Will the Senate learn from its mistakes on Trump’s surgeon general nomination?

President Trump has nominated for surgeon general Casey Means — a wellness influencer, founder of a company that offers exercise tracking and diet coaching and a close associate of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Means has received bipartisan praise for her campaigns against ultra-processed food, inflammatory proteins and fat, excessive sugar, and seed oils as major causes of metabolic dysfunction, obesity and chronic disease. She is also known for advocating locally grown, organic foods.

That said, Means’s recent testimony at her confirmation hearing provides abundant evidence that confirming her as the government’s leading spokesperson on public health would reinforce the administration’s use of conspiracy theories instead of scientific research to set priorities and polices — and to make many more Americans sick again.  

Responding to questions about flu, measles and Hepatitis B vaccines, Means ducked, dodged, and dissembled. “We’re continually studying the vaccine injuries,” she emphasized, “making sure we’re eradicating conflicts of interest in vaccine research.” Note that she has boasted on social media of having “spoken out against the current culture of vaccines.”

When Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) asked if she agreed with Kennedy that there is no evidence flu vaccines prevent hospitalization and deaths among children, she replied that vaccines save lives at “the population level,” whatever that means. She then indicated that she hadn’t seen Kennedy’s statement and advised parents to consult with their physicians.

With a measles outbreak in South Carolina hitting unvaccinated children especially hard, Means declined to assure Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a........

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