President Donald Trump nominated functional medicine practitioner Casey Means to US Surgeon General on May 7. This move was made after President Trump’s first selection for the role, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, was withdrawn from nomination by the White House.
The president announced Means’ nomination on Truth Social:
Means was an adviser to the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. prior to him dropping out and endorsing then-candidate Donald Trump.
Concerning her background, Means left her surgical residency program during her final year at Oregon Health and Science University to practice functional medicine. On her website, the Surgeon General nominee describes what she finds critical in health:
“I’m passionate about sharing what I know about how to make choices and adopt mindsets that support optimal cellular biology. This not only means making healthy choices for ourselves, but also living in harmony with nature, overcoming fear, setting boundaries, and feeling strong…during my training as a surgeon, I saw how broken and exploitative the healthcare system is and left surgery to focus on how to keep people out of the operating room.”
Means wrote a newsletter before the 2024 US Presidential Election, outlining her “health wishlist for the next Administration.”
In the list’s preamble, she stated, “More than anything, I would like to see our future White House rally Americans to be healthy and fit. We need inspirational national leaders helping to inspire people to care about their health, the food they eat, and their fitness. We also need leaders who understand the relationship between human health and environmental health, which are inextricably linked. We cannot go on poisoning the earth without destroying our own health; we are one with nature.”
Among the several items on the list are the following:
- Remove conflicts of interest and industry influence in the National School Lunch Program and serve children nutritious, real food in schools.
- Investigate toxins in our food supply and restrict/ban those that are known to cause diseases in animals and humans.
- Put warning labels on all foods known to cause disease, including most, if not all, ultra-processed foods.
- Eliminate the ability of pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers on TV.
- Prevent the pharmaceutical and process food industry from buying influence at the FDA and USDA.
- Break up the meatpacking monopolies and reform burdensome food regulations.
- Require nutrition and functional medicine courses in medical schools.
- Support preventative, alternative, and holistic approaches to health.
- Prevent pharma from price-gouging the American people.
- Reform the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and increase unbiased research on the safety of the cumulative effects of vaccines on the CDC vaccine schedule.
In an episode of The Spillover, Casey Means’ brother and associate, Calley Means, spoke with me about the disastrous effects produced in US health by Big Pharma, Big Food, and the FDA. We also discussed how alternative healthcare methods can fix these issues.
