Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he had been left with “cognitive problems” by a parasitic worm in his brain in a 2012 deposition. Now a Democratic primary contender turned independent presidential candidate, RFK Jr. made the admission during divorce proceedings involving his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, arguing the health scare had reduced his mental powers and earning power.
Kennedy said he realized there was a problem when he began experiencing brain fog and memory loss. He was initially suspected of having a brain tumor, with scans identifying a dark spot on his brain. Doctors later advised it was “caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” he said.
“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
The 70-year-old candidate tells The New York Times he has fully recovered from these issues now, but Manter Laboratory for Parasitology curator Scott Gardener told the newspaper that cells calcify around worms in the brain, leaving the infected with something “almost like a tumor that’s there forever.”
“It’s not going to go anywhere,” he stressed.
Infectious disease experts and neurosurgeons speculated the condition RFK Jr. described was neurocysticercosis, caused by a pork tapeworm larva.
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Kennedy admitted to the NYT he also suffered “severe brain fog” due to mercury poisoning around the time the worm was discovered. The newspaper also noted RFK Jr. history of heart issues, which hospitalized him at least four times between 2001 and 2012, and a hepatitis C infection caught by using drugs intravenously when he was younger.
RFK Jr. is polling better than any third-party presidential candidate since Ross Perot in the early 1990s, and could sway the election. Of the two leading candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, only Trump has no known brain issues, with a doctor’s report in 2023 noting his “cognitive exams were exceptional.”
Biden, 81, almost died from a brain aneurysm in 1988, requiring a multi-hour surgery to save him and receiving the last rites from a priest. Last year, he had a skin cancer lesion removed from his chest. Federal investigators interrogating him over his mishandling of classified documents noted this year that he has memory problems.
