In a statement Thursday, government watchdog Public Citizen cheered the news of his departure.
“The Trump Administration has wildly abused the Special Government Employee designation to shoehorn powerful people into official jobs in a way that allowed them to evade financial transparency and anti-corruption restraints,” Public Citizen Democracy Advocate Jon Golinger said. “The clock ran out on Mr. Means, and we’re glad he finally resigned.”
“Charlatan”
Casey has a background in actual medicine, with a degree from Stanford Medical School, but she dropped out of her residency, holds no active medical license or board certification, and has gone all in on “functional” medicine, which is an ill-defined form of alternative medicine. She co-founded a company called Levels, which promotes intensive health tracking, including continuous blood glucose monitoring for people who don’t have prediabetes or diabetes. (Another Levels co-founder is Sam Corcos, now the chief information officer for the Department of the Treasury, who, as The New Yorker reported, led the effort to dismantle the Internal Revenue Service on behalf of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.)
Casey and Calley Means made a name for themselves among the MAHA crowd with their 2024 book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health. The book encourages health-conscious readers to avoid processed foods, seed oils, fragrances, a variety of home care products, fluoride, unfiltered water, bananas (when eaten alone), receipt paper, and birth control pills. It includes a chapter titled “Trust Yourself, Not Your Doctor.”
Health experts have sharply criticized her nomination to the role of surgeon general. The health network Defend Public Health released a statement Thursday urging lawmakers to reject her “quackery.”
“The US Surgeon General is the leading US government voice on public health issues,” said DPH member and physician Oni Blackstock, an HIV expert and former assistant commissioner at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “That person must be someone Americans can trust to give credible advice based on solid science and real data, not a charlatan who specializes in selling expensive, unproven tests and treatments.”