If you’re asking 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 over a brain tumor scare.
The incident happened in 2010, when Kennedy told a friend he was experiencing memory loss and mental fogginess, according to the report that cited Kennedy speaking about it in a 2012 deposition. It prompted Kennedy to seek medical treatment that doctors said showed a tumor.
Kennedy then prepared to have a procedure done at Duke University Medical Center.
The New York Times:
While 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 that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.
The worm story came to light in his divorce proceedings as he made the case that his earning potential had been reduced by brain damage. Twelve years later, he is running to be president.
In the interview with The Times, he said he had recovered from the memory loss and fogginess and had no aftereffects from the parasite, which he said had not required treatment. Asked last week if any of Mr. Kennedy’s health issues could compromise his fitness for the presidency, Stefanie Spear, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign, told The Times, “That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.”
Parasites living in human brains? It’s not unheard of.
From an Associated Press report from August 2023 in Australia:
A neurosurgeon investigating a woman’s mystery symptoms in an Australian hospital says she plucked 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 used forceps to pull out the parasite, which measured 8 centimeters, or 3 inches.
“I just thought: ‘What is that? It doesn’t make any sense. But it’s alive and moving,’” Bandi was quoted Tuesday in The Canberra Times newspaper.
“It continued to move with vigor. We all felt a bit sick,” Bandi added of her operating team.
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.
