I am not a fan of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He seems to be somewhat of a crank and his run for president seems to be a vanity project in order to push some of his outlandish views. But his revelation that he has a dead parasitic worm in his brain has created a media storm.
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday detailed the medical abnormality he experienced in 2010 that he said was caused by a worm that entered his brain and then died, marking his first public explanation of the incident.
Kennedy said he recalls experiencing “brain fog” and “having trouble with word retrieval and short-term memory,” during that period in a podcast interview on “Pushing the Limits with Brian Shapiro.”
He was initially told by doctors that he had a tumor in his brain, and was planning to have it removed before he met with another doctor who looked at images of his brain and said it didn’t look like a tumor, Kennedy said.
While I completely oppose his candidacy, I am disturbed at how some are reacting to the news, treating it as a source of humor. People’s health problems can be a source of concern. Learning that one has a worm in one’s brain, even if it is dead, can be terrifying. While it can raise legitimate questions about whether they are capable of serving in the office, it is not funny and I wish people would stop treating it as such.
The thing I can’t understand is why people are so credulous about this claim. No actual evidence has been shared. The information comes from a deposition where he was trying to claim diminished capacity so he could reduce spousal support in his divorce. RFK is both a pathological liar and a medical crank. It’s entirely possible it was completely made up or that he was diagnosed by the same type of crank he works with in his antivax advocacy today. Either way, it has no impact on his fitness to be president because he was 100% unfit to begin with.
I discovered a new feature on Bluesky this week, purely because of this. Someone specifically posted that they’d muted all posts with the word “brainworms” in them. I immediately did the same, and my feed got a lot nicer and easier to read. It’s like never having to read anything John Morales or Silentbob post on here -- it just instantly improves the average quality of the reading material here, if occasionally resulting in large areas of white space if one or both of them has had one of their spasms.
I do understand why people believe it. They want to. It IS -- pace Mano -- funny. Comedy is personal and a LOT of people are finding the funny there. But my god people please talk about something else. Yeah, brainworms, haha, move on.
So, does that preclude discussion of the assembly called by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1521?
Well, it got me to remember a tv comedy series that I enjoyed and got me wondering about politicians in general. It was titled “Brain Dead”, ran on CBS in2016. Here is the IMDb link
Ah, no links. Easily found by search engines.
I suspect the people finding it humorous/amusing, is in part due to the (relatively recent?) popularity of saying someone “has brainworms” when they are spouting off particularly bad ideas/misinformation.
Which, RFK has done a lot of, so it may seem to some people rather apt that he claimed to have had a “brainworm”
That, and there have been stories circulating social media of people getting weird parasites (I think one was someone out of China(?) eating raw pork, and getting numerous cysts from juvenile tapeworms in his brain. Also that weird amoeba that people sometimes contract from hot springs, that enters via the nasal cavity, and then makes it’s way to the brain, and eventually kills the person.
meh, I don’t much care either way, I just want him to go away and/or be quiet…
It’s utter bullshit from a nepo baby who has earned a reputation for being a complete sack of trash while being an elected official. I think ridiculing his latest performance of abject stupidity is entirely appropriate.
It’s a thing, but.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPRzYJwqz6g
—
This, of course, is a false claim.
There are times when people quote me, and unless one has also blocked themselves from seeing those comments, one will perforce have to read something John Morales or Silentbob post on here.
(Still. My legend lives :0 )
DrVanNostrand @ # 1: No actual evidence has been shared. The information comes from a deposition where he was trying to claim diminished capacity so he could reduce spousal support in his divorce.
RFK Jr also claimed at that time to have had brain problems due to mercury poisoning from too much seafood, particularly tuna fish sandwiches (since cleared up). Which raises at least two questions:
* How much recovery from acute mercury poisoning in a late-50s man is even possible in a decade or so?
• Why would a prominent environmental activist subsist for so long on known endangered & polluted oceanic fish anyway?
We might also consider that the child support debate got so ferocious it was never concluded, with the mother of four of RJK Jr’s children committing suicide as his family ganged up on her.
I don’t find it funny either, but humour, like musical or other tastes, is highly subjective.
It can get tricky. Monty Python has used stuttering as a source of humour in a couple of their films, most notably A Fish Called Wanda. As a stutterer, I did feel quite awkward when I first saw the film. It could be argued that the stutterer (played by Michael Palin) was not the target of of the jokes, but the question remains; why even use it as a source of humour? Dunno. Ask Palin or Cleese. I still like the movie.
In theory we should not joke about disease, but when SSAT claims to be a stable genius with excellent health he makes himself a valid target for mockery.
re birgerjohansson @11: Yeah, and he only weighs 215 pounds.
Rebecca Watson thinks it’s funny. Not funny haha, but funny strange (well maybe a little haha).
Like many here, I have no reason to think this story is true. The condition is rare, and the only source of information has a long history of dishonesty, narcissism, and medical quackery. I would never mock someone for a medical condition beyond their control (and it’s interesting to think about this in the contexts of both Covid, and the mental and physical troubles of SSAT). If someone acquired an illness through their own foolishness, I might criticize them for that, however, but I would also feel sympathy for those around them who might be affected.
I can understand people being skeptical about the truth of the worm claim but it was in a legal deposition and I doubt that Kennedy, a lawyer, would risk perjury charges to make such an outlandish claim.
Furthermore, it seems like the story has too much detail to be just a casual claim.
The worm is not a generic one but the specific type has been identified. So I think the claim is plausible.
As I noted above via Chubbyemu.
It’s been in the news:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/did-a-tapeworm-really-eat-part-of-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-brain
Wait… how did I get lumped in with Morales?!! X-D (Strange bedfellows)
(I think sonofroj is mad at me for defending inclusive language -- with data!)
Tapeworms have only two layers of tissue. They cannot gnaw their way through anything, lacking any organs. As mentioned above, they can only passively absorb nutrients. That is why they are so thin.
The worms that infect wildebeests are a different matter. They kill their hosts.
Thanks for the details, Mano. Yes, RFKook did make that claim in a legal deposition — as a means of dodging out of child-support payments. Basically he was pleading insanity to dodge responsibility; and even if his claims are 100% verifiably true, it still doesn’t absolve him of any responsibility for his inexcusable dishonest actions.
A parasite infecting a parasite?
@Mano
My point is not that his claim is impossible. This pork parasite exists. What I’m saying is that the only actual evidence uncovered by any of these news reports is the deposition, which is his own self-serving testimony. His numerous lies are copiously documented, so I don’t think anything he says can be taken at face value. As for the risks of lying under oath, I don’t think it’s hard for a seasoned grifter like RFK. All he has to do is find an unethical and/or quack doctor to point to a random blur on a brain scan and say it could be a dead parasite. He literally lies for a living and surrounds himself with quack doctors that do the same. Any of his self-serving claims should be taken with great skepticism.