Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 70, has been shaking up the 2024 presidential race as a third-party candidate and has recently said he believes he could beat former President Donald Trump. As his campaign heats up, The New York Times published a report Wednesday about a worm that was in Kennedy’s brain.
According to the report, Kennedy said in a 2012 deposition that doctors told him two years prior that “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.” He consulted the doctors after experiencing severe memory loss and mental fog.
Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease expert and Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told CNN that pork tapeworms in particular form a calcified cyst in the brain that can cause the brain to release inflammatory chemicals called cytokines when they die. That condition is called neurocysticercosis and it can cause seizures. Patients with the illness often need to be on anti-seizure medication.
Hoetz said worms do not typically feed on brain tissue. However, he noted that it is difficult to asses Kennedy’s potential situation without brain scans.
“It’s an incomplete story,” he told CNN.
Last year, Audacy’s “Something Offbeat” podcast talked with Dr. Adler R. Dillman, a professor of Parasitology and chair of the Department of Nematology at University of California, Riverside, about doctors who found a live worm inside an Australian woman’s brain.
Kennedy’s deposition was related to his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, said CNN. He is currently married to actress Cheryl Hines. In the deposition, Kennedy said the condition impacted his earning power.
Stefanie Spear, a spokesperson for Kennedy’s campaign, told CNN he contracted the parasite while traveling extensively in Africa, South America and Asia for his work as an environmental advocate. He also was diagnosed with mercury poisoning that he said was linked with consumption of tuna and perch. Mercury poisoning can also result in neurological issues such as lack of coordination, impairment of speech and muscle weakness.
“Kennedy told the paper he has recovered from the memory loss and brain fogginess and that the parasite did not require treatment,” said CNN regarding The New York Times report. Although Kennedy’s campaign declined to provide his medical records to the Times, it did say in a statement that questioning his health is a “hilarious suggestion,” considering the ages of his contenders, former President Donald Trump, 77, and President Joe Biden, 81.
This March, Kennedy publicly criticized the paper and called it “an instrument of the Democratic Party,” which he was part of before deciding to run for president as an independent candidate.
Apart from the worm infection and high mercury levels, Kennedy has also struggled with atrial fibrillation, or A-fib (also known as an irregular heartbeat) but he told the Times he believes he no longer struggles with it.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, his uncle, died from a brain tumor in 2009. Another uncle, former President John F. Kennedy, battled Addison’s disease, a disorder of the adrenal glands. Both the former president and Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., the current candidate’s father, were assassinated.
According to an excerpt of When Life Strikes the President from Oxford University Press: “The Kennedy family, though extremely keen on physical fitness, was plagued by illness and untimely death. In the years before John F. Kennedy was elected to the presidency, two of his siblings had suffered violent deaths in plane crashes, and his sister Rosemary had been institutionalized after a horribly botched lobotomy operation. Less than a year into his presidency, JFK’s father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was felled by a near-fatal and debilitating stroke that robbed him of his ability to communicate in speech or writing.”
CNN also reported that Kennedy is in the process of getting ballot access in every state ahead of the November election. FiveThirtyEight polling data showed him polling at 10% nationwide this and The Hill’s Decision Desk HQ found him polling a little over 8%.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign introduces a compelling three-way contest against incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump,” said The Hill. “This unique configuration tests the waters of American political allegiance, as voters consider a broader spectrum of options for the country’s leadership, similar to in 2016.”
Ipsos said in March that Kennedy could shake up the election and that he has the potential to pull voters from both Biden and Trump. Still, he has been part of a considerable amount of controversies, including some related to his anti-vaccine views and comments considered to be anti-Semitic. Just this week, controversy-mired actor Kevin Spacey endorsed Kennedy’s campaign.
Kennedy has said he believes he can beat Trump, per ABC News, and this week called on the former president to formally debate him, according to a report in The Hill.