Science
RFK Jr. says he had a dead worm in his brain. What are these parasites and how common are they?
Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made various claims about his health over the years, but the most shocking came Wednesday when it was revealed that Kennedy once insisted that a worm ate a portion of his brain over a decade ago.
Kennedy’s assertion, which was reported by the New York Times, was made during divorce proceedings from his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, and was intended to support his claim that health issues had reduced his earning potential.
Kennedy reportedly disclosed the ailment during a court deposition, saying that in 2010 he was experiencing memory loss and severe mental fogginess. He said he consulted with several neurologists who examined brain scans and suspected he had a brain tumor, and he was scheduled to undergo surgery.
But then a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital told Kennedy he believed the scans revealed the remnants of a dead parasite.
The abnormality in his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” the article reported Kennedy as saying in the 2012 deposition.
No medical proof has been offered to back up the candidate’s claims, but the issue has prompted widespread conversation about the existence of brain worms, as well as the candidate’s fitness for office.
Kennedy addressed the issue in a tongue-and-cheek post on X on Wednesday saying that he could “eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.” He added in another post, “I feel confident of the result even with a six-worm handicap.”
There are several parasites that can do damage in the human brain, but the most common in the Americas is the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium. In the intestines, the worm can grow to 2 to 7 meters in length. Though its eggs can migrate from the intestines to tissues throughout the body, in all other organs the larvae dies before reaching maturity.
A photomicrograph of the parasitic pork tapeworm Taenia solium.
(Dr. Mae Melvin / Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Multiple medical experts told The Times that the condition Kennedy described sounds like neurocysticercosis, a parasitic infection caused by the larval form of the pork tapeworm. Those doctors have not treated Kennedy and were speaking generally.
Depending on where the parasite lodges itself in or around the brain, the patient could either be entirely asymptomatic or experience headaches and seizures. Memory loss and cognitive problems of the kind Kennedy described in his deposition would be rare, said Dr. Edward Jones-Lopez, an infectious-disease specialist with Keck Medicine of USC.
“It would be unusual for the parasite to cause memory loss just as an isolated symptom,” he said.
Kennedy’s description of the worm dying after it “ate a portion” of his brain is also a “misnomer” when speaking about neurocysticercosis, Jones-Lopez said. The parasite dies before maturing into an animal capable of eating anything.
The tapeworm’s eggs are found in the feces of an infected person, and they can spread to other hosts who consume food or water contaminated by the feces. If someone touches a contaminated surface and then puts their fingers in their mouth without washing their hands, they can ingest the eggs as well.
Once swallowed, the eggs find their way into skeletal muscles or other tissues, where they form cysts and cause the disease known as cysticercosis.
“In the brain it is actually larvae (not the mature worm itself) that forms cysts, which when surgeons excise and give to us pathologists, is often dead,” wrote Dr. William Yong, a pathologist specializing in neuropathology at UC Irvine. “They only form adult tapeworms in the intestines. Anywhere else in the body they form these larval cysts that ultimately die, degenerate and calcify.”
T. solium cysts can also enter the digestive system in contaminated pork that is raw or undercooked, causing a condition called taeniasis. The CDC estimates there are probably fewer than 1,000 cases a year, but it’s difficult to know for sure because infections typically result in nothing worse than mild digestive problems, such as abdominal pain or an upset stomach.
If the cysts find a home in the small intestine, they can develop into adult tapeworms in about two months’ time. Their eggs could then spread and cause neurocysticercosis.
Calcified evidence of past infections has been turning up on the brain scans of patients who’ve had imaging taken for other reasons, leading doctors to conclude that most cases of neurocysticercosis are either asymptomatic or produce only mild symptoms. A single patient could have hundreds of these calcifications in their brain, said Dr. Diana Vargas, a neurologist and neuroimmunologist at the Emory University School of Medicine.
The parasite is typically seen in underdeveloped countries where pigs come in contact with human feces, said Dr. Charles Bailey, the medical director for infection prevention at Providence St. Joseph and Providence Mission hospitals.
“It can go from the GI tract and has a propensity to migrate into the brain,” Bailey said. “It can be asymptomatic until the parasite dies. Usually when it dies it triggers some local inflammatory response which causes swelling in that particular area that can lead to symptoms.”
The parasite is endemic in Central and South America, as well as some areas of Asia and Africa, Vargas said. It isn’t frequently seen in the United States, but there are still hundreds of hospitalizations per year, she said.
Bailey said in his four-decade career he’s seen 10 to 12 cases, mostly from people who have lived in Latin America.
“Most of the cases I’ve seen have not been in travelers. They’re people who have lived in that part of the world most or all of their life and for whom high-quality or fully cooked meat might not have been consistently available,” Bailey said. “It’s not something typical tourists should be concerned about.”
Kennedy told the New York Times that doctors told him the cyst they saw on his scan contained the remains of a parasite. He was unsure where he might have contracted it, but suspected it could have been during a trip he took to South Asia. It did not require any treatment, he said.
Bailey said there’s no need to remove the parasite surgically unless it’s located in an area of the brain where it’s causing problems. If it’s discovered before it dies, it can be treated with oral anti-parasitic medications, usually along with steroids to control swelling and inflammation that could become life-threatening.
It can take anywhere from several months to up to four years for symptoms to develop, Vargas said.
Other types of parasites that can lodge in the brain include schistosoma, a flatworm that burrows through the skin but doesn’t form the signature cyst that neurocysticercosis does, or echinococcus, which can infect the brain but far more typically attacks the liver, Jones-Lopez said.
Compared to T. solium, the other parasites “are so extremely rare,” Vargas said.
The presidential candidate says that over the years he’s suffered from atrial fibrillation — the most common type of heartbeat abnormality — mercury poisoning, hepatitis C from intravenous drug use in his youth and spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes his vocal cords to squeeze too close together.
Kennedy’s campaign press secretary Stefanie Spear said in a statement to The Times that Kennedy traveled extensively in Africa, South America and Asia doing environmental advocacy work and “in one of those locations contracted a parasite.”
“The issue was resolved more than 10 years ago, and he is in robust physical and mental health,” she said. “Questioning Mr. Kennedy’s health is a hilarious suggestion, given his competition.”
Kennedy, who is running to represent the American Independent Party, has been criticized for his extreme views and disinformation about vaccines.
In a podcast in 2021, Kennedy advised parents to “resist” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines on vaccinating children. For years he has spread falsehoods about the effectiveness of vaccines and during a speech in 2022 said COVID-19 restrictions were something a totalitarian state would do, likening them to conditions in Nazi Germany.
Times staff writer Faith E. Pinho contributed to this report.
The sun had barely risen over the Pacific Ocean when a small motorboat carrying a team of Indigenous artisans and Mexican biologists dropped anchor in a rocky cove near Bahías de Huatulco.
Mauro Habacuc Avendaño Luis, one of the craftsmen, was the first to wade to shore. With an agility belying his age, he struck out over the boulders exposed by low tide. Crouching on a slippery ledge pounded by surf, he reached inside a crevice between two rocks. There, lodged among the urchins, was a snail with a knobby gray shell the size of a walnut. The sight might not dazzle tourists who travel here to see humpback whales, but for Mr. Avendaño, 85, these drab little mollusks represent a way of life.
Marine snails in the genus Plicopurpura are sacred to the Mixtec people of Pinotepa de Don Luis, a small town in southwestern Oaxaca. Men like Mr. Avendaño have been sustainably “milking” them for radiant purple dye for at least 1,500 years. The color suffuses Mixtec textiles and spiritual beliefs. Called tixinda, it symbolizes fertility and death, as well as mythic ties between lunar cycles, women and the sea.
The future of these traditions — and the fate of the snails — are uncertain. The mollusks are subject to intense poaching pressure despite federal protections intended to protect them. Fishermen break them (and the other mollusks they eat) open and sell the meat to local restaurants. Tourists who comb the beaches pluck snails off the rocks and toss them aside.
A severe earthquake in 2020 thrust formerly submerged parts of their habitat above sea level, fatally tossing other mollusks in the snail’s food web to the air, and making once inaccessible places more available to poachers.
Decades ago, dense clusters of snails the size of doorknobs were easy to find, according to Mr. Avendaño. “Full of snails,” he said, sweeping a calloused, violet-stained hand across the coves. Now, most of the snails he finds are small, just over an inch, and yield only a few milliliters of dye.
new video loaded: This Parrot Has No Beak, But Is at the Top of the Pecking Order
By Meg Felling and Carl Zimmer
April 20, 2026
For months now, menopausal women across the U.S. have been unable to fill prescriptions for the estradiol patch, a long-established and safe hormone treatment. The news media has whipped up a frenzy over this scarcity, warning of a long-lasting nationwide shortage. The problem is real — but the explanations in the media coverage miss the mark. Real solutions depend on an accurate understanding of the causes.
Reporters, pharmaceutical companies and even some doctors have blamed women for causing the shortage, saying they were inspired by a “menopause moment” that has driven unprecedented demand. Such framing does a dangerous disservice to essential health advocacy.
In this narrative, there has been unprecedented demand, and it is explained in part by the Food and Drug Administration’s recent removal of the “black-box warning” from estradiol patches’ packaging. That inaccurate (and, quite frankly, terrifying) label had been required since a 2002 announcement overstated the link between certain menopause hormone treatments and breast cancer. Right-sizing and rewording the warning was long overdue. But the trouble with this narrative is that even after the black-box warning was removed, there has not been unprecedented demand.
Around 40% of menopausal women were prescribed hormone treatments in some form before the 2002 announcement. Use plummeted in its aftermath, dipping to less than 5% in 2020 and just 1.8% in 2024. According to the most recent data, the number has now settled back at the 5% mark. Unprecedented? Hardly. Modest at best.
Nor is estradiol a new or complex drug; the patch formulation has existed for decades, and generic versions are widely manufactured. There is no exotic ingredient, no rare supply chain dependency, no fluke that explains why women are suddenly being told their pharmacy is out of stock month after month.
The story is far more an indictment of the broken insurance industry: market concentration, perverse incentives and the consequences of allowing insurance companies to own the pharmacy benefit managers that effectively control drug access for the majority of users. Three companies — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx — manage 79% of all prescription drug claims in the United States. Those companies are wholly owned subsidiaries of three insurance behemoths: CVS Health, Cigna and UnitedHealth Group, respectively. This means that the same corporation that sells you your insurance plan also decides which drugs get covered, at what price, and whether your pharmacy can stock them. This is called vertical integration. In another era, we might have called it a cartel. The resulting problems are not unique to hormone treatments; they have affected widely used medications including blood thinners, inhalers and antibiotics. When a low-cost generic such as estradiol — a medication with no blockbuster profit margins and no patent protection — runs into friction in this system, the friction is not random. It is structural. Every decision in that chain is filtered through the same corporate profit motive. And when the drug in question is an off-patent estradiol patch that has negligible profit margins because of generic competition but requires logistical investment to keep consistently in stock? The math on “how much does this company care about ensuring access” is not complicated.
Unfortunately, there is little financial incentive to ensure smooth, consistent access. There is, however, significant financial incentive to steer patients toward branded alternatives, or simply to let supply tighten — because the companies aren’t losing much profit if sales of that product dwindle. This is not a conspiracy theory: The Federal Trade Commission noted this dynamic in a report that documented how pharmacy benefit managers’ practices inflate costs, reduce competition and harm patient access, particularly for independent pharmacies and for generic drugs.
Any claim that the estradiol patch shortage is meaningfully caused by more women now demanding hormone treatments is a distraction. It is also misogyny, pure and simple, to imply that the solution to the shortage is for women’s health advocates to dial it down and for women to temper their expectations. The scarcity of estradiol patches is the outcome of a broken system refusing to provide adequate supply.
Meanwhile, there are a few strategies to cope.
- Ask your prescriber about alternatives. Estradiol is available in multiple formulations, including gel, spray, cream, oral tablet, vaginal ring and weekly transdermal patch, which is a different product from the twice-weekly patch and may be more consistently available depending on manufacturer and region.
- Consider an online pharmacy. Many are doing a good job locating and filling these prescriptions from outside the pharmacy benefit manager system.
- Call ahead. Patch shortages are inconsistent across regions and distributors. A call to pharmacies in your area, or a broader geographic radius if you’re able, can locate stock that your regular pharmacy doesn’t have.
- Consider a compounding pharmacy. These sources can sometimes meet needs when commercially manufactured products are inaccessible. The hormones used are the same FDA-regulated bulk ingredients.
Beyond those Band-Aid solutions, more Americans need to fight for systemic change. The FTC report exists because Congress asked for it and committed to legislation that will address at least some of the problems. The FDA took action to change the labeling on estrogen in the face of citizen and medical experts’ pressure; it should do more now to demand transparency from patch manufacturers.
Most importantly, it is on all of us to call out the cracks in the current system. Instead of repeating “there’s a patch shortage” or a “surge in demand,” say that a shockingly small minority of menopausal women still even get hormonal treatments prescribed at all, and three drug companies control the vast majority of claims in this country. Those are the real problems that need real solutions.
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, the executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at New York University School of Law, is the author of the forthcoming book “When in Menopause: A User’s Manual & Citizen’s Guide.” Suzanne Gilberg, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Los Angeles, is the author of “Menopause Bootcamp.”
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