Casey Means: Critiquing Her Critics
Now that President Trump has nominated Dr. Casey Means, coauthor of best seller “Good Energy” to be Surgeon General, critics of the MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) movement, and of holistic health concerns in general, have started the pile-on of criticisms and character assassination. The latest article in Vanity Fair from Katherine Eban is no exception, “‘She Was Tearful About It’: The Nuances of Casey Means’s Medical Exit and Antiestablishment Origins.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/the-nuances-of-casey-means-medical-exit
The criticisms leveled against Means reveal more about the defensiveness of the medical establishment than they do anything substantially about her.
It‘s quite the leap to assume that because she experienced distress and burnout during surgical residency, that disqualifies her perspective. What if burnout isn’t always a personal failing, but many times a healthy response to an unhealthy experience? Some people have tender consciences, or steely fortitude, or both and are okay with opting out of the mainstream when it’s unhealthy.
I think as she moves forward we will see more people dismissing her holistic approach as “pseudoscience.” This isn’t new for any of us who care about nature, human wellness, and the preservation of religion, tradition, people, and place. The demands of the scientific-technical-progress cult are all-encompassing and leave little room for anyone to broaden the field of observation or understanding. I agree that she at times, like many in our holistic space, overstates her advice or conclusions, but that is worlds apart from fraud or quackery. The double standard is glaring: why are holistic-minded providers scrutinized so aggressively, while conventional practitioners—say, cardiologists who zealously promote statins as if an essential nutrient despite their objective failure in most cases—face no such reputational risk for overreach?
That inconsistency suggests the criticism is not scientific, but personal, social, emotional, political. And frankly has little to do with health.
In this article, and the way it’s framed, you can almost smell the hostility toward her simply because she walked away from the accepted, traditional path. Her whole character now is suspect. Her financial motives questioned. But not those of the surgeons she left behind. Her choice to opt out is seen as disloyalty, failure, betrayal, rather than as a principled act. But many sane and ethical people reach the conclusion that the system they’re in is misaligned with health or care—and they leave not because they are “anti-medicine,” but because they want to find a better way to help people be well. Or even themselves be well.
As many of us have experienced, critics rarely engage with actual clinical results ideas have in real life human beings. The framework she proposes (root-cause thinking, metabolic-energy health, continuous glucose monitoring, lifestyle transformation) actually transforms real lives. Patients lose weight, reversing disease, and feel well. That raises the uncomfortable question for conventional practitioners: Are your patients getting better? If not, perhaps it’s time to listen rather than lash out. Reasonable conversations could help us all learn and move forward.
