Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet concludes 'And yet that is the administration, one that revels in disinformation, that she now seeks to serve. Bad energy.'
CITATION: Offline: The silent torment of Casey Means
Horton, Richard
The Lancet, Volume 407, Issue 10532, 932
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00454-X/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email
Casey Means approached her Senate confirmation hearing to be US Surgeon General last week with a manifesto in mind... As she explains: “Every institution that impacts your health makes more money when you are sick and less when you are healthy.”...
But the Senate Committee, chaired by Bill Cassidy, a physician himself, was not especially interested in engaging with Means’ views on metabolic disease. They were much more concerned with testing her opinions on the controversial positions taken by Kennedy, especially his views on the safety of vaccines... One could feel the silent torment she was undergoing as she struggled to reconcile what she knows to be the scientific truth with the misinformed views of those in the Trump administration.
Senator Bernie Sanders tried again. The American Medical Association concludes there is no link between vaccines and autism. Kennedy believes there is a link. Her view? More torment: all possible causes of autism should be studied. Senator Tim Kaine asked if she agreed with Kennedy that there was no evidence that the influenza vaccine prevents serious disease, hospitalisation, and deaths in children. Again, no clear answer...
Means said that her guiding values were science, dignity, shared humanity, and respect for freedom. But patient autonomy can only be fully realised when the information available is accurate and reliable. When government misinformation pollutes the ecosystem of facts available to patients, any notion of autonomy is nothing but a fantasy. And yet that is the administration, one that revels in disinformation, that she now seeks to serve. Bad energy.
Note: Casey Means is considered a leader of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement and was nominated by President Trump to be Surgeon General.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org