Guess We Gotta Do The RFK Jr. Brain Worm Story, Don't We?
Say, I wonder if anyone has made a joke about the worm starving?
“Brain worm” was the brain worm in a lot of people’s heads since the New York Times reported yesterday (gift link) that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had been afflicted by one in 2010. Kennedy testified in a deposition during a 2012 divorce case that doctors told him they found a dead worm in his brain, that it had eaten bits of his brain before it died, and that’s why he had less ability to bring in income. So we only know “RFK Jr Brain Worm” because he sought more favorable divorce terms.
But yeah, “brain worm.”
You think, if you’re a nerd, of the nasty little slug that Khaaaaaaan! put in poor Chekhov’s ear in Star Trek II, the Wrath of Brain Worms. (Earworms, however, are a different thing, like having “Escape [The Piña Colada Song]” stuck in your head all day. Sorry.)
I ran “brain worms eating brains” through Substack’s built-in image generator, and it came up with nightmare fuel / ‘80s rock album covers like this.
And it would have to be RFK Jr, who pretty clearly has a bad brain already.
Anyhow, here are the basic details of the Times story, which are gross and medically interesting and honestly kind of sad. Let’s also remind ourselves that once you get past the icky science fiction jokey stuff, which we acknowledge above is not easy, injuries to the brain are seriously bad things all around, especially if you know someone who’s had a brain injury or other neurological condition.
According to Kennedy’s account in the deposition and a December interview with the Times, Kennedy started noticing strange symptoms in 2010: memory loss, mental fogginess, and an increasing tendency to fearmonger about vaccines. (OK, maybe not that third one.) It sounded to a friend like possible symptoms of a brain tumor, so Kennedy got checked out by several top neurologists, who thought it was a brain tumor, and they scheduled surgery at Duke University Medical Center, but then while he was packing to go, Kennedy 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.
Yikes. The Times digs into that more — pardon the phrasing — along the way revealing other health issues that may make it harder for Kennedy, 70, to portray himself as the youthful alternative to Joe Biden and Donald Trump. He’s been hospitalized at least four times for a heart condition, atrial fibrillation, although he says the last incident was over a decade ago and he thinks the problem just went away on its own.
Oh, and hepatitis C in his youth, from intravenous drug use, but he was treated and he’s all better now.
Also too, mercury poisoning, which happened around the same time as the parasite problem, likely because Kennedy was scarfing down prodigious amounts of fish, especially tuna. Man loved him some tuna sammiches.
“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.”
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 if maybe, you know, that actual, acknowledged history of health problems might “compromise his fitness for the presidency,” Kennedy campaign spokesperson Stephanie Spear told the Times, “That is a hilarious suggestion, given the competition.”
Thank goodness we are now so well-conditioned to unserious assholery from public figures and their underlings, or that flippancy might be news in itself.
And no, Kennedy won’t be releasing any medical records, because see above. But he did go on Twitter to joke about it, which means he wins. Kennedy twote, “I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate,” and followed up with “I feel confident of the result even with a six-worm handicap.”
Serious political discourse from a serious candidate.
Several neurologists and parasite experts the Times consulted with — medical doctors, not body horror expert David Cronenberg — said that based on Kennedy’s descriptions, it sounded to them like a “pork tapeworm larva,” and we hope you sleep well tonight, folks. The Times dutifully notes that the docs hadn’t seen Kennedy and were speaking in general terms, so keep that in mind. As it were.
Important general medical details!
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.
Tapeworm larvae — nope, not running that through the image generator — can actually survive in a brain for years, just enjoying the nutrient-rich surroundings, listening to public radio, and not causing any issues for the brain-owner subletting a bit of headspace to them. Other larvae are nowhere near that chill, and are more like the assholes I lived next door to in college, just fucking everything up all the time, except with the tapeworm larvae the brain havoc often comes “when they start to die, which causes inflammation. The most common symptoms are seizures, headaches and dizziness.”
The point here is that sorry, probably the parasite didn’t eat Kennedy’s brain, and, again speaking generally, while brain worms might cause memory loss and fogginess, that’s even more likely the result of mercury poisoning, which is nasty stuff. Kennedy said that test results showed “his mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.”
Also, Kennedy said in that 2012 deposition that his atrial fibrillation was so bad that during one hospitalization the docs used a defibrillator to shock his heart rhythm back to normal. There’s probably a pop song in that.
He said in the deposition that stress, caffeine and a lack of sleep triggered the condition. “It feels like there’s a bag of worms in my chest. I can feel immediately when it goes out,” he said.
Worms again? It’s like this guy has worms on the brain.
Look, RFK Jr. may not be healthy enough to be president, but he’s definitely fit to spoil the election and hand the presidency to Donald Trump, who by contrast has never had brain worms, just lifelong evil and stupidity.
[NYT (gift link)]
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I feel protected from brain worms because yesterday afternoon JackJack (the cat) brought me a dead worm that he slayed himself. OK, it was a baby garden snake, but he's ready for similar challenges, I think.
Walk without rhythm, it won't attract the worm
Walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm
Walk without rhythm, and it won't attract the worm
if you walk without rhythm, huh, you'll never learn