Trump's Surgeon General Pick To Face Senators' Questions At Confirmation Hearing

President Donald Trump’s prime for surgeon general, Dr. Casey Means, is apt to look reliable questions Thursday connected Capitol Hill arsenic senators determine whether to support her confirmation.

If she assumes nan role, Means would go nan county’s starring nationalist wellness spokesperson, pinch nan authority to rumor wellness warnings and advisories.

Her information has stirred controversy: Means, a adjacent state of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has voiced skepticism of accepted medicine and promoted wellness products. She besides doesn’t clasp an progressive aesculapian license.

Means will attest virtually starting astatine 11 a.m. ET earlier nan Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

Trump nominated her successful May aft he withdrew his erstwhile choice, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, a erstwhile Fox News aesculapian contributor.

Trump said he selected Means connected Kennedy’s recommendation. She was a run advisor during Kennedy’s statesmanlike bid and an designer of his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

In her 2024 book, “Good Energy,” Means describes having discontinue her aesculapian residency programme aft she became disillusioned pinch nan aesculapian system’s attraction connected managing illness alternatively than curing patients. She sewage her M.D. astatine Stanford University and completed astir each of her five-year surgical residency astatine Oregon Health and Science University earlier she dropped out.

“I walked retired of nan infirmary and embarked connected a travel to understand nan existent reasons why group get sick,” she wrote successful her book.

Means’ aesculapian licence lapsed successful January 2024 — a taxable that is expected to travel up astatine nan hearing.

Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who served during Trump’s first administration, has argued that completing a residency and holding a valid aesculapian licence are implicit ineligible requirements for nan role, since surgeons wide oversee nan Public Health Service Commissioned Corps — a national nationalist wellness branch that requires its ain officers to person aesculapian licenses.

Means did not respond to a petition for comment.

Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for nan Department of Health and Human Services, said successful a connection that Means’ “credentials, investigation background, and acquisition successful nationalist life springiness her nan correct insights to beryllium nan surgeon wide who helps make judge America ne'er again becomes nan sickest federation connected Earth.”

Other issues that could originate astatine Thursday’s proceeding see Means’ past comments astir puerility vaccinations. In May, she wrote in her newsletter that nan “total burden” of nan existent vaccine schedule is “causing wellness declines successful susceptible children,” and she linked to a Substack station that suggested vaccines origin autism — a declare that technological grounds has many times debunked.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., chair of nan Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is simply a expert and proponent of vaccines. During Kennedy’s confirmation process, Cassidy acknowledged his hesitations but coiled up providing captious support for Kennedy.

Means besides told blimpish commentator Tucker Carlson past year that commencement power pills are “prescribed for illustration candy.” In her newsletter, she wrote that hormonal commencement power has “horrifying wellness risks.” (Decades of investigation has shown it’s safe for astir people, and superior complications are rare, though immoderate studies person identified a slightly elevated consequence of bosom cancer successful women who person taken commencement power pills.)

Those stances, taken together, person generated interest among immoderate nationalist wellness experts that Means could usage her imaginable pulpit to dispersed misleading information.

“Casey Means has built her profession attacking contraception, vaccines, and women’s autonomy — each while profiting from misinformation and wellness fads,” Dr. Dara Kass, erstwhile location head astatine HHS successful nan Biden administration, said successful a statement. “The Senate should cull this dangerous, unqualified nominee.”

However, Means has gained fame successful wellness circles because of her messages astir outsized firm power successful nan nutrient and pharmaceutical industries. Her book argues that group tin “improve and widen their lives” utilizing “simple principles doctors aren’t taught successful aesculapian school” — namely, eating healthier, getting much slumber and beingness activity and knowing one’s underlying illness risk.

Many nationalist wellness experts work together that renewed attraction connected patient diets and lifestyles is warranted, though immoderate mobility nan peculiar solutions Means has supported done her work.

Means co-founded a company called Levels, which helps group show their humor glucose, and has besides sold dietary supplements, teas and different wellness products connected societal media. An investigation by The Associated Press recovered that Means sometimes grounded to disclose that she could profit aliases use from nan sales.

Means signed an morals agreement successful September stating that she would resign from her advisory position astatine Levels and extremity promoting her book, producing her newsletter and putting up monetized societal media posts.

Dr. Richard Carmona, who was surgeon wide from 2002 to 2006 nether President George W. Bush, said he worries astir a nominee who didn’t complete her aesculapian training and has ne'er held a activity domiciled successful medicine.

“As a surgeon general, I want to make judge it’s personification that has nan due training, experience, integrity, knowledge to woody pinch nan complexity of this United States and our interface pinch nan remainder of nan world. There’s nary container that she checks that really is germane to nan issues we’re dealing pinch today,” he said.

Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, nutrient studies and nationalist wellness astatine New York University, said Means should beryllium judged by her actions successful office, not based connected nan truth that she didn’t decorativeness residency. If Means is confirmed, Nestle said, she could usage her level to beforehand patient diets.

“She could return up ultra-processed foods. That would beryllium terrific,” Nestle said.

But Nestle cautioned that promoting supplements wouldn’t beryllium backed by technological research.

“I’m successful favour of wellness. I’m not successful favour of wellness products, because I don’t deliberation there’s overmuch grounds that they work,” she said.