The menagerie at the Department of Health and Human Services keeps getting stranger. President Trump’s nominee for Surgeon General, Casey Means, auditioned Wednesday for the role of vaccine skeptic at her Senate confirmation hearing.
The Surgeon General is supposed to provide Americans with “the best scientific information available on how to improve their health and reduce their risk of illness and injury,” according to the HHS website.
Ms. Means, who founded a “wellness” business, doesn’t seem qualified for that role.
Asked about HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s discredited claims linking vaccines with autism, Ms. Means equivocated that “we do not know what, as a medical community, causes autism,” and “we should not leave any stone unturned.”
She’s right that we don’t know all of the causes of autism, but countless studies have ruled out vaccines. Why not say that?
She also dodged when asked if she’d encourage parents to get their children vaccinated against measles.
“I believe every patient, mother, parent needs to have a conversation with their physician,” she replied. How about a simple “yes”?
Ms. Means said that “vaccines are not part of my core message.” So what will be her message?
Hard to tell, but she has made a career of promoting unproven and dangerous health remedies like raw milk and psychedelic drugs, which she has said she experimented with.
The drug “psilocybin can be a doorway to a different reality that is free from the limiting beliefs of my ego, feelings, and personal history,” she wrote in her 2024 book “Good Energy.”
What HHS needs are serious people who will tell the truth and can begin to restore confidence in public-health advice.
