It’s something out of The Twilight Zone. As if the 2024 election couldn’t get any livelier, we have Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claiming that part of his brain was consumed by an invasive worm. Mr. Kennedy said that in 2010, he experienced memory loss and brain fog. Friends worried that it could be a brain tumor, as reported by The New York Times, with scans showing dark spots.
As it turns out, the worm had infected the son of the late attorney general, consumed some brain matter, and then died. Mr. Kennedy, who is running as an independent in the 2024 election, insists that if he’s elected, he’s totally fine even though his brain was infected with worms that feasted on him (via NYT):
RFK Jr.'s campaign says the worm that ate part of his brain will not affect his ability to serve as president. https://t.co/b4rkyXnRbx
— VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) May 8, 2024
While packing for the trip, he [RFK, Jr.] 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.
[…]
Still, over the years, he has faced serious health issues, some previously undisclosed, including the apparent parasite.
For decades, Mr. Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heartbeat abnormality that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although in an interview with The Times this winter, he said he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the condition had disappeared.
[…]
Several infectious disease experts and neurosurgeons said in separate interviews with The Times that, based on what Mr. Kennedy described, they believed it was likely a pork tapeworm larva. The doctors have not treated Mr. Kennedy and were speaking generally.
Dr. Clinton White, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said microscopic tapeworm eggs are sticky and easily transferred from one person to another. Once hatched, the larvae can travel in the bloodstream, he said, “and end up in all kinds of tissues.”
Though it is impossible to know, he added that it is unlikely that a parasite would eat a part of the brain, as Mr. Kennedy described. Rather, Dr. White said, it survives on nutrients from the body. Unlike tapeworm larvae in the intestines, those in the brain remain relatively small, about a third of an inch.
Some tapeworm larvae can live in a human brain for years without causing problems. Others can wreak havoc, often when they start to die, which causes inflammation. The most common symptoms are seizures, headaches and dizziness.
Kennedy had parasitic infection and a host of health issues, including mercury poisoning, which the candidate claims stemmed from his tuna fish-heavy diet. Joe Biden is old, mentally declining, and trying to keep Hamas alive. Donald Trump is also old but doesn’t have these health issues—brain worm. Are you kidding me?
It’s a box on the bingo card that I don’t think anyone saw coming. Yet, it also highlights how a presidential candidate’s health is fair game, even necessary in today’s age. Kennedy probably figured this stuff was coming out anyway, so why not get ahead of the story, especially with something as intriguing as a parasite eating part of his brain?
This whole cycle is entertaining. I know the world is burning, and college campuses have been taken over by terrorists, but Kennedy had brain worms, Biden acts like someone who’s being eaten by brain worms, and Donald Trump appears to have pulled off a Super Bowl 51-like event regarding his legal woes.
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