RFK Jr. was previously treated after the worm ate part of his brain and died inside him

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. revealed that doctors once discovered a worm in his brain that had died. This emerges from a report published on Wednesday by the New York Times. The Times reports that Kennedy disclosed the condition in a 2012 deposition during divorce proceedings. In that statement, which was reviewed by the newspaper, the now-presidential candidate said he suffered from severe memory loss and mental numbness in 2010. After tests and scans, doctors initially believed Kennedy was suffering from a brain tumor before a doctor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital called him with a different opinion. That doctor said he believed the problem was “caused by a worm that entered my brain, ate part of it and then died,” Kennedy said in the deposition. The Times reports that Kennedy did not know the type of parasite or how he might have contracted it, but suspected he contracted the worm in South Asia. The newspaper spoke to experts who did not treat Kennedy but generally theorized that the worm may have been a pork tapeworm larva. Dr. Clinton White, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, told the Times that it was unlikely that the worm actually ate Kennedy’s brain as he described it. White said the tapeworm larvae feed on nutrients from the body, and unlike the tapeworm larvae in the intestines, the larvae in the brain are relatively small. Regarding the memory loss described by Kennedy, Scott Gardner, curator of the Manter Laboratory for Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said it was likely that Kennedy suffered from the effects of mercury poisoning, which he also described in the deposition, according to the Times . Kennedy told the Times he had recovered from the memory loss and dizziness and had no after-effects from the parasite. He said the condition did not require treatment. Kennedy’s campaign declined to provide the Times with his medical records. Neither President Joe Biden nor former President Donald Trump have released their medical records.