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We Are Very Sorry To Hear About RFK Jr.'s Brain Worm And Mercury Poisoning

Holy god, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan's sailors.

By Charles P. Pierce PUBLISHED: MAY 08, 2024 11:44 AM EDT
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a60732296/rfk-jr-parasite-worm-brain/


candidate rfk jr holds cesar chavez day event as he pushes latino outreach in his presidential bid
Mario Tama//Getty Images

The New York Times took a deep dive on Tuesday into the medical history of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose raison d'etre as a presidential candidate is primarily based on crazy-assed Do Your Own Research vaccine denialism and the fact that the two major candidates are older than he is and, therefore, not up to the job, cognitively. Judging from the Times story, RFKJ needs to find himself some new raisons d'etre tout suite.

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.

Well, that sounds awful.

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.

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.”

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.

Brainworms? Poisoned fish? Holy Lord, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan's sailors. How did he avoid scurvy?

It's easy to assume that the latter condition has played a serious role in his entire public life. His effort to clean up the country's rivers concentrated heavily on the threat posed by mercury byproducts from coal-fired power plants. And, of course, his vaccine denialism began as a crusade against the mercury-based vaccine preservative Thiomersal, which was in fact removed from use by the Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy attached himself to the phantom threat of the preservative as a causal agent for autism, which discredited his warnings about mercury in vaccines generally.

His medical history is now a legitimate topic for political discussion because he chose to engage in long-distance diagnoses of the president. Every one of his verbal stumbles and every moment of public forgetfulness is going to be counted against his fitness for office because that's the field on which he's chosen to compete. Personally now, I think he should stop with the YouTube calisthenics and the TikTok iron-pumping and accept the fact that he's not that much younger than the president is.