RFK Jr. says doctors found a dead worm in his brain

In 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suffered from such severe memory loss and mental numbness that a friend feared he might have a brain tumor. Kennedy said he consulted several of the country’s top neurologists, many of whom either treated or spoke with his uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, before his death the previous year from brain cancer.

Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Kennedy was immediately taken to Duke University Medical for a procedure Center by the same surgeon who operated on his uncle, he said.

While he was packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital who disagreed: Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head.

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The doctor believed the abnormality found on his scans was “caused by a worm that entered my brain, ate part of it and then died,” Kennedy said in the deposition.

Kennedy, 70, now an independent presidential candidate, has portrayed his athleticism and relative youth as an advantage over the two oldest people ever to seek the White House: President Joe Biden, 81, and former President Donald Trump, 77. Kennedy has secured a spot on the ballot in Utah, Michigan, Hawaii and, his campaign says, California and Delaware. His intensive efforts to gain access in additional states could enable him to decide the election.

He tried hard to appear healthy by skiing with a professional snowboarder and an Olympic gold medalist who called him a “ripper” as they raced down the mountain. A camera crew was by his side as he lifted weights shirtless at an outdoor gym in Venice Beach in Los Angeles.

Nevertheless, he has struggled with serious health problems over the years, some of which were not previously known, including the apparent parasite.

Kennedy suffered for decades from atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm disorder that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although he said in an interview with The Times this winter that he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the illness had disappeared.

Around the same time he learned about the parasite, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely due to eating too much fish that contained the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological problems.

“I clearly have cognitive issues,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss and long-term memory loss that affects me.”

In the Times interview, he said he had recovered from the memory loss and dizziness and had had no after-effects from the parasite, which he said did not require treatment. Asked whether Kennedy’s health problems could jeopardize his eligibility for the presidency, Stefanie Spear, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign, told the Times last week: “Given the competition, that’s a hilarious suggestion.”

The campaign declined to provide his medical records to the Times. Neither Biden nor Trump have released medical records this election cycle.

Doctors who have treated parasitic infections and mercury poisoning said both conditions can sometimes permanently damage brain function, but patients can also experience temporary symptoms and make a full recovery.

Some of Kennedy’s health problems were revealed in the 2012 deposition he gave during divorce proceedings from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. At the time, he argued that his earning potential had been reduced by his cognitive problems.

Kennedy provided more details, including about the apparent parasite, in the phone interview with the Times just before his first state ballot. His campaign declined to answer follow-up questions.

In the days following NewYork-Presbyterian’s call in 2010, Kennedy said in the interview, he underwent a series of tests. Scans over many weeks showed no change at the site in his brain, he said.

Doctors eventually concluded that the cyst they saw on the scans contained the remains of a parasite. Kennedy said he didn’t know what type of parasite it was or where he might have contracted it, but suspected it was during a trip through South Asia.

Several infectious disease experts and neurosurgeons said in separate interviews with the Times that based on what Kennedy described, they believed it was likely a pork tapeworm larva. The doctors did not treat Kennedy and spoke in general terms.

Dr. Clinton White, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, said microscopic tapeworm eggs are sticky and can be easily transmitted from one person to another. Once the larvae hatch, they can travel in the bloodstream “and land in all sorts of tissues.”

Although it was impossible to know, he added that it was unlikely that a parasite would eat part of the brain, as Kennedy described. Rather, says White, it feeds on nutrients from the body. In contrast to tapeworm larvae in the intestines, those in the brain remain relatively small, about a third of an inch.

Some tapeworm larvae can live in the human brain for years without causing problems. Others can have devastating consequences, often starting to die, leading to inflammation. The most common symptoms are seizures, headaches and dizziness.

According to the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, there are about 2,000 hospitalizations each year in the United States for the disease known as neurocysticercosis.

Scott Gardner, curator of the Manter Laboratory for Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said once a worm is in the brain, the cells around it calcify. “And you’ll basically have almost like a tumor that’s there forever. It’s not going to go anywhere.”

Gardner said it was possible that a worm would cause memory loss. But severe memory loss is more often associated with another health problem that Kennedy said at the time: mercury poisoning.

Kennedy said he had a diet heavy on predatory fish at the time, particularly tuna and bass, both of which were known to have elevated levels of mercury. In the Times interview, he said he experienced “severe brain fog” and had difficulty reproducing words. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has railed against the dangers of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired power plants, had his blood tested.

He said tests showed its mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

At the time, Kennedy had also been battling thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines, for several years. He is a longtime vaccine skeptic who has falsely linked childhood vaccinations to a rise in autism and other disorders.

In the interview, Kennedy said he was certain his diet caused the poisoning. “I loved tuna sandwiches. I ate them all the time,” he said.

The Times described Kennedy’s symptoms to Elsie Sunderland, an environmental chemist at Harvard University who has not spoken with Kennedy and has spoken generally about the condition.

She said the mercury levels described by Kennedy were high, but not surprising for someone who consumed that amount and type of seafood.

Kennedy said he made changes after these two health problems, including getting more sleep, traveling less and reducing his fish consumption.

He also underwent chelation therapy, a treatment that binds metals in the body so they can be eliminated. It is generally given to people who have been contaminated by metals such as lead and zinc in workplace accidents. Sunderland said if mercury poisoning was clearly diet-related, she would simply recommend the person stop eating fish. But another doctor who spoke to the Times said she would recommend chelation therapy for the levels reported by Kennedy.

Kennedy’s heart problem began in college when his heartbeat began to beat out of sync, he said.

He was reportedly admitted to a Seattle hospital in 2001 while in the city to give a speech. He was treated and released the next day. He was hospitalized at least three other times between September 2011 and early 2012, including once in Los Angeles, he said in the deposition. During that visit, he said, doctors shocked his heart with a defibrillator to restore rhythm.

He said in the statement that stress, caffeine and lack of sleep were the cause of the illness. “It feels like I have a sack of worms in my chest. I can feel immediately when it goes off,” he said.

He also said in the statement and interview that he was infected with hepatitis C in his youth through intravenous drug use. He said he was treated and had no lasting effects from the infection.

Kennedy has spoken publicly about another serious health problem – spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes his vocal cords to be squeezed too tightly and that explains his hoarse, sometimes strained voice.

He first noticed it when he was 42 years old, he said in the statement. Kennedy made a lot of money speaking for years, and that business declined as the condition worsened, he said.

Last year he told an interviewer that he had recently undergone a procedure available in Japan that involved implanting titanium between his vocal cords to prevent them from involuntarily narrowing.

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