RFK Jr. has a brainworm? This explains an awful lot

I originally planned on writing about something totally different than this, but the drumbeat of stories and jokes in the media and on social media over the last couple of days made it impossible for me to resist writing about this. I’ve been writing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s antivax propaganda and conspiracy theories for nearly 19 years now, but I never could have predicted what happened during the last year. For example, it’s been a bit over a year since RFK Jr. announced that he was running for President, and, even more surprisingly, he appears to be garnering enough support that he could play the role of spoiler in enough swing states to affect the elections. Soon after, he was in the news for speculating that COVID-19 was an “ethnically targeted bioweapon.” As bizarre as those stories have been, nothing prepared me for earlier this week when the New York Times published an article entitled RFK Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain. That’s right. RFK Jr. had a brainworm! Even better, its tagline read:

The presidential candidate has faced previously undisclosed health issues, including a parasite that he said ate part of his brain.

My first reaction was: WTF? My second reaction was: Well, that explains an awful lot. My third reaction was to do what Orac does and look into the story a bit more:

In 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was experiencing memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor. Mr. Kennedy said he consulted several of the country’s top neurologists, many of whom had either treated or spoken to his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, before his death the previous year of brain cancer.

Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a procedure at Duke University Medical Center by the same surgeon who had operated on his uncle, he said.

While packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at NewYork-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.

My having taken the ‘nym of the most powerful supercomputer in an obscure British science fiction TV series from the late 1970s and early 1980s aside, I am human. I really, really couldn’t resist the usual jokes about how the brainworm must have died of starvation. Indeed, Wednesday night Stephen Colbert had a field day, and I couldn’t stop laughing, starting with a brief intro:

And a large part of his monologue:

One is really, really tempted to suggest that maybe ivermectin is for RFK Jr. after all! It is, however, unclear what kind of worm it was, although lots of news outlets tried to get doctors and scientists to speculate, for example:

From what I have read, it might have been a particular infection known as Taeniasis. And Taeniasis is an infection you get from a tropical parasitic worm – the easy name is tapeworms [which can be carried by pigs].

What happens is when you’re infected with a tapeworm, usually from raw pork or undercooked pork, you ingest the eggs and those eggs will go on to hatch. And in their larvae form, they will spread throughout the body and, depending on what tissues in the body they end in, they cause a disease called cysticercosis.

Unfortunately, ivermectin isn’t the treatment. Drugs called praziquantel and albendazole are. That’s not all, though. RFK Jr. also reported having suffered from mercury poisoning:

About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues.

“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”

How did he get mercury poisoning? Here’s how:

Mr. Kennedy said he was then subsisting on a diet heavy on predatory fish, notably tuna and perch, both known to have elevated mercury levels. In the interview with The Times, he said that he had experienced “severe brain fog” and had trouble retrieving words. Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has railed against the dangers of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired power plants, had his blood tested.

He said the tests showed his mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

Ironically, though:

At the time, Mr. Kennedy also was a few years into his crusade against thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines. He is a longtime vaccine skeptic who has falsely linked childhood inoculations to a rise in autism, as well as to other medical conditions.

In the interview, Mr. Kennedy said he was certain his diet had caused the poisoning. “I loved tuna fish sandwiches. I ate them all the time,” he said.

Of course, I do take some of this reporting with a grain of salt in that the NYT found these tidbits in a deposition for his divorce proceedings from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, in which he was trying to argue that his earning power had been diminished by his cognitive struggles. Given that this happened in 2012, I have to wonder whether his earning power had been diminished more than his having over the last seven years prior becoming the most famous antivax activist in the world after Andrew Wakefield, if not more famous than Wakefield, rather than a brainworm.

I’m really not sure from this reporting whether RFK Jr. was subsisting on nothing but tuna and other fish at risk for having a lot of mercury long before he went on his thimerosal crusade. It depends on whether “at the time” means at the time he gave his deposition or not, as that was 2012 and seven years into his antivax crusade that had started as a crusade against thimerosal-containing vaccines and then expanded to encompass all vaccines. It would make a lot more sense if this happened before he started his antithimerosal crusade; indeed, it would explain a lot about how he so easily latched onto fear mongering about a mercury-containing vaccine preservative. On the other hand, if he was saying that he was having the symptoms at the time of his divorce, in 2012, which seems likely (otherwise why bother to mention it in the deposition?), then WTF? He had spent the last seven years fear mongering about mercury in vaccines, but he chowed on fish prone to having high levels of mercury to the point of developing symptoms like “severe brain fog”? Damn. The man either really, really loved tuna or was not nearly as brilliant as his followers portray him or, more likely both. Unsurprisingly, he underwent chelation therapy for it, a favorite quack treatment for, well, everything that might or might not have been appropriate medically in this case. (Some doctors would recommend it for such high mercury levels; others would just recommend dietary changes.)

Basically, the overall impression is that RFK Jr. is not a healthy man, his recent turn to pumping iron and showing off his guns and his bench press abilities for the cameras notwithstanding. He has a number of health problems. Of course, there’s the spasmodic dysphonia, which affects the vocal cords and explains his distorted voice (and that he also blames on vaccines). He also has atrial fibrillation (for which he’s been hospitalized four times and undergone cardioversion each time), and contracted hepatitis C from drug use in his youth. Of course, RFK Jr. denies that he has suffered any longterm sequelae from any of these and claims that he’s in perfect health, to the point of posting:

I feel confident of the result even with a six-worm handicap.

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 8, 2024

OK, I’ll give him credit and admit that the two posts above are actually kind of funny, but one does have to wonder whether he suffers from any persistent cognitive problems, because:

Doctors who have treated parasitic infections and mercury poisoning said both conditions can sometimes permanently damage brain function, but patients also can have temporary symptoms and mount a full recovery.

Which category does RFK Jr. fall into? Who knows? Unfortunately, you don’t have to have a brainworm or mercury poisoning to be a raving antivax conspiracy theorist like RFK Jr. The reason that you shouldn’t vote for RFK Jr. isn’t because he had a brainworm or mercury poisoning. The reasons you shouldn’t vote for him are that he’s antivax and a raving conspiracy theorist who would likely destroy what’s left of our public health infrastructure and science-based public health and vaccine policies.

In the meantime, I’m just going to enjoy articles like I’m the worm that ate part of RFK Jr.’s brain, and I’m asking for your vote who argues that “I am brave enough to say: I am a parasite, and I don’t understand what is best for the country!” I also recommend this Threads account, which hilariously posts as RFK Jr.’s brainworm.