RFK Jr. Claims a Worm Ate Part of His Brain and Then Died
Ringo Chiu via AP
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed in a 2012 deposition that medical scans revealed a “dead parasite” in his brain.
The New York Times‘ Susanne Craig reported on Wednesday that Kennedy started experiencing “memory loss and mental fogginess” in 2010 and that friends became concerned. And rightly so, since Kennedy’s uncle, the late Ted Kennedy, had died of brain cancer in 2009. Brain scans revealed a “dark spot” that was first thought to be a tumor, but a second opinion yielded a far weirder possibility: a “dead parasite.” Craig wrote:
The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.
The deposition was related to his divorce from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, who died by suicide in 2012 before their divorce was finalized. The subject of the worms came up over the question of money: “At the time, Mr. Kennedy was arguing that his earning power had been diminished by his cognitive struggles.”
In the same deposition, Kennedy also stated that other health conditions made him feel as if “there’s a bag of worms in my chest. I can feel immediately when it goes out.”
Craig noted in her report that throughout his long-shot campaign, Kennedy has portrayed himself to be a younger, more mentally and physically fit alternative to the geriatric President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump despite once claiming to be full of worms:
[Kennedy] has gone to lengths to appear hale, skiing with a professional snowboarder and with an Olympic gold medalist who called him a “ripper” as they raced down the mountain. A camera crew was at his side while he lifted weights, shirtless, at an outdoor gym in Venice Beach.
However, Kennedy has weathered a host of other health issues:
For decades, Mr. Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heartbeat abnormality that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although in an interview with The Times this winter, he said he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the condition had disappeared.
About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues.
“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
Kennedy claimed in that Times interview that he had “fully recovered” from the memory loss, and his campaign spokeswoman Stefanie Spear said that the idea that Kennedy was unfit to be president now was “a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.”
