In 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suffered from memory loss and mental illness so severe that a friend feared he might have a brain tumor. Mr. Kennedy said he had consulted with several of the nation’s leading neurologists, many of whom had treated or spoken to his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, before his death the previous year from brain cancer.
Several doctors noticed a dark spot on scans of the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain 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.
As he made preparations 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 the head.
The doctor believed the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate part of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in his deposition.
Now an independent presidential candidate, Mr. Kennedy, 70, has described his athleticism and relative youth as an advantage over the two oldest people to ever run for the White House: President Biden, 81, and former President Donald J. Trump, 77. Mr. Kennedy earned a spot on the ballot in Utah, Michigan, Hawaii and, according to his campaign, California and Delaware. His intensive push to gain access to more states could put him in a position to tip the scales of the election.
He went to great lengths to appear healthy, skiing with a professional snowboarder and with an Olympic gold medalist who called him a “ripper” as they raced down the mountain. A camera crew stood by him as he lifted weights, shirtless, at an outdoor gym in Venice Beach.
Yet over the years he faced serious health problems, some of which had not been previously revealed, including the apparent parasite.
For decades, Mr. Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm 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 hadn’t had an incident in more than a decade and thought his condition had gone away .
Around the same time he learned about the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, likely due to ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological problems.
“I clearly have cognitive issues,” he said in his 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss and long-term memory loss that affects me.”
In the Times interview, he said he had recovered from the memory loss and fog and had no after-effects from the parasite, which he said did not require treatment. . Asked last week whether any of Mr. Kennedy’s health problems could compromise his fitness for president, Stefanie Spear, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign, told the Times: “It’s a hilarious suggestion, considering the competition. »
The campaign declined to provide his medical records to The Times. Neither President Biden nor Mr. Trump has released medical records this election cycle.
Doctors who have treated parasitic infections and mercury poisoning have said that both conditions can sometimes permanently damage brain function, but patients can also experience temporary symptoms and make a full recovery.
Some of Mr. Kennedy’s health problems were revealed in the 2012 deposition he gave during divorce proceedings from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. At the time, Mr Kennedy claimed his earning capacity had been diminished by his cognitive difficulties.
Mr. Kennedy provided more details, including about the apparent parasite, in the telephone interview with The Times, conducted as he was about to run on his first state ballot. His campaign declined to answer follow-up questions.
In the days after NewYork-Presbyterian’s call in 2010, Mr. Kennedy said in the interview, he underwent a battery of tests. Tests over several weeks showed no change in any area of his brain, he said.
Doctors ultimately concluded that the cyst seen during scans contained the remains of a parasite. Mr Kennedy said he did not know the type of parasite or where he might have contracted it, although he suspected it might have happened while traveling in South Asia.
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 did not treat Mr. Kennedy and spoke in general terms.
Dr. Clinton White, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, said microscopic tapeworm eggs are sticky and easy to transfer from one person to another. Once hatched, the larvae can travel through the bloodstream, he explained, “and end up in all kinds of tissues.”
Although it is impossible to know, he added that it is unlikely that a parasite would eat 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 the human brain for years without causing problems. Others can wreak havoc, often when they start to die, causing inflammation. The most common symptoms are seizures, headaches and dizziness.
There are about 2,000 hospitalizations each year in the United States for the disease, known as neurocysticercosis, according to the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Scott Gardner, curator of the Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said that once a worm is present in a brain, cells calcify around it. “And you’re going to have almost a tumor that’s going to be there forever. This won’t lead anywhere. »
Dr Gardner said it was possible a worm could cause memory loss. However, severe memory loss is more often associated with another health problem Mr. Kennedy said he had at the time: mercury poisoning.
Mr Kennedy said he then ate a diet rich in predatory fish, including tuna and perch, both known to have high levels of mercury. In the Times interview, he said he experienced “severe brain fog” and had difficulty finding words. Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has spoken out against the dangers of mercury contamination of fish from coal-fired power plants, had his blood tested.
He said tests showed his mercury levels were 10 times higher than what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.
At the time, Mr. Kennedy had also been engaged for several years in a crusade against thimerosal, a mercury-containing preservative used in some vaccines. He is a longtime vaccine skeptic who has falsely linked childhood vaccinations to an increase in autism, as well as other medical problems.
In the interview, Mr Kennedy said he was certain his diet was the cause of the poisoning. “I loved the tuna sandwiches. I ate them all the time,” he said.
The Times described Mr. Kennedy’s symptoms to Elsie Sunderland, an environmental chemist at Harvard who did not speak to Mr. Kennedy and responded generally about his condition.
She said the mercury levels Mr Kennedy described were high, but not surprising for someone who consumes that amount and type of seafood.
Mr Kennedy said he made changes after these two health problems, including sleeping more, traveling less and reducing his fish intake.
He also underwent chelation therapy, a treatment that binds to metals in the body so they can be expelled. It is usually given to people contaminated with metals, such as lead and zinc, during industrial accidents. Dr. Sunderland said that when mercury poisoning is clearly diet-related, she simply recommends that the person stop eating fish. But another doctor who spoke to The Times said she would advise chelation treatment for the levels Mr Kennedy said he had.
Mr. Kennedy’s heart problem began in college, he said, when it began beating out of sync.
In 2001, he was admitted to a Seattle hospital while in town to give a speech, according to media reports. He was treated and released the next day. He was hospitalized at least three additional times between September 2011 and early 2012, including once in Los Angeles, he said in his deposition. During that visit, he said, doctors used a defibrillator to shock his heart to reset the rhythm.
He said in his deposition that stress, caffeine and lack of sleep triggered the illness. “I feel like there’s a bag of worms in my chest. I can feel it immediately when it goes out,” he said.
He also said in the deposition and interview that he contracted hepatitis C through intravenous drug use in his youth. He said he was treated and had no lingering effects from the infection.
Mr. Kennedy has spoken publicly about another major health problem: spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes his vocal cords to be pinched too close together and explains his hoarse, sometimes strained voice.
He first noticed it when he was 42, he said in his deposition. For years, Mr. Kennedy made a lot of money giving speeches, and that business fell off as the situation worsened, he said.
He told an interviewer last year that he recently underwent a procedure available in Japan to implant titanium between his vocal cords to prevent them from contracting involuntarily.
News Source : www.nytimes.com
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