New US surgeon general pick wants to "raise the vibration of humanity"

[Meta/off-topic] I altered the original title and removed Trump's name from it. The article isn't about Trump or his selection process, and ~society has plenty of Trump-focused posts. Should this article generate any discussion, I think it would be better if it were centered around Casey Means rather than "oh great, Trump did another crazy thing."

In her writing and speaking gigs, Casey Means highlights the importance of metabolic health, an enthusiasm for many alternative health practitioners. Like many of them, she assigns a mystically important role to the gut: In Good Energy, Means states that “conditions like depression and schizophrenia” are “tied to poor gut bacteria,” adding that “researchers can identify a person with depression or schizophrenia just by analyzing their gut bacteria composition.” (The study Means appears to be citing specifically says that more research is needed to determine whether there’s a causal link between schizophrenia and the gut microbiome.) She’s also hailed raw dairy, writing how she wants “to be free to form a relationship with a local farmer, understand his integrity, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, and then decide if I feel safe to drink the milk from his farm.”

But Means’ medical opining has occasionally veered in a more New Age direction. She has claimed that “the universe” speaks to her and that people can “manifest” what they want by writing it down. “Perhaps the body is simply the material ‘radio receiver’ through which we can ‘tune in’ to the divine,” she wrote in an October 2024 newsletter. “We will get instructions (through human inspiration and reason) for what we need to do to raise the vibration of humanity and create a sustainable future… The future of medicine will be about light. I don’t exactly know how yet.”