A still from a video promoting Surgeon General nominee Casey Means' online metabolism course.Screenshot/onecommune.com

On Wednesday, following controversy about inconsistencies in her résumé, President Trump withdrew his nomination of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat to become surgeon general and gave the nod to alternative medicine practitioner and author Dr. Casey Means.

“Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Dr. Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History.”

Her academic achievements include dropping out of a medical residency in otolaryngology because, she says, she was frustrated that the discipline did not focus on “root causes.” Means’ medical license is inactive, according to Oregon medical board records.

Means’ medical opining has occasionally veered in a New Age direction.

Her life’s work includes co-founding Levels, a business that sells glucose monitors, co-writing the book Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health, and promoting an eight-day online course on metabolic health. 

Means has promoted the idea that the national epidemic of chronic disease is attributable to diet and lifestyle choices, an argument that largely echoes the talking points of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That’s no coincidence: both Means and her brother Calley, who describes himself as a lobbyist and evangelist for healthy food, played a central role in advising Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Calley Means, who now works with Kennedy as a White House health advisor, is said to be........

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