Category: News & Comment

The tabloid-ready headlines about the worm that ate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain have overshadowed it, but revelations about Kennedy’s medical history also revealed several other potentially debilitating health issues. The revelations were published by the New York Times this week in an article that was reprinted by Yahoo.com.

Testifying in a deposition in 2012, Kennedy, then 58, said he was experiencing symptoms of a brain tumor, especially memory loss and severe mental fogginess. The symptoms were especially concerning because his uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, died from brain cancer in 2009.

Scans showed a small mass in the Kennedy Jr.’s brain, and he was scheduled for surgery. A last-minute second opinion revised the diagnosis as a parasitic infection, likely from a pork tapeworm larva. As Kennedy put it back then, he was infected by “a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died.”

Other health concerns
[…]

Polls consistently find that around 15 to 20 percent of voters say they’ll vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president. Today, five months out from Election Day, Kennedy’s support remains a proverbial jump ball in the campaign. At first, Kennedy attracted support from Democrats. But now there is evidence that he is pulling support from both parties, with some polls showing his support coming increasingly from Donald Trump.

Writing in the Washington Post, Aaron Blake says that a recent Monmouth University poll “gets at why the Kennedy effect might shift in Biden’s favor.”

Blake writes that when voters are informed about Kennedy’s crackpot theories on vaccination and public health, “Republicans say they become more open to supporting Kennedy, while Democrats sour on him.”

[…]

NY Times: Former President Donald J. Trump seemed alternately irritated and exhausted Monday morning, as his lawyers and prosecutors hashed out pretrial motions before jury selection in his criminal case.

Even as a judge was hearing arguments on last-minute issues in a criminal case that centers on salacious allegations and threatens to upend his bid for the presidency, Mr. Trump appeared to nod off a few times, his mouth going slack and his head drooping onto his chest.

The former president’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, passed him notes for several minutes before Mr. Trump appeared to jolt awake and notice them.

Politico: “I’m not sure that there has been a really thorough mitochondrial respiration study on the effects of two hours of morning sunlight on reproductive health. I would love to fund something like that,” Shanahan said to a 2023 panel with the National Academy of Medicine, a group to which she had previously donated $100 million….

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate has been a harsh critic of in vitro fertilization, while funding alternative research on extending women’s reproductive years.

Nicole Shanahan has for years denounced IVF — calling it “one of the biggest lies that’s being told about women’s health today.”

At the same time, she has also been a vocal proponent of and financial backer for unconventional research into the possibility of helping women having children into their 50s and exploring no-cost interventions to help women conceive, such as exposure to sunlight.