In a world of odd “spiritual” beliefs, Dr. Casey Means is no outsider. In fact, she is an effective channel for them.
Means and her brother, Calley, are Stanford-educated medical professionals whose work focuses on functional medicine — the sort of root-cause and wellness interests that drive the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. The siblings act as healthcare lobbyists and, more specifically, top advisers to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Their objectives have come to represent a broad view of the conservative-Christian position on matters of health.
In these respects, Casey Means has backing for her recent nomination from President Donald Trump for U.S. surgeon general. Her spiritualism, however, is among the set of complaints activist Laura Loomer has lodged against it. One newsletter from Means’s website tells readers to “embrace the ‘woo woo’,” as she did to “evolve my consciousness.” Details of Means’s “not necessarily” recommended but not-disavowed experiences tell that she used a medium “to connect with my spirit guides,” participated in full moon ceremonies, and “talked (literally out loud) to the trees, letting them know I was ready for partnership, and asking them if they could help.”
On the more biological side, Means reminisces, in her book Good Energy, on when her mother “disintegrated into the earth to feed the trees and flowers and mushrooms above her in an eternal cycle.”
Vague higher power beliefs, like Means’s, are common across the globe — they are one aspect of the human experience that transcends time and culture. A recent Pew Research study reports that 70% of Americans believe that there is “definitely/probably life after death.” Indonesia tops the list, at 85%, and Sweden lies at the bottom with 38%.
Among American Christians, the number jumps to 83%. Even the more outlandish beliefs, such as sentient trees, survey decently: In America, 66% of people believe “animals, parts of nature, or certain objects have spirits or spiritual energies.”
Nowadays, though, spirituality is just spirituality. Means is finding herself in the ways she pleases, and for the progressive observer, she fits the conservative-Christian grouping well enough: People are defined by their endpoints and affiliations more than anything else.
The American secular tendency thus conflates spirituality and religion, and sets the product against science. What results is blanket bias against worldviews which normally oppose one another. Good and trustworthy ideas are indistinguishable from pseudoscience of the same flavor, and both go by the wayside.
That is a major issue, especially in healthcare: Means’s supposed spiritual practices differ entirely from those of a Christian doctor interested in restorative reproductive medicine, yet the two sound equally holistic and nature-oriented. Whereas some of Means’s medical opinions might actually fit the characterization, RRM itself is branded as a “political rather than a scientific concept” and “always rooted in religion.” The fusion is a disaster for human life and fertility treatment.
Of course, spiritual commitments are not in themselves unscientific. Some of our most relied-upon scientific theories came from Catholic priests and bishops: Gregor Mendel is considered the “Father of Modern Genetics” and Georges Lemaitre developed the Big Bang Theory. Several others, lay and clerical, made similar contributions in science and mathematics.
PRONATALIST COMPROMISES ARE DOOMED TO FAIL
Means’s ventures, while spiritual, are a departure. There is no coherent system of faith. More, they damage human dignity: When attributed to a tree, the human condition is obscure, at best. Causality is iffy, too, where the process of death and regeneration is two-way. These are basic issues on which the surgeon general should have a good grasp if she is going to issue public health orders.
But Americans usually look at the religion category as exceptionally personal. So it’s more likely than not that Means’s liabilities are just far enough off limits not to matter. That doesn’t mean the realm of the plainly unscientific has a place in the surgeon general’s office.