Conspirituality - Brief: Does Calley Means Get Anything Right?

Nov. 15, 2025 - Conspirituality

29:14

Brief: Does Calley Means Get Anything Right?

RFK Jr's senior advisor and supplements salesman, Calley Means, has repeatedly fabricated the story of Abraham Flexner and the birth of the modern medical system. Derek looks into his historical revisionism and what it could mean for the MAHA movement. Show Notes Medical Education in America: Abraham Flexner The Great Influenza: John Barry The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: Roy Porter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	John D. Rockefeller started the modern pharmaceutical industry looking for uses of oil byproducts and was the first big pharmaceutical baron.
	And he, in order to sell pharmaceuticals, funded modern medical education.
	So he was the big grantee to Johns Hopkins and other early medical schools and sought to create a medical system of evidence-based medicine that essentially siloed diseases into different categories where doctors could either do surgeries or prescribe drugs.
	This was a radical concept at the time.
	At the time, actually, medicine was more holistic and the predominant medical theory was actually holistic, things being connected.
	He said that's totally wrong.
	We need to identify the condition and prescribe a drug for it.
	And he funded Johns Hopkins, which created the modern medical education system of residency of the different silos of specialties that doctors go into.
	So that was John Rockefeller's brainchild as an express, not again, you know, to help the American people be healthier.
	It was to sell pharmaceutical drugs.
	That framework then was written by his lawyer, whose last name was Flexner, was an employee of Rockefeller's who created and just basically gave Congress the Flexner report in 1909, which established evidence-based medicine as the only type of medicine that the U.S. government would fund and propagate.
	Fuck, there's so much going on there.
	Okay, that's Callie Means, RFK Jr.'s advisor and supplement salesman via his company, Trumed.
	We've featured him a number of times on this podcast as he is, according to his own accord, one of the people responsible for shepherding Kennedy into Trump's camp, which he claims came to him during a vision in a sweat tent, by which I think he means sweat lodge.
	Given how often he seems to battle reality though, I'm not really sure what I can believe coming out of his mouth.
	I've now listened to Means talk about Abraham Flexner on at least a half dozen podcasts, and every time he completely flubs the story, so much so you have to wonder if it's intentional.
	He gets very basic facts wrong.
	Flexner wasn't a lawyer, he was an educator.
	Flexner never worked for John D. Rockefeller.
	He was hired to work on the report by Andrew Carnegie.
	The Flexner report was published in 1910, not 1909.
	Sure, these seem basic, the type of thing that's not really relevant.
	I recently said on an episode that Culver City is a neighborhood in Los Angeles when in fact it's its own city, which was a bit of a brain fart considering I lived on the border of Culver City for seven years.
	The thing is, when a listener reminded me of that fact, I stored it away so I wouldn't make that mistake again.
	Means never corrects himself even on the most basic oversights.
	But that's not what this episode is actually about.
	There's something much graver going on with his factually allergic statements.
	Yes, he basically got everything wrong in the minute and a half that I played, which makes you wonder how you can trust anything out of this dude's mouth.
	I'm going to go over his claims, but I want to contextualize them in the broader landscape of Maha.
	The bigger picture is this.
	Why are you getting so much wrong if not on purpose?
	Are you trying to build a narrative of some sort?
	I mean, oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller as the father of big pharma?
	Sounds pretty fucking suspicious, don't you think?
	Especially since it was his Jewish lawyer doing the fixing.
	What we're seeing is historical revisionism by wellness influencers like Callie Means, which distorts the progression and value of evidence-based medicine, not only by misrepresenting facts, but by constructing an anti-medicine narrative for profit and influence.
	Spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt about modern medicine means fewer people getting themselves or their children vaccinated, which we're seeing nationwide, and which will cripple us if another pandemic emerges.
	It means fewer people seeking treatment when they need it, instead emptying their wallets to buy products sold by the for-profit wellness industry, which means is very much a player in.
	It means pulling funding away from research we so desperately need and shuffling it into shit like, and I wish I was kidding, Kennedy directing one of his agencies to study windmills because his boss is afraid of them.
	And it means the development of a growing cynicism and outright disdain for the millions of medical professionals who have devoted their lives to studying evidence-based medicine, a cynicism that turns people toward those wellness influencers that have never taken the time or effort to study that which they decry.
	So let's break it all down today.
	I'm Derek Barris and you're listening to a Conspirituality Brief.
	Does Callie Means get anything right?
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	I got bit by a dog recently.
	On Mondays, our puppy Tempo goes out on an all-day adventure with a local dog trading school.
	Usually he's dropped off alone, but a few weeks ago, the trainer showed up with a corgi.
	I greeted him how I do all dogs.
	I bent down to make myself small and I put forward my hand for him to sniff.
	He approached and then laid into my right index finger.
	It was super fast and I think everyone was a bit shocked and the three small punctures didn't seem that bad.
	But as I'm aware, dog bites can quickly turn.
	So the following morning I went to emergency care.
	It's been about eight years since my last tetanus shot and the doctor told me that the most up-to-date recommendations are every five.
	I got the shot there and then she sent me a prescription for a course of erythromycin at Costco Pharmacy where we go and I was on my way.
	Now this seems all very mundane.
	Get a vaccine and take some pills to ward off a potential bacterial infection.
	Sometimes though, I have to remind myself just how revolutionary and historically new this all is.
	Not so long ago, such outcomes were far from certain.
	All of the leading causes of death in America in the 19th century were from infectious diseases.
	For most of history, most people died because bacteria or a virus was transmitted from another person or an animal to them, or they scraped their leg on a rock, and all they could do was guess that some god was mad at them when things went south.
	Over time, science evolved, we gained an understanding of biology and nature, and we started writing new stories based on our new understanding, as well as, when feasible, writing the past in a new light.
	This is central to what I believe people like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Callie Means are doing.
	They're rewriting history to recreate the evolution of medicine in order to boost their own agendas, which is rooted in selling alternative medicine.
	And that's not new.
	When Callie says medicine was more holistic at the turn of the 20th century, the context that he's missing is that there was a ton of pseudoscience, none of which did shit to fend off bacterial or viral infections.
	The picture he's painting is one of much healthier humans relying on natural healing modalities.
	But the opposite is true.
	There are so many things I've personally experienced in my 50 years of life that would have killed me far sooner 150 years ago.
	And this is true for many of us.
	That's why I call it a blind privilege.
	It's not that we have to think about it all the time, but we should at least recognize how new this is and how lucky we are.
	And none of this means modern medicine is perfect.
	Far from it.
	Racism and sexism have played outsized roles in the creation of our medical industry, phenomena that are only recently beginning to be addressed, which is also partly why MAGA loathes anything that even hints at equity.
	The profit motive driving modern American healthcare is a fucking nightmare.
	I've yet to talk to or interview a medical professional who doesn't express their own criticisms with the system they work inside of.
	But the historical revisionism going on through people like Callie Means is a foundational piece of Maha's wellness propaganda.
	The contrast is even starker when we look abroad.
	Means conveniently leaves out an essential piece of context.
	Europe was eating our lunch when it came to medicine and science in the 19th century.
	I'm currently reading The Great Influenza, The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry.
	And here's how he frames the situation.
	Quote, While for decades European medical schools had, for example, required students to have a solid background in chemistry, biology, and other sciences, as late as 1900, it was more difficult to get into an American college than into an American medical school.
	At least 100 U.S. medical schools would accept any man, but not woman, willing to pay tuition.
	At most, 20% of the schools required even a high school diploma for admission, much less any academic training in science, and only a single medical school required its students to have a college degree.
	Nor, once students entered, did American schools necessarily make up for any lack of scientific background.
	Many schools bestowed a medical degree upon students who simply attended lectures and passed examinations.
	In some, students could fail several courses, never touch a single patient, and still get a medical degree.
	Paul Starr writes about these competing medical schools in his book, The Social Transformation of Medicine, The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry.
	The goal wasn't medicine, it was graduating students quickly to turn a profit.
	Some curriculums were three years long, then another nearby college might introduce a two-year program to pick off students because they can get their degrees quicker.
	19th century doctors were really not much different than wellness influencers today.
	They had little practical training, and it was up to them to build a practice wherever they found a market.
	And if you are the only doctor in town, you have a monopoly, as it's not like people have anywhere else to go.
	The free market wasn't controlled by doctors.
	Homeopaths, herbalists, and heroic medicine practitioners all competed with medical college graduates.
	And then, of course, there were patent medicine makers who were responsible for the bulk of newspaper advertising throughout the 19th century.
	You can kind of consider them their era's wellness influencers.
	Today, we know that their concoctions were little more than some herbs soaked in alcohol, and they knew that then, but the public didn't.
	These were the most likely people in this market to disparage college graduates.
	Interestingly, it turns out a lot of patent medicine salesmen, aka actual snake oil salesmen, also offered advice and even therapy to their clients.
	So, again, not dissimilar from wellness influencers doing the same shit today.
	Things were so bad in the 19th century that doctors and scientists didn't have laboratories to do their work.
	Barry notes that doctors weren't trained with stethoscopes or taught simple physiological tests like taking blood pressure.
	Basic screenings were common in European training where researchers were discovering groundbreaking principles about human biology.
	I mean, think of the great discoveries from that time.
	Louis Pasteur, who was French, Edward Jenner, English, Robert Koch, German, Joseph Lister, British, Ignais Semmelweis, Hungarian, Florence Nightingale, English, as was John Snow, Paul Ehrlich, German.
	These are the people responsible for vaccinations, germ theory, anesthesia, antisepsis, epidemiology, nursing reform, diagnostics, and antimicrobial therapy.
	Meanwhile, in 1871, a Harvard medical school professor argued that students shouldn't waste their time whiling away in the labyrinths of chemistry and physiology.
	And then that started to change.
	Johns Hopkins University was founded in 1876 by the Quaker philanthropist bearing the same name.
	The Johns Hopkins Hospital opened in 1889 and four years later, the medical school.
	Finally, America had a credible training school dedicated to actual scientific and medical research for the first time.
	But it's not like other schools disappeared.
	There was still a lot of competition and lackluster standards persisted, which is when Andrew Carnegie stepped in.
	Through the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Carnegie hired Abraham Flexner to visit all of the nation's medical schools and see if they were up to snuff.
	At the turn of the 20th century, concerns were widespread among educational leaders and reformers about the poor state and the uneven quality of medical schools throughout North America.
	There was an entire movement concerned about undertrained physicians helping to lead to poor health outcomes.
	Sound familiar?
	Unlike today, though, this was a real problem, like a systemic problem, and not in the way that Maha is presenting it.
	Flexner, who has never been a lawyer or who has never worked for John D. Rockefeller, had previously critiqued higher education in America.
	And Carnegie's foundation felt that he can offer an objective, muck-raking evaluation.
	They wanted an outsider's assessment that could catalyze the necessary changes to make medical education more scientifically rigorous, standardized, and closely associated with the research universities and teaching hospitals that were starting to pop up.
	Their explicit goals included raising educational standards, closing inadequate schools, ensuring that medical training was rooted in laboratory science, and aligning North American medicine with European, especially German best practices.
	Given the list of advancements I just shared a moment ago, it makes sense that American business leaders wanted this nation to be viewed in a better light.
	They wanted to be kings in a country known for its achievements.
	It's not like they were all philanthropic, but they didn't want to be known as being those kings in a backwater outpost.
	And sometimes I think people forget that America's prominence on the world stage didn't really happen until after World War II.
	And so Flexner traveled to every medical school in the United States and Canada and provided detailed recommendations for higher standards, academic integration, and greater emphasis on scientific and clinical competence.
	While Callie Means claims that Flexner shut down dissenting voices in holistic medicine, that's just made up.
	That is not true.
	Here's Paul Starr.
	Quote, well before Flexner's report was published in 1910, the number of medical schools had begun to decline, dropping from a high point of 162 in 1906 to 131 four years later, a loss of almost a fifth.
	The turnabout came as the steadily rising requirements set by state licensing boards and other authorities gradually altered the economics of medical education for students and schools alike.
	These changing economic realities rather than the Flexner report were what killed so many medical schools in the years after 1906.
	Now, was John D. Rockefeller interested in medicine?
	Yes, as was the other industrialist Andrew Carnegie.
	Were their motives profit-driven?
	Likely in part.
	They wanted to see America's success, which would in turn raise their own stature.
	But Calley's claim that Rockefeller single-handedly founded the modern pharmaceutical industry to sell oil byproducts, that he funded medical education solely for pharmaceutical interests, and that he orchestrated the siloing of disease categories in U.S. medicine is just all fucking bullshit.
	As I said, Rockefeller didn't hire Flexner and he wasn't responsible for the report.
	After the report, Rockefeller did support medical reforms and he donated to Johns Hopkins, but first in 1904, and it wasn't to push pharmaceuticals, it was because some of their property was lost in a fire.
	That money was requested by Sir William Osler, who was one of the hospital's founding physicians.
	Rockefeller didn't run to them to turn oil byproducts into drugs.
	They saw a rich man and they needed help and he stepped in.
	Now, these guys were uber capitalists.
	The unfettered capitalism we experience in America today very much started with people like Rockefeller and Carnegie.
	So I'm not here trying to defend the dudes, but I do think historical accuracy is pretty fucking important, especially like I said, when people are rewriting it in a way so that they could make the type of money and power that Rockefeller and Carnegie did, which is what a lot of these top influencers basically desire.
	Take the pharmaceutical industry, which again is very fucking problematic in our times, but its rise was driven by much broader trends than Rockefeller.
	You had advancements in chemistry, you had the growth of the European pharmaceutical giants like Bayer, and you had public health needs.
	The narrative that pharmaceuticals are derived primarily from oil byproducts is completely untrue because many early and current pharmaceuticals are not petroleum-based.
	But yes, there are some.
	And as I've said on this podcast before, many supplements, including many that Means himself sells through Trumed, are petroleum-based synthetic vitamins and minerals manufactured through the same process as petroleum-based pharmaceuticals.
	So miss me, miss all of us with that fucking hypocrisy.
	Also, the entire movement toward evidence-based medicine and specialization was not engineered by Rockefeller, Carnegie, or Flexner.
	These reforms reflected a broader consensus within the medical and scientific community regarding effective clinical training and the need for research-based practices inspired, as I said, by existing hospital structures and research facilities in Europe.
	It was a very broad coalition of people who wanted better medicine.
	But if you make it just look like it was Rockefeller and his Jewish lawyer, well, you got a narrative that you can sell people who are definitely not doing their own research.
	And while I've been studying this for a while and I've read many medical history textbooks because I just like learning about that stuff, pretty rich that the do your own research crowd just takes people like Callie Means at his word.
	You know what?
	What that broad consensus wanted, it worked.
	So let's look at some of the advancements through the 20th century that happened in America.
	Now, the first antimicrobial agent was discovered and developed by Paul Ehrlich in Germany in 1909.
	And the first true antibiotic, which is penicillin, it was discovered by Alexander Fleming in London in 1928.
	But key antibiotics like streptomycin, which was the first effective tuberculosis drug, and tetracycline were discovered in America in the 40s and 50s.
	In fact, the golden age of antibiotic development was during that period in the United States and in Europe, in the UK specifically.
	American researchers produced many key therapeutics.
	Look at all the vaccines: pertussis, diphtheria, influenza, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, hepatitis B, chickenpox, haemophilius influenzae type B, and tetanus.
	The same shot I received after that cute but aggressive little asshole Corky thought my finger looked like a snack.
	This all happened because a number of people in education, medicine, and business looked at the American medical system in the early 20th century and they said we could do better.
	And so we did.
	And this is the structure that people, like all of the Maha influencers, want to tear down in the broad imagination so they can build up their own alternative medicine empire.
	The scientific milestones that I just mentioned completely transform public health.
	Yet despite these advances, wellness influencers continue to rewrite the story so that they can have their own agenda.
	And I don't want to over-romanticize the past either.
	I've long criticized wellness influencers for their imagined natural healing remedies of 5,000-year-old whatever.
	The system developed in the World War II era created chronic tension between pharmaceutical companies, the hospital system, and insurance agencies, leading to so many of the problems we experience today in our for-profit system.
	It turns out we never abandoned the greedy cash grab in medicine that persisted throughout the 19th century.
	We did professionalize it, but to claim it's just about money as a stretch.
	There have been serious advancements and all of us have benefited from them.
	And these advancements were made because of a concerted effort to educate professionals.
	Evidence-based medicine isn't perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than those untested, unregulated concoctions that were sold by patent medicine makers.
	And if their tactics of regularly attacking doctors and researchers sound a bit familiar when you listen to Kennedy, Means, and their Maha stands today, you are not wrong.
	Snake oil was a real thing then and now.
	Prestige and money are seductive.
	And we've watched quite a few fringe wellness conspiracy theorists get hired into this administration and they're taking full advantage of their fortunes.
	In June 1910, Abraham Flexner published an article in The Atlantic discussing American medicine from 1750 onward.
	I've included a link to it in the show notes.
	What began as an honest and serious process of apprenticeship was formalized as teaching departments in a few established universities.
	Then, he writes, the profit motive kicked in, which sacrificed quality medical training for that time, of course.
	So he writes, quote, The teaching was, except for a little anatomy, wholly didactic.
	The schools were essentially private ventures, money-making in spirit and object.
	No applicant for instruction who could pay his fees or sign his note was turned down.
	State boards were not as yet in existence.
	The school diploma was itself a license to practice.
	The examinations, brief, oral, and secret, plucked almost none at all.
	Even at Harvard, a student for whom a majority of nine professors voted was passed.
	The man who had settled his tuition bill was thus practically assured of his degree, whether he had regularly attended lectures or not.
	Accordingly, the business throve.
	No oversight, a handful of people controlling curriculum, opportunities for anyone willing to pay the entry fee.
	Sounds exactly like what Maha is constructing.
	As with the charlatans of Flexner's time, they blame the system for every failing, and then they position themselves as the real champions of health.
	And we all suffer from their relentless pride.
	So when someone like Callie Means goes so far to construct a false history, we have to wonder what he and all of Maha is really selling.

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