‘True Corruption’: Agency Capture Responsible for Chronic Disease Epidemic in U.S.

“This has happened very intentionally, and it can be undone pretty quickly too,” Calley Means said in an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience. “But we have to realize this isn’t a conspiracy. It’s true corruption that happened deliberately.”by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.OCTOBER 15, 2024

Despite massive government spending, the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S. is worsening each year and the scientific and medical establishment is unwilling and unable to reverse the trend, according to two leading food safety advocates who appeared last week on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

Calley Means and Dr. Casey Means, siblings and authors of “Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health,” told Joe Rogan that environmental contamination and the lack of food regulation in the U.S. have contributed to metabolic disruption afflicting many Americans.

“In 2024, [we have] the highest rates in American history of Alzheimer’s, cancer, autoimmune conditions, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, autism,” Calley said. “Every single chronic disease you can think of is at an all-time high, growing at an increasing rate as we spend more money to treat those conditions.”

The siblings, who last month spoke at a Senate roundtable on nutrition and the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S., said the corporate capture of public health agencies, medical schools and the media is fueling the epidemic.

They called for a new public health model.

“The reason there’s a MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] movement [is because] people know something’s not right and people know that this health issue is the tip of the iceberg of what’s actually happening in our world today,” Casey said.

“The fastest-growing industry in the United States is not AI [artificial intelligence], it’s not tech, it’s healthcare. As it grows, we get sicker, fatter or more depressed, more infertile. It’s going to bankrupt the country and it’s not slowing down,” Calley said.

“We are getting destroyed, and it’s very recent and it’s accelerating,” Casey said.

‘Fixing a rigged market’ is a ‘necessity’

Casey and Calley, who have backgrounds in medicine and lobbying, respectively, described the factors that led them to abandon those careers.

“I loved biology, went to Stanford Medical School, went on to do surgical residency,” Casey said. Yet, “There was something inside of me that was whispering and then speaking a little louder, and then finally was a deafening call to me, that something is not right.”

“That led me on what is now a seven, eight-year journey, ultimately leaving the surgical world, putting down my scalpel forever,” Casey said.

Calley said he once thought “being a good young conservative was supporting the farm industry or supporting the food industry.”

“I helped Coke funnel money to the American Diabetes Association. The American Diabetes Association says that if you have diabetes, you don’t need to worry about your sugar intake. They say it’s not tied to food,” Calley said.

Calley also recalled lobbying lawmakers to convince them that taking Coke off food stamps was racist. “Coke soda, to this day, is the number one item on food stamps.”

As a lobbyist, “We paid conservative influencers to say it’s the ‘nanny state’ to question the rigged system.” But he later realized that “fixing a rigged market” is not an attack on the free market. “It’s a necessity.”

U.S. food ingredients contribute to metabolic dysfunction

Casey pointed out that rates of cancer, autism, Alzheimer’s, dementia, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, obesity and infertility “are going through the roof.”

She said, “74% of Americans are overweight or obese, 50% now of American adults have Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes,” compared to 1% in 1950.

“One in two Americans are expected to have cancer in their lifetime … young adult cancers are going up, 79% in the last 10 years,” Casey added. “Autism rates are absolutely astronomical. One in 36 children has autism now in the United States. That was 1 in 50 in the year 2000.”

“We’ve got heart disease, which is almost totally preventable, as the leading cause of death in the United States, killing around 800,000 people per year,” Casey said.

Casey said doctors are trained to treat diseases in isolation. “No one’s asking, ‘Why is this happening?’ Instead, we put ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder] in a bucket. We put depression and anxiety in a bucket. We put Alzheimer’s in a bucket.”

For Casey, there is “a very obvious blaring answer” — one that led her and Calley to write their book earlier this year. “It’s all caused by metabolic dysfunction.”

“It’s basically like all of us are a little bit dead while we’re alive,” Casey said. “That’s what metabolic dysfunction is. It’s less energy in the body. We’re underpowered.” This starves the brains and other vital organs of the energy they need to function, she said.

Environmental contamination has also played a role, Casey said. Pointing out that children reach puberty, on average, six years earlier than in 1900, Casey said excess estrogen in food and the environment is to blame.

“We’ve got plastics, as you know, everywhere … It’s literally in the air,” she said. “We’re breathing the nanoparticles. It’s in our food, it’s in our water, it’s in everything.” When plastic breaks down, “it acts like a xenoestrogen … that can literally bind to our estrogen receptors and act like estrogen.”

Pesticides are another contributor to metabolic dysfunction, Casey said. Some pesticides increase aromatase, the enzyme that converts to estrogen, she said. She cited atrazine, a pesticide that is banned in Europe, “but we spray 70 million pounds of it per year in the U.S.”

“Then we’re barreled with sugar … it’s in our kids’ school lunches. The sugar everywhere … is driving the visceral fat in kids,” Casey said.

Tobacco companies’ takeover of Big Food led to ‘weaponization of food’

According to Calley, “Chronic disease wasn’t that big of a deal in the 1970s, 1980s,” but there was “a sharp turn” after cigarette companies bought major food manufacturers in the early 1990s — leading to a “weaponization of food.”

“They did two things very, very intentionally,” Calley said. “They took over the institutions of trust to say ultra-processed food was healthy, and then they took their scientists and rigged the food itself to make it more addictive.”

Casey described high-fructose corn syrup as “a weapon of mass destruction” used to “make people insatiable.”

“We have 10,000 chemicals in our food system,” Casey said. “Europe only 400, because they have to show that it’s safe before they use it. We’re allowed to use it,” and worry about proving its safety later. She cited the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAS) system, where companies “self-assess” to determine if the ingredients they use are safe.

“This has happened very intentionally, and it can be undone pretty quickly too. But we have to realize this isn’t a conspiracy. It’s true corruption that happened deliberately,” Calley said.

Doctors ‘not trained to connect the dots’

Medical students and doctors are “not trained to connect the dots,” Casey said, citing the example of metabolic dysfunction.

“I didn’t learn it at Stanford Medical School. I didn’t learn it in my surgical residency,” Casey said. “We are not trained to see the body as a unified system. We’re trained to see it as 20, 30 different parts. And so, no one’s seeing the forest for the trees.”

“Somebody from Harvard Medical School that specialized in Alzheimer’s, their entire course load, their entire training, their entire focus is on accepting Alzheimer’s, that it’s there, that it’s growing, and then figuring out marginal improvements for it,” Calley said. As a result, patients see multiple doctors who “aren’t speaking to each other.”

“That’s very profitable, very problematic,” Calley said. “Today, 90-95% of spending is on chronic conditions.”

Calley and Casey said the structure of modern-day medical studies is also to blame.

“Anything that actually recognizes the unison and the interconnectivity of why we’re getting sick can’t be studied through a double-blind, placebo-controlled study,” Calley said.”

Casey cited the connection between vaccines and autism as an example. “I bet that one vaccine probably isn’t causing autism, but what about the 20 that they’re getting before 18 months? We don’t look at it in a synergistic way … that’s a big problem.”

For Casey, the liability shield enjoyed by vaccine manufacturers, stemming from the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, has not only protected those companies but also serves as a model that other industries are trying to imitate.

“They’re now starting to try and push things like that for pesticides,” Casey said.

Institutional capture ‘a defining existential issue in our country’

For Casey and Calley, institutional capture is at the heart of this system.

“There’s a defining existential issue in our country, where our major institutions have been captured,” Calley said. “I think we’re going to be brought to our knees if we don’t realize this.”

Casey said:

“It’s a simple economic incentive problem that’s causing all these problems. I think that what we’re striving for in this country is ultimately economic growth and value. That is what we care about. And so, in each industry, you see people fighting for that … We’re all motivated by this carrot that is destroying us.”

According to Casey, doctors “don’t get paid for outcomes” but instead “get paid for volume. This has “incentivized a structure of healthcare where it’s most profitable to actually be seen by as many specialists as humanly possible.”

“Doctors … are incentivized to really be head-down in their specialty lane and not actually step out and look at the big picture of how things are connected, when in fact it’s all connected. We don’t see the body anymore,” Casey said.

Healthcare costs are skyrocketing because the medical system “knows how to tell Congress that there’s no cost too high for something when it comes to pharmaceutical interventions,” Calley said. “We’re bankrupting the country with interventions once people get sick.”

He pointed out Pharma is responsible for half of the ads on TV news — not so much to sell products, as to influence the news. Big Pharma “spends five times more on lobbying and public affairs than the oil industry,” while the healthcare industry is “the highest funder of politicians” and “the highest spender on research,” he said.

Pharma also funds regulatory agencies and scientific studies on food and nutrition. “These studies are all funded by the chemical companies, by the food companies, as are university medical and nutrition schools,” Calley said.

“Fundamentally, on the grassroots micro level, these industries have co-opted our institutions of trust,” Calley said, and those who raise questions are punished.

“If you step outside the guidelines, you’re at risk for intense litigation and potentially ridicule,” Casey said, citing the example of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In 2022, every single public health official in America said you were enemy No. 1 for talking about sunlight and talking about food and talking about healthy eating,” Calley said. “If you were metabolically healthy, you did not die of COVID pretty demonstrably.” Yet, “you were threat No. 1.”

Calley said grassroots activism is effective — and catches the attention of lawmakers. “Every single member of Congress tells me … the only thing that beats money is grassroots [activism],” Calley said.

Watch Calley and Casey Means’ on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ here:

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”