Arrogant Opportunism
Means’ most famous declaration is that she “learnt virtually nothing at Stanford Medical School”. Not a single thing? Really? Her statement, relentlessly repeated for impact during a Senate hearing, implies that either she is incredibly smart or everyone at Stanford is stupid.
Her generalization tactics, simple solutions and penchant for hyperbole – “I learnt virtually nothing” – demonstrates how Means is not scientific. No scientist speaks like that. They would take care in their choice of words and provide supporting data (eg, “I only learnt 14.75% of my knowledge from my time at Stanford, excluding external influences like …”).
A genuine scientist would go to a school like Stanford and listen, verify and see what he or she could learn by attempting to falsify scientific claims. And even if the scientist is a High Potential Individual, like Casey Means pretends she is, the Stanford professors’ claims would be scrutinized according to the scientific methodology. They would never be written off as worthless.
When Means then jumps to the same absolutes and superlatives on how our health has been affected by this chemical or that food ingredient, members of the scientific community just roll their eyes and move on to something more important. That is, before she became the nominee for US Surgeon General.
Means is not seeking approval from the scientific community. She is an opportunist with an agenda and a yearning for retribution for how the medical establishment had apparently failed her mother. And she is also making a lot of money selling simplistic solutions to the fears she so deftly mongers.
The Means Family Businesses
When Casey Means left the medical profession and joined her twin brother, Calley, on a naturopath crusade, these two opportunists arrived at a circus sideshow with an audience of naïve, vulnerable people craving proof of a conspiracy theory. Not only did Means’ language and rhetoric change to fit her new fearmonger credentials, she also started touting overpriced products to be hawked as simple solutions.
No credible scientist would make medical claims that doubled as marketing pitches for gadgets on some online shopping site or offering product discounts for referral fees.
In promoting her 2024 book, Good Energy, Casey Means reduced virtually all diseases (“depression, anxiety, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer …”) to a single root cause – sugars. Of course, the book explains how you don’t need doctors to live free from disease (those shills all went to Stanford or some other corrupt institutions). You can achieve “limitless health” simply by monitoring your “good energy” levels with her handy continuous glucose monitor. And Dr Casey also would like to sell you her four-week plan to “optimally power” your cells (as well as a few Casey Means-approved Good Energy cookbooks).
Yes… vegetables will make you healthy. Who would ever have thought of that that?
I don’t know where to begin to break this down, except that it is horrifying that this is the caliber of the candidate for U.S. Surgeon General. No wonder the scientific community is stunned – any reasonable person could spot this quackery and naturopath opportunism in seconds.
Casey and Calley Means set up a company, Levels Health, to promote their continuous glucose monitoring system (as teed up in their Good Energy bestselling book). Not only do they sell a vulnerable population a monitoring gadget ($199 a month), they suck them in to an app membership ($40 a month), dietician support via an external partner and further bloodwork options ($99 per lab analysis). They even offer “personalized AI insights” (because I suppose not all bots tied to data monitoring apps look at an individual’s personal data). Their clients are not diabetes sufferers, but they are all afraid enough to pay handsomely. And just who made them afraid?
By selling an app, Casey claims that makes her a “tech entrepreneur”.
On her personal website, Means also acknowledges she is an investor in Zen Basil and is constantly advising followers to buy their product – recommending the organic basil seeds in her book, in recipes, on X and on YouTube. Without disclosing her financial interests, some (at least in the scientific world) would consider her relentless referral fee activity as unethical.
The Means twins also set up a business, Truemed, with other partners, that cater to the affluent wellness movement, selling everything from home saunas to supplements to Pelotons to mattresses to cold water plunging tubs (read her book, it will all make sense). The Truemed website touts how all of their merchants can provide a “Letter of Medical Necessity” within two minutes after a short online health assessment, thus saving the consumer up to 30% on their products (because nothing screams “medical necessity” more than a home cold water plunging tub). As long as people are promised “unlimited health” by someone going by the name of “Dr Casey”, they are willing to continue spending on her products and gadgets. How much more will they spend once she becomes Surgeon General?
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Scientists are watching these clown show scammers in disbelief. Soon Casey Means will become the chief medical doctor for the United States. According to the U.S. government, that means:
The mission of the U.S. Surgeon General is to give the public the best scientific information available on how to improve health and lower the risk of illness and injury.”
Upsetting the Washington Applecart
Casey Means also represents a shift in the DC landscape. The capital (or Capitol) has been defined by the shifting sands of political fortune. The White House, for example, employs around 1500 staffers tied to the party in power, until recently, either the Democrats or the Republicans. (Some insiders tell me it is more like 50,000 White House staffers but I look more at the immediate posts.)
When administrations change, the losing party is left in the wilderness, exiled for the next four to eight years to meager jobs in think tanks, consultancies and foundations until the pendulum, hopefully, swings back to their favor. The checkered CVs of Washington insiders is always an interesting light read, and needless to say, these political natives can achieve a lot in the ‘off season’.
When the first Trump administration came in, there was no real transition because no one, literally, had expected him to win. Trump 2.0 is a different story. Now, not only Biden Democrats had to clear their desks and have their ongoing projects suspended or cancelled, but traditional Republicans found no opportunities in the new administration.
Then DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, came in to level the playing field and leave a large number of empty chairs. RFK Jr’s mass firings in the Department of Health and Human Services is not cost-cutting but a short term “purification” or purge while a new force, the MAHA movement, is preparing their acolytes to take control. Firing the experts and freezing the academic budgets is the first step, to be followed by a new era of health activism and a redefinition of what is to be known as scientific expertise.
The positions scientists would have coveted are now being occupied by a totally new political force – not yet a party but a movement defined by their distaste of scientific institutions.
The MAHA Institute is a lobby group created to bring the Make America Healthy Again movement of Moms, conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers into the political mainstream, uniting them with the Make America Great Again political force. Casey Means’ twin brother, Calley, is a main driver of this organization. This is different from the MAHA Commission, set up by executive order and due to report tomorrow on the causes of the chronic disease crisis. There is another group, MAHA Action, established by anti-vaxxer opportunist, Del Bigtree (and apparently, according to Del, RFK Jr as well), that will be pushing the MAHA agenda via films and political actions.
Right now these political movements are a bit of a joke, worthy of satire, but this is only the first 100 days of the second Trump administration. MAHA has four years to get their activists, naturopaths and alternative scientists into the influential positions (and the scientific community is having to watch this ritual bleeding). RFK Jr’s mass firing of scientists in the various agencies in the Health and Human Services Department is not a cost-cutting measure, but a purge.
Casey and Calley Means had been joined at the hip for the last two years of campaigning so it might seem odd that the less scientific, less manipulative, less intelligent of the Means twins became special advisor to RFK Jr and a director in the MAHA Institute. Why wasn’t Casey involved here? Was the superstar held in reserve, waiting for a higher calling as the HHS revolving door gathered speed? Perhaps Surgeon General wasn’t originally in the cards.
Casey Means is one more flag-bearer of a movement of anti-experts who believe not only that nothing can be learnt at Stanford University (or from your doctor), but that there is a conspiracy led by some academic-industrial complex to make everybody obese, to give innocent people cancers (so they can sell them pharmaceuticals and expensive medical treatments) and to persecute those brave, caring naturopath scientists who stand up to fight for what is right.
Casey is already assuming the victim position, and like a heroine of Marianne proportions, she plays to a naturopath mob ready to burn all of the books. I can’t find any reason for any scientist to not hate such a product of the anti-science movement.
These are dark days for science.
David Zaruk is the editor of Firebreak, and also writes under the pen-name The Risk Monger. David is a retired professor, environmental-health risk analyst, science communicator, promoter of evidence-based policy and philosophical theorist on activists and the media. Find David on X @Zaruk
