RFK Jr. says the worm ate his brain

If you ask Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the answer is yes.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Kennedy said doctors found a dead worm in his head because of a brain tumor scare.

The incident occurred in 2010 when Kennedy told a friend that he was suffering from memory loss and mental numbness, according to the report, which quoted Kennedy in a 2012 deposition. This prompted Kennedy to seek medical treatment as doctors said he had discovered a tumor.

Kennedy then prepared for surgery at Duke University Medical Center.

The New York Times:

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

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,” Mr Kennedy said in the statement.

The worm story came to light in his divorce proceedings when he argued that his earning potential had been reduced by brain damage. Twelve years later, he ran for president.

In the interview with The Times, 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. When Stefanie Spear, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign, was asked last week whether any of Mr. Kennedy’s health problems could jeopardize his fitness for the presidency, she told The Times: “Given the competition, that’s a hilarious suggestion.”

Parasites that live in the human brain? It is not uncommon.

From an August 2023 Associated Press report in Australia:

A neurosurgeon examining a woman’s mysterious symptoms at an Australian hospital says she ripped a wriggling worm from the patient’s brain.

Surgeon Hari Priya Bandi was performing a biopsy through a hole in the 64-year-old patient’s skull at Canberra Hospital last year when she pulled out the parasite, which measured 8 centimeters, or 3 inches, with tweezers.

“I just thought, ‘What is this? It makes no sense. But it is vivid and moving,” Bandi was quoted as saying in The Canberra Times newspaper on Tuesday.

“It continued to move with vigor. We all felt a little sick,” Bandi added of her surgical team.

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Matt Arco can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.