Terrifying -- DIgby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/05/09/terrifying/

. . .

How can this be happening (The Atlantic)?

Casey Means … Donald Trump’s new nominee for surgeon general, announced yesterday, is a Stanford-trained doctor who is well-spoken and telegenic. Most important, she clearly knows how to draw attention to health issues. Good Energy, the book she published last year with her brother, Calley (who, by the way, is a special adviser in the Trump administration), is Amazon’s No. 1 best seller in its “nutrition” and “aging” categories. She regularly posts on Instagram, where she has more than 700,000 followers.

In many other ways, however, Means is far from perfect. A leading voice in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America healthy again” movement, she has a habit of trafficking in pseudoscience and at times can be hyperbolic, to put it lightly. Means has said that America’s diet-related health issues could lead to a “genocidal-level health collapse” and that “all of us are a little bit dead while we are alive” because of what she calls “metabolic dysfunction.” She has also written about taking part in full-moon ceremonies and about how talking to trees helped her find love—though she admitted that the rituals were “out there.” And Means (who didn’t respond to a request for comment) has used her platform to promote “mitochondrial health” gummies, algae-laden “energy bits,” and vitamins she described as her “immunity stack.”

Means was not Trump’s top choice for surgeon general. His first nominee, Janette Nesheiwat, was pulled out of contention yesterday amid allegations that she had misrepresented her medical training. Presuming the Senate confirms Means as the next surgeon general, she will be another one of RFK Jr.’s ideological compatriots who have joined him in the Trump administration. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary are both also skeptics of the public-health establishment. Earlier this week, Vinay Prasad, another prominent medical contrarian, assumed a top job at the FDA. Now the “MAHA” takeover of the federal health agencies is all but complete. Earlier today, Trump told reporters that he tapped Means “because Bobby thought she was fantastic.”

I think we’re literally entering a new dark age.

[regnaD kciN]

1. The article understates the issue...

Means is not a “Stanford-trained doctor.” Yes, she’s been trained at Stanford, but she never became a doctor; she dropped out during her internship, deciding the medical establishment was the problem, and eschewed getting certified as a doctor in favor of hawking profitable alternative woo-woo. (And, of course, she’s anti-vax, as one would expect from a close ally of Brainworm Bobby.)

[JoseBalow]

2. "You're a doctor?"

[Disaffected]

3. Hmm, she would be called a quack if she were a doctor,

so I guess "crank" or "crackpot" will have to suffice.