RFK Jr. Says He Had a Dead Worm in His Brain
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says a doctor once suspected a worm literally ate part of his brain, according to a new report from The New York Times.
According to the Times, in a 2012 deposition related to divorce proceedings against his second wife, RFK Jr. detailed a litany of health concerns he said would diminish his future earnings potential. Among these was an incident in which Kennedy’s doctors identified a dark spot in one of his brain scans after he raised concerns of memory fog and impaired cognitive ability.
Neurologists initially believed the spot to be a brain tumor but, according to Kennedy, he received a call from another doctor shortly before a scheduled surgery who believed the mass “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”
In a phone call with the Times, Kennedy said that doctors ultimately determined that the spot visible in his brain scans contained the remains of a dead parasite of unknown species. Kennedy could not say definitively how he had contracted the worm but suspected it had been during a trip to Southeast Asia taken around that time.
But the cognitive struggles that prompted Kennedy to have his brain checked in the first place may have had an entirely different cause. According to the deposition, Kennedy was diagnosed with diet-induced mercury poisoning caused by an overconsumption of seafood.
Kennedy described the mercury levels in his blood as being more than 10 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety parameters. “I loved tuna fish sandwiches. I ate them all the time,” he told the Times.
Before his run for the presidency, Kennedy was already a notorious figure for his long-held conspiracies surrounding vaccines. One of Kennedy’s most infamous false claims was a purported link between thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative commonly used in vaccines, and autism.
As a candidate, Kennedy has a slim chance of actually securing the presidency amidst the rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, but he is poised to act as a spoiler candidate. It’s unclear whether his candidacy will benefit Biden or Trump, but Kennedy’s conspiracies have endeared him with factions of the political right that embraced vaccine skepticism in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, Kennedy baselessly claimed that vaccines were likely responsible for the creation of epidemics like the Spanish flu and HIV/AIDS, and he sued major news outlets for allegedly illegally boycotting right-wing conspiracy theories by engaging in an industry partnership to fight misinformation.
Throughout the race, Kennedy has pointedly presented himself as a younger, healthier alternative to the aging Biden and Trump, but despite his public posturing, it seems he has plenty of health concerns himself.
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