Casey Means is a “wellness influencer” (read: grifter) nominated for the office of Surgeon General, the nation’s top medical official.
I say this as someone who is well acquainted with, uses and benefits from alternative medical approaches. There are some flat-out nutballs in that space.
Attn: Senator Bill Cassidy MD – The RFK example should be a giant red flag on this one.
Casey Means has, to say the least, modified her tone. When she testified today in front of the Senate’s health committee, the nominee for surgeon general didn’t, as she is normally wont to do, delve into her experiences with psychedelics or endorse raw milk. She also did not rail at length against birth control. Instead, the longtime health entrepreneur and influencer emphasized her medical degree from Stanford—even though she does not have an active medical license—and sought out common ground with the senators cross-examining her.
Before her nomination last spring, Means—who dropped out of her surgical residency in 2018—embraced some unconventional theories about wellness. As Rina Raphael wrote for The Atlantic last month, Means has talked to trees, implied that natural disasters are a “communication from God,” and dubbed the nation’s health “a spiritual crisis.” When she appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast in 2024, she denounced seed oils and suggested that the widespread use of hormonal birth control was indicative of a cultural “disrespect of life.” She has also questioned the universal birth dose of the hepatitis-B vaccine.
Means, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, wrote in her September ethics filing that she would resign from Levels and forfeit or divest all stock options in the company. But she is still listed on Levels’ blog as the company’s chief medical officer. She said today during her hearing that she has spent “the last several months working with the Office of Government Ethics to be fully compliant” with rules regarding conflicts of interest. Senator Chris Murphy also pressed Means on her financial relationships with companies whose products she has promoted in her newsletter, citing an analysis that found that she’d frequently failed to make proper disclosures to her readers. “I have a strong feeling that the way in which they gathered this data is done intentionally to create these claims that you’re making,” Means testified.
Today, Means was far less outwardly anti-establishment than she has been in her book, her newsletter, and podcast appearances. For example, when Senator Patty Murray asked Means to explain her previous anti-birth-control comments, Means said that she was referring not to birth control generally but to particular women whose medical history might increase risk from taking birth control. She also avoided explicitly besmirching immunizations. “I believe that vaccines are a key part of any infectious-disease public-health strategy,” she told Senator Bill Cassidy.
Jerome Adams, former US Surgeon General in Stat:
Now the Senate is considering Casey Means for the role. She graduated from Stanford Medical School but left her surgical residency at Oregon Health & Science University shortly before completion. Her medical license went inactive in January 2024, and she acknowledged at her hearing that she currently cannot prescribe medications and has no desire to treat patients.
This is not a minor technical issue. The surgeon general is the nation’s “top doc” and a three-star admiral. By policy and long-standing tradition, physicians in the Commissioned Corps must complete residency training and maintain an active, unrestricted license. If confirmed, Means would be responsible for enforcing standards she does not meet herself. Disciplining an officer for a lapsed license while your own remains inactive would erode morale and credibility at the very top — not to mention opening the office up to legal liability.