RFK Jr. says doctors found a dead worm in his brain in 2010

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said doctors found a dead, parasitic worm in his brain in 2010, the candidate’s campaign confirmed to Spectrum News on Wednesday.

The 70-year-old scion of the Kennedy family told the New York Times that he had recovered from symptoms associated with the parasite that consumed part of his brain – including memory loss and mental numbness – and that no treatment was required.

“Mr. “Kennedy traveled extensively through Africa, South America and Asia as part of his work as an environmentalist and became infected with a parasite in one of these places,” Kennedy’s campaign press secretary Stefanie Spear said in a statement to Spectrum News. “The problem was reported “It has been resolved for more than 10 years and he is in robust physical and mental health. Questioning Mr. Kennedy’s health is a hilarious suggestion given his competition.”

Kennedy has focused much of his campaign on his conspiratorial views on health and medicine, often contrasting his relative youth and personal physique with his main rivals: 77-year-old former President Donald Trump and 81-year-old President Joe Biden. The longtime anti-vaxxer spent years spreading misinformation about the risks of vaccines, including the long-debunked false conspiracy theory that linked childhood vaccinations to autism.

When he began his anti-vaccine activism in the early 2000s, one of his focuses was thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative that was used safely in vaccines for decades before being largely phased out in 2001, according to the Centers for Disease Control Traffic was pulled and prevention. Speaking to the Times, Kennedy said he also suffered from mercury poisoning from eating too much fish around the same time he became infected with the parasite.

Mercury is found in large quantities in fish such as tuna and bass, which Kennedy said at the time he consumed in large quantities. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, mercury poisoning can cause brain damage. Kennedy told the Times that he had tests done at the time that found he had 10 times more mercury in his blood than the EPA considers safe.

“I loved tuna sandwiches. I ate them all the time,” he told the Times.

Kennedy began his presidential campaign in the Democratic primary before transitioning to an independent candidacy. His campaign has worked to get him and his candidate, attorney and philanthropist Nicole Shanahan, on the ballot in all 50 states. They say they have so far gained access to ballots in California, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina.

Both the Trump and Biden campaigns have stepped up their attacks on Kennedy in recent weeks, fearing he will lose the support of their respective candidates in November. The Democratic National Committee put up a billboard in Las Vegas on Wednesday portraying Kennedy as a “spoiler” candidate who will split the anti-Trump vote and allow the former president to win.

“Look, RFK falls very low. “He’s not a serious candidate,” Trump said last week outside the Manhattan criminal courtroom where he is being tried. “The numbers he takes with him will be against Biden, they say. I don’t know, it might be against me a little bit, but I don’t see him as a factor.”

Aside from the brain worm and mercury poisoning, Kennedy has a decades-long history of health problems. In particular, his voice sounds strained and rough, which is due to a condition called spasmodic dysphonia that affects his vocal cords.

“In 1996, when I was 42, I was struck by spasmodic dysphonia, which causes my voice to tremble,” Kennedy said at a NewsNation town hall last year. He said he had gone to a specialist in Japan six months earlier to undergo a “novel operation” that he said helped strengthen his voice. He later told an interviewer that he had titanium implanted between his vocal cords.

And in 2001, according to media reports, he was hospitalized for cardiac arrhythmia. The Times reported Wednesday that Kennedy said in a 2012 deposition that he was hospitalized for heart treatment three more times between September 2011 and early 2012, including once when he said doctors needed a defibrillator used to get his heart back into a regular rhythm.

The Times also reported that in the statement, which Spectrum News has not verified, Kennedy said that he contracted hepatitis C as a younger man from taking intravenous medication, but that he had been treated and had no further health effects .