By Ahmed Aboulenein
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Wellness influencer Casey Means, President Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general, is set to appear on Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee for her confirmation hearing.
As the nation’s doctor, the surgeon general provides Americans with the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce the risk of illness and injury.
Means, 37, is appearing virtually before the committee because she is 40 weeks pregnant and will say she has spent 15 years treating thousands of patients in clinics and operating rooms as well as running her own medical practice, according to her written testimony.
Means graduated medical school at Stanford University but subsequently dropped out of her surgical residency. Her medical license status is currently listed as “inactive” by the Oregon Medical Board, though it is not expired. Means says on her website that her license status is voluntary because she is not actively seeing patients.
She and her brother, Calley, are close allies of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and vocal proponents of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Calley Means, a former food industry lobbyist, serves as a White House adviser focusing on food policy and the influence of corporations on health.
“Our nation is angry, exhausted, and hurting from preventable disease,” Casey Means will say, according to the testimony, seen by Reuters.
Means co-founded the health-tech app Levels, which uses data from continuous glucose monitors to inform users on how food affects their health. She holds a financial stake in her brother’s company, Truemed, which works with doctors to certify the medical necessity of advanced health technologies and wellness programs, enabling customers to qualify for tax breaks.
Means intends to resign her position at Levels if confirmed, and divest her stocks in Levels and Truemed, according to her disclosure filing with the Office of Government Ethics.
She has advocated for the consumption of raw milk, repeatedly echoed Kennedy’s unscientific claims linking vaccines to autism, and criticized the use of birth control pills.
“Public health leadership must address the modifiable drivers of chronic disease identified in the MAHA Assessment: poor diet, chemical exposure, lack of physical activity and chronic stress, and overmedicalization,” she is slated to say in Thursday’s testimony.
Means is Trump’s second nominee to the position. He abruptly withdrew his nomination of Janette Nesheiwat in May after she was criticized by far right activist Laura Loomer, who has since also criticized the choice of Means.
Her nomination has also drawn fire from more establishment voices.
Peter Lurie, president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, called on the Senate to reject her nomination and warned of the potential consequences.
“If confirmed, we expect her to promote falsehoods about vaccines and other essential health topics, which will ultimately harm our health, not improve it,” Lurie said.
(Reporting by Ahmed Aboulenein; editing by Caroline Humer and Bill Berkrot)
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