelly Show' last November. She's repeatedly said 'Rome is burning' when talking about the health care system and chronic illness. As a wellness influencer, she also takes a religious and spiritual approach to solving those problems. She urges people to trust their intuitions and view themselves as part of something bigger. 'Do we want to believe that humans are, that life is a miracle, this universe is a miracle, our bodies are miracles, and we want to connect with God in this lifetime and we want to build and respect these temples that are interconnected with the Earth to do that, or do we not?' she asked Rogan last October. 'That's the choice we have right now.' ___ ___
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
On podcasts, Trump's surgeon general pick touts organics, questions vaccines and talks spirituality
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump's newest surgeon general nominee is a burgeoning health influencer who has shared her approach to health care through appearances on some of the nation's most popular wellness and right-wing podcasts. A sampling of Dr. Casey Means' comments from those interviews over the past year paints a picture of someone who could use the nation's most prominent health care position to focus on diet and lifestyle factors as a way to prevent chronic conditions, while raising questions about pharmaceutical interventions and the vaccine schedule for children. Means, 37, has said she devoted her career to studying the root causes of why Americans are getting sick after dropping out of her residency program. Here's a closer look at what Means' podcast appearances reveal about how she might approach the role as surgeon general: She believes we're treating chronic health conditions the wrong way Means argues that the cause of most health conditions — including cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, erectile dysfunction and infertility — is the 'toxic stew' of harmful products, air pollutants, food additives and technology overload that we are living in. She says those environmental impacts are 'crushing' the body's metabolic system of breaking down food for energy, leading to chronic conditions that are rising significantly in the U.S. 'When you go to the science with a root cause perspective, you go back to PubMed with a slightly different perspective, not how do I treat these diseases once they emerge, but why are they happening, you see a very obvious blaring answer,' she told podcaster Joe Rogan on his show last October in a discussion about public health. 'It's all caused by metabolic dysfunction, a term that I never learned in medical school.' That root-cause philosophy aligns with Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s stated priorities for his job. He has promised exhaustive studies to identify any environmental factors that may cause autism. Means attributes a wide range of chronic diseases to those factors. She argued on 'The Megyn Kelly Show' in September that COVID-19 'was really fundamentally a metabolic disease" that more seriously affected people who were compromised because of 'lifestyle-related and food-related diseases.' Her approach to health care also has made her critical of some popular pharmaceutical products, from birth control pills to GLP-1 receptor agonists such as Ozempic that treat obesity. On 'The Tucker Carlson Show' last August, she said birth control pills have given women 'liberation' but said they are being prescribed 'like candy' and inhibit women from assessing important biomarkers related to their menstrual cycles. 'It's a disrespect of things that create life," she said. While Means said taking obesity drugs such as Ozempic can help some people jumpstart their way to healthier lifestyles, she also called the drug 'very dark' and said it has 'a stranglehold on the U.S. population, almost like solidifying this idea that there is a magic pill.' She advocates against pesticides, ultra-processed foods and seed oils Means argues that Americans should radically change their diets to improve their health, including sticking to organic fruits and vegetables that have not been genetically modified and avoiding highly processed foods and refined sugars. The 2020 to 2025 U.S. dietary guidelines recommend that added sugars make up less than 10% of Americans' diets. On Jay Shetty's 'On Purpose' podcast last August, Means called for an executive order to reduce that number to zero, or at most 6%. She also said there should be no added sugars in federally funded school lunches. While Food and Drug Administration guidance currently says genetically modified fruits and vegetables are 'as healthful and safe to eat as their non-GMO counterparts,' Means disagrees, saying anything modified to withstand pesticides should not be ingested. 'They wanted to be able to spray it with poison and not kill it,' she said on reality TV star Kristin Cavallari's podcast 'Let's Be Honest' in January. 'That should set off some red alarms.' Like Kennedy and some Republican lawmakers, Means has railed against seed oils, which include common cooking oils such as canola, soybean and corn. Nutrition scientists have pointed out that decades of research confirm the health benefits of consuming such oils, especially in place of alternatives such as butter or lard. Food scientists agree with Means that people should reduce their consumption of ultra-processed foods, which are linked to a host of negative health effects. But they say there's no evidence that the seed oils themselves are responsible for poor health outcomes. In her interview with Shetty, Means said the worst advice she's ever heard is 'all good things in moderation.' 'There are things that we do not want in moderation in our bodies, in our temple, especially in our children's bodies,' she said. She has criticized the children's vaccination schedule Asked by Cavallari about vaccines, Means said that's not her area of expertise but raised concerns about the national vaccination schedule for children. She highlighted the recommendation that newborns be vaccinated for hepatitis B, which spreads through contact with blood and other bodily fluids. 'This is the one that was kind of, like, my gateway to being, like, asking a lot more questions,' Means said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the newborn dose is 'an important part of preventing long-term illness in infants and the spread of hepatitis B in the United States.' Means said she didn't think the vaccine needed to be given so widely to young infants when a test for the disease in pregnant mothers is a standard part of prenatal care. Means also said COVID-19 vaccine mandates 'destroyed so many people's lives' and 'broke something open' among American citizens. 'People started to really see that maybe we shouldn't be, like, trusting the experts blindly,' she said. 'Maybe there is such deep, like, corporate capture of industry and honestly corruption of our medical data and information that like, we have to kind of question everything.' She urges a spiritual approach to solving 'extinction-level' threat to health Means frequently references the current state of the nation's health as an emergency situation. 'We're facing, I would say non-hyperbolically, extinction-level trends in our health right now,' she said on 'The Megyn Kelly Show' last November. She's repeatedly said 'Rome is burning' when talking about the health care system and chronic illness. As a wellness influencer, she also takes a religious and spiritual approach to solving those problems. She urges people to trust their intuitions and view themselves as part of something bigger. 'Do we want to believe that humans are, that life is a miracle, this universe is a miracle, our bodies are miracles, and we want to connect with God in this lifetime and we want to build and respect these temples that are interconnected with the Earth to do that, or do we not?' she asked Rogan last October. 'That's the choice we have right now.' ___ Associated Press writer Michelle R. Smith in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about the AP's democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
