Copyright Ars Technica
Siblings Casey and Calley Means—wellness darlings of the Make America Healthy Again movement, despite being rife with potential conflicts of interest—are both missing from the political arena, at least for now. Casey Means, President Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, was scheduled to appear virtually at a Senate confirmation hearing today, but the hearing was postponed indefinitely after she went into labor. The hearing, it turns out, had been scheduled two days after her due date, CNN reported this morning. Meanwhile, The New York Times separately reported that Calley Means has departed from the White House, vacating his role as a “Special Government Employee,” which has a 130-day term limit. The Times reported that Calley left about a month ago when the term ended, though the White House never announced his departure, and he has continued to be identified as a government employee in press articles and at a conference. Calley, who has acted as an influential advisor to anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., told the Times that the press articles and his conference biography were inaccurate. The absence of the Means is welcomed by critics, who point out the pair’s lack of health expertise and their wellness companies could pose conflicts of interest to their government work. Calley, for instance, is an entrepreneur who co-founded the wellness company Truemed, a platform that enables people to use money from HSAs and FSAs (pre-tax accounts for medical needs) to buy unproven, upscale wellness interventions, like cold plunges, red light therapy, a $10,000 personal sauna, and supplements. As the Times noted, Calley’s Truemed stands to benefit from the Trump administration’s plans to broaden eligibility for such tax-advantaged medical spending. 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.”
