Doctors told Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that he had a dead parasitic worm inside of his brain, the independent presidential candidate divulged in a 2012 deposition obtained by The New York Times.
Experiencing memory loss and brain fog, Kennedy in 2010 consulted with neurologists who initially concluded that a dark spot found in scans of his brain was a tumor. But a doctor at New York-Presbyterian Hospital later told Kennedy that the spot “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Kennedy said in the deposition.
Kennedy, unsure of where he contracted the parasite, suggested it may have happened during a visit to South Asia. A doctor without firsthand knowledge of Kennedy’s medical history told the Times that details described in the deposition pointed to a pork tapeworm larva.
In his own campaign, Kennedy has assailed the mental fitness of his two opponents, but in the deposition admitted that the worm — and a mercury poisoning diagnosis that came around the same time — had taken its toll.
“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the deposition, per the Times. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
Kennedy has previously pushed conspiracy theories around vaccines, falsely linking mercury-based compounds in some of them to neurological diseases.
Doctors who spoke with the Times said it’s not possible to be sure whether the parasite and mercury poisoning caused permanent brain damage without firsthand knowledge of Kennedy’s medical records.