Independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr has claimed that a worm ate part of his brain and then died.
Kennedy, 70, revealed that doctors had found the worm when they examined him after he feared he had cancer.
He made the claim at his 2012 divorce proceedings, the New York Times reported.
The politician and environmental lawyer, who was an anti-vaccine campaigner during Covid, is a member of the Kennedy political dynasty.
His uncle the late Massachusetts senator Edward Kennedy had died from a brain tumour and he feared he also had cancer. He said he had suffered memory loss which he believed could be caused by the disease.
But a doctor in New York who told him a dark spot on his brain scan was a dead parasite, the Times reported.
Kennedy, the son of late Attorney General Robert F Kennedy who was assassinated in 1968, testified that the doctor had told him that the dark spot on the scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died”.
He also said in his 2012 deposition that he has suffered from mercury poisoning that has caused neurological issues.
“I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said at the time. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”
He told the New York Times in an interview that the poisoning was caused by eating too much fish which he loved.
Kennedy is taking on President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump arguing that he is healthier and fitter than both to run the country.
