Pulling Casey Means Nomination was Necessary but Insufficient
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Two months after her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Casey Means has been pulled as nominee for U.S. Surgeon General.
Public Citizen previously published a report on how Means and MAHA influencers exploit vulnerabilities in the American health care system to hawk unproven medical treatments and unregulated health supplements while fomenting distrust towards health care providers.
Eagan Kemp, health care policy advocate of Public Citizen, issued the following statement:
“Casey Means was always a terrible choice for U.S. Surgeon General and we welcome her nomination being pulled. Her disastrous confirmation hearing showed she was absolutely unqualified, which anyone should have been able to tell from prior statements supporting conspiracy theories, including on vaccines, autism, and access to reproductive health care.
“President Trump should get no credit for pulling such a bad nominee. Instead he should be shamed for leaving the American people without a Surgeon General at a crucial time in public health, when vaccine preventable diseases are running roughshod through the population. Americans have been left to try to make sense of the confusing and disjointed responses of HHS under the increasingly erratic Secretary Kennedy and his cabal of unqualified lackeys within HHS.
“Pulling this nomination highlights the dangers of putting forward nominees with financial conflicts instead of qualifications. We need a Surgeon General who will speak honestly with the American people about what the science actually shows, not whatever the latest conspiracy Sec. Kennedy is pushing on any given week.
“We need a Surgeon General that will push back on Trump and RFK Jr. as they put unfounded anti-science views ahead of actual public health guidance in the service of those that would profit from the confusion they sow. Trump should continue cleaning house by firing Sec. Kennedy but he is too scared of Kennedy to do so. Americans will die as a result of Trump’s cowardice and we will look back on this period of public health malpractice with shame and plenty of blame to go around.”